Ok …let’s go back in time step by step.
1. First we have painted all the decks with polyester. Polyester did an awesome job in filling all the gaps and smallest micro holes in the carbon fiber. It gave the whole deck that smooth touch, but there was so much sanding I can’t even tell you. The thing with polyester is…is that you don’t want the layer to be too thick. You need to sand off as much as you can to get the layer as thin and as smooth as possible. Also we have added some additional fiber glass to reinforce some parts of the deck like wheel wells or parts where the battery compartment is. I think it took us good week to have everything properly sanded.
fuck loads of sanding:
2. After polyester was applied and sanded everything had to be covered with nice coat of epoxy base.
3. After epoxy cured we had to sand it all over again but this time with about 400-600 grit This part of sanding was really important as this was the last time we had chance to get rid of all the imperfections that were left.
4. After sanding - nice thin expoxy base was applied again:
of course after that epoxy cured we had to sand it again this time with 800 grit.
5. After that last base of epoxy was sanded we were ready to paint everything. We have used that hard polyurethane paint for yachts. We have applied two layers of it.
6. After paint cured we had to flip over and paint all the tops:
- After two layers of paint were applied we had to drill holes for trucks…and that shit was a real challange. Normally it’s not a big deal at all to drill holes as most of the decks are flat were it’s super easy to align everything properly. Because of the battery compartment sticking out and all the curves that the deck has we had to build a freaking template to get it properly done. Again .I was expecting everything to be easy …were as in reality it took us good three days to make the template properly aligned.
- After we drilled holes, we have applied last layer of paint to cover all the spots that we drilled.
As you can see guys there is nothing but hard work here and there is nothing I could do to get it made quicker. Everything had to be as close to perfect as possible before the paint was applied. The only part of the deck I didn’t really cared that much about is the TOP of the deck that goes under the grip tape. Also there might be some epoxy drip marks or coarse texture inside the battery compartment but to have it nice and smooth it would take me another year to have it done as nice as the exteriors - it’s all covered by the battery and electronics anyway - so please forgive if it looks rough.
There is also one decision that has to be made…and that is :
We need to decide whether we finish everything as it is now were we have nice and smooth polyurethane as it is …or do we go with one last thin layer of that TANK PROOF car paint I’ve been posting videos about a while ago.
Normally that paint is applied with hard thick COARSE texture where you can literally use a knife and nothing happens… hover meanwhile we were doing all the decks I had received a sample of that paint being painted with 30% thinner and with 1.8 air gun. The result is really really nice. This paint mixed with thinner is obviously not as bullet proof as on those video but it still looks like it should be literally scratch proof against rocks and debris. My gut is telling me that we should try it. I am picking up 50ml of that paint for testing today and I’ll try to paint it and see if I can replicate that texture that has been sent to me. Take a look at the photos. That small texture looks really nice, and during my tests I couldn’t scratch it.
**Boys again…sorry for the silence but I wasn’t even checking the forum for the past three weeks…I know you are all waiting for fucking ages, and started to worry if I am alive. **
I am on this project every single day just trying to have everything made awesome so thanks for understanding.
keep up the hard work 