DragBus Rat Stylee part three – giving it a home-made primer paint job

Keeping the theme of a Rat Style the finish of the paint has to be either original or very close to original – well we were out of original paint on our VW Camper, what with the extreme rust and pitting, plus the numerous panel replacements. So..

What colour to spray from an aerosol? It has to be a matt finish so we chose primer. The best primer that is sealed against water is an epoxy primer. So armed with 14 cans of Spraymax epoxy 2K primer from Germany – this is real 2 pack primer in an aerosol form, to energise it you press the red button on the base and you then have 12 hours or so to use the can – off we set.

First off we scuffed the whole Bus, using a 3M paint stripping wheel – took about 20 hours to strip the necessary parts. We then wire wheeled the really rusty areas and use a neutraliser to convert rust to this black substance that is not going to rust further.
This is front floor half way through the work – here we still have some surface rust;

Nothing escaped being taken off the Camper – we took the front doors off, all the glass so we can get paint into the window beds, including the door tops – stripped and bare ready for paint;

Once the area was cleaned with water and degreaser, we treated the surface rust and then blew off all the dust and particles with lots of compressed air, masked the paint area carefully so as not to overspray anything original, let the area settle and then wiped off with a tack rag several times. Here we are part way through the rattle can aerosol process – note the use of breathing apparatus;

Once all painted – including the roof we then couldn’t wait for the camera before refitting some trim and windows – to see what the finished Bus would look like;

And here are the two sides with door tops and pop outs complete with new seals / rubbers etc;

And the passenger side;

While the Bus was being painted we stripped off the front beam and gearbox running gear for a coat of underseal – courtesy of Waxoyl;

A sneaky picture showing the new narrowed beam in place around the Waxoyled chassis beams;