Kirkham 427 ManualTable of Contents

Finishing the Body

Looking at your body surrounded by all those boxes of parts, you're probably ready to dig in and check everything out. However, unless you're just curious, you don't have to open anything yet. First, you'll need to decide how you'd like the finish on the body. These days, most people either go with a painted finish, a brushed finish, or a completely polished finish. While paint is entirely up to you and your body man, we would love to help you with anything we can if you're going the brushed or polished route. Below are just a few examples of what your car could look like when you're done.

Painted Brushed Polished

click on picture to enlarge

Sanded or “Brushed” Finish

Before you start, we'll let you know what kind of hours you're looking at. From a filed finish, it will be at least 100 hours to reach a finish like you may have seen on our factory-brushed cars. From there, polished racing stripes will take about 20 hours more, as well as the purchase of a buffer if you really want them to shine. Now...if you have 120 hours, read on. If not, you could hire your neighbors (hopefully they'll work for pizza), or purchase factory brushing.

If you'd like us to do it, hopefully you're only pre-reading this and won't have to pay to ship your car back. Don't feel bad though. You wouldn't be the first.

Here's a list of materials you'll need to sand your car.

Sanding Materials

-dust masks

 1 or 2 boxes

-80 grit velcro-back sandpaper 2 3/4” x 16”

(2 boxes of 50)

-120 grit velcro-back sandpaper 2 3/4” x 16”

 2 boxes of 50

-red scotch brite. The very-fine kind.

 (3 boxes of 20)

-sanding block 2 3/4” x 8 ideally.
2 3/4” x 16” cut in half is ok.

1

-glass cleaner, like Windex

(a couple of bottles)

-laquer thinner

(1 bottle)

-paper towels

 (big value pack)
latex or nitrile gloves, unless you're into the aluminum hand look. 1 or 2 boxes
patience A Lot

Your Sanding Crew


The full 16” block is usually too long to block most areas of the car, so we cut the block and the paper in half. Now you have supplies for a friend. In a few hours, when you're trying to figure out if you have any hope in finishing this task, you'll discover that friends can be a great way to maximize productivity.

Maximizing productivity means rapid progress and a high level of motivation for you and your “crew” of friends. Motivation, not talent, is the key element to sanding a car, so keep a lot of food and fine beverages on hand for the crew (no one likes to work hungry). Though some talent is necessary, without motivation, you'll probably end up sending your car elsewhere to be sanded. That being said, we're ready to begin.


Getting to Know the Techniques

Just for practice, start blocking with 120 grit on an area of the car (like the top of the nose) going in a consistent direction in which you'd like the grain to flow. Normally, we run the grain from front to rear. Don't worry if it you're unable to go straight at first... you'll figure it out with some practice. While blocking, you'll probably notice that some areas (especially concave ones) of the car will be impossible to get at with a block. For these areas, you can put one or two pieces of 2 ¾ x 8 sandpaper on a piece of scotch-brite and sand using the palm of your hand as a block. Using this method, you may find it's easier to get a straighter grain, and you may also find that you use this method a lot more than the block, which is fine. Use whatever you feel most comfortable with.

example of grain scotch-brite with paper attached

click on picture to enlarge

The Sanding Process

Now that you've got the basic techniques down, it's time to start sanding for real. Start with 80 grit, and go over the whole car, always keeping with your desired grain. The purpose of the 80 grit is to get any deep file marks out. Once all the deep marks are gone, you can move on to 120 grit.

120 grit will give you a nice satin finish and is as fine as we go before scotch-brite. This step is definitely more important than the 80 grit step. How well you sand the car with 120 grit will ultimately determine how nice the grain will be in the end. In order to get the grain as uniform as possible, make your final strokes long and straight. This way, the grain will not appear to have any stopping or starting points. It will look as if you walked from the front of the car to the back with every stroke. People will wonder how on Earth you did it, and all that work will be worth it. Keep the long strokes going until you're satisfied with the grain. Your car should look awesome at this point, as scotch brite will not cover any major flaws or imperfections in the grain (unless you scotch-brite for a long, long time).

Once you're happy with your 120 grit job, it's on to scotch-brite. You may ask yourself at this point, “Why go any further? This looks sweet!” Well, the scotch-brite will give the car a “super-satin” look. So if you plan on polishing stripes on your car, the scotch-brite on the main part of the car will help the stripes stand out and contrast better. However, if you'd like to stop now, that's cool. Our only preference here is that you're happy.

Scotch-brite works a lot like the 120 grit step. It's just a finer level of finish. The trick to scotch-brite is doing it for a long enough period of time (always with the grain). As you use the scotch-brite, you'll notice (after about 50 strokes in the same area) that the finish starts to become cloudier or more satin than the 120 finish. Once the “cloud” appears in the area you are sanding, you're done with that area. The idea is to get this “cloudiness” to cover the whole car, thus creating a very consistent final finish. If you skimp on the scotch brite, your car will look cloudy and inconsistent, so be sure to be thorough in this step on all areas of the car.

Cleaning and Maintaining Your Finish

When you're satisfied with the scotch-briting, you're ready to clean the car off. At this point, hosing the car down will get rid of most of the dust, and then just wipe it off with the grain. You may have to repeat this step a few times as the dust really packs itself in the finish. Maintain your finish with Windex or laquer thinner and paper towels (again, always wiping with the grain). Windex will take out most finger prints, while laquer thinner will take out most anything else. If laquer thinner will not take out a stain, try wet sanding with scotch-brite using water or Windex as lubricant. That should take car of just about any stain you'll encounter.


Polished Racing Stripes


Polished Racing Stripes have become a very popular option, and are a great way to add a unique and original look to your car. There are two ways to apply the stripes. The difference is that one is semi-polished and still has a grain, and the other is fully polished. The difference is shown below.

(fully-polished stripe picture) (semi-polished stripe)

click on picture to enlarge

Stripe Polishing Materials.

Semi-polished:

-Mother'smag and aluminum polish (two 10 ounce jars

-paper towels (another big value pack)

-latex or nitrile gloves (use some leftover ones from sanding)

Add these items for fully-polished stripes:

-polishing buffer

-rotory/wobble DA Sander

-320 grit DA paper (1 box)

-600 grit DA paper (1 box)

-800 grit DA paper (1 box)

-1000 grit DA paper (1 box)


Here's the layout and measurements we typically use.

6 1/8” on the top part of the nose and the bottom of the rear. This measurement tapers up to 6 3/4”at the edges of the cockpit. There's a 1” gap between the stripes. Click on photo to enlarge.


The stripes just above the oil cooler are 5 7/8” wide and the ones under the cooler are 5 3/4” wide. The gap between the stripes is 1 inch.

If you'd like to add “pit stripes”, we typically run these from the edge of the hood (as shown) to the middle of the wheel arch.

These stripes were used on similarly-painted teammates' cars to help pit crews know who was who on the track. These stripes are 2” wide with a 1” gap between them.


A note on stripes: Obviously, this is not the only possible configuration of stripes. The more you study, the more you'll notice that the stripes (pit stripes included) on original race cars varied greatly. So feel free to be creative, and go with what you like.

Meatballs

If you'd like meatballs (number circles) on your car, we place ours as pictured below. They are 18” on the hood and trunk, and 19” on the sides. Again, there was a lot of variation on the vintage race cars (often the side meatballs were partially on the doors), so make them, and the size of them, however you like.

front 18” side 19” rear 18”

click on picture to enlarge

Semi-Polished Stripes (visible grain)

If your goal is to semi-polish the stripes, just mask the stripes off, apply and rub in the polish with a paper towel, wipe it off with another paper towel, and repeat as desired. Oh yeah, always wipe with the grain. Also, make sure to rub all of the polish out before you determine whether you're satisfied or not. Sometimes, the stripes can look polished without being polished. This is due to extra (unwiped) polish on the car creating the contrast, not the fact that the metal is really polished. In this case, your stripes will wash off when you clean the car, and the actual end-result will be less polished than you may have desired.

Fully-Polished Stripes
(no visible grain)

First, realize that even though this may seem like a much bigger project than semi-polishing the stripes, it really doesn't take any longer, and power tools do the work, not your body. Though many people do not mind, be aware that fully-polished stripes will more greatly reflect the sun than the semi-polished ones.

The first step in this process is removing the grain from the area you wish to polish. In the case of typical racing stripes, plan on removing the grain down the whole middle section of the car. There's no need to mask here, and it doesn't matter if you go beyond where the stripes will actually be. Use 320 grit on a DA sander, (wobble function) and remove all of the visible grit. (figure 1.6) Repeat this process with 600 and 800 grit. After the 800 grit, turn the DA sander to the “rotary” function and sand with 1000 grit. Though you can do this without a rotary function, it will take longer to polish out the little DA swirl marks. 1000 grit paper with a rotary DA will pretty much polish the stripe area. Be consistent here, and do not gouge the aluminum. (figure 1.7) After the 1000 grit, the area will be nearly polished with the exception of some swirl marks. At this point, you're ready to polish. Rub a liberal amount of polish on to the desired area, then (with the buffer on low speed) polish in a swirl pattern. (figure 1.8) Repeat this final step 2 or 3 times until you have a consistently polished surface. (figure 1.9) Now just mask the stripes, re-scotchbrite the polished area outside of the strips, remove the tape, clean with Windex, and you're done. Celebrate, give your crew a nice bonus (extra pizza), and tell them to meet back in an hour to start the assembly.

A Fully Polished Car

If you'd like to polish your entire car, please refer to the “Fully-Polished Stripes” section. The polishing process is exactly the same as the stripes. Just keep in mind that all the nooks and crannies can be a major chore to get to, and the total job could last more than 300 hours. Racing stripes on a polished car work the same as on the brushed car, just in reverse. After polishing the entire car, mask the stripes, and sand them in with scotchbrite. If you just changed your mind about polishing your own car, call us for a quote, and we'll help you out.



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Change date: Monday, 02-Jul-2007 20:56:55 MDT
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