P A R A C I N G O N L I N E . c o m

Project American Flyer - Week Seven

How I Painted the Flames on the PARacingNews.net Project American Flyer car.

Before you read this and say to your self "But that's not how Jesse James does it", keep in mind we were on a very low budget for the project as we were building an inexpensive, claimer racecar. It would have made no sense to put a $5000 paint job on a $500 car. So, with the disclaimer out of the way, let me tell you how I did it.

First I stopped by an automotive paint supply store and picked up some supplies. I bought two rolls of 3M fine line vinyl tape. One roll was 1/8 inch thick and the other was 1/4 inch thick. You will see why I needed two rolls, each a different size, later. Each roll was about seven dollars. I then made a trip to Wal-Mart. Remember, we are on a budget. In the paint section I picked up several things. I bought six rolls of masking tape at 54 cents each, three cans of gloss white, two cans of gloss yellow, two cans of gloss orange, and two cans of gloss red spray paint. Each can was 94 cents. I also picked up a roll of masking paper at under four dollars.

With my supplies in hand I returned to the shop where just the day before I had used 12 cans of gloss black spray paint to give the car it's black finish. Before I go any further, do I recommend spray paint for painting an entire car or even flames? Yes, if you are on a budget, no if you are doing a show car or can afford to pay someone to paint it.

OK, back to the flames. The first thing I did was find the center of the hood. The center would be my starting point. Using the 1/8 inch thick 3M fine line tape I started to draw out my flames. This tape is great as it curves, and will do almost anything you need it to do, without folding over or wrinkling. I taped off one half of the car's hood with various shaped flames and I have to admit, I pulled up the tape several times until I was happy with the way things looked. That is another great thing about the tape, I was able to reuse the pieces I had pulled up. This made me feel a lot better about spending seven bucks for the roll. Once I was happy with the first half, I moved to the second half.

There are several ways to do flames, some people believe you have to have identical matching flames on both halves for it to look good. Although I am not in that category, for this exercise, I tried to follow that rule. I will tell you right now, if you want them to be exact, get a template, otherwise, they aren't going to be perfect. I didn't have a template so I winged it. I believe the second half came out close to the first half, but there are definite differences.

Once I finished taping the second half with the 1/8 inch thick tape, I got out the 1/4 inch thick tape and made a second outline around the outside edge of the first line. I did this so that I would have more room for my masking tape which I would use later. The wider tape doesn't curve as sharp as the thinner tape, so it took some more work to get it laid out, but still, it went fairly smooth and was done rather quickly.

After I outlined the flame pattern with the thicker tape, it was time to mask off the area that I did not want painted. This was a very time consuming task which saw two rolls of masking tape disappear. I had to cover every inch of the cars hood and front fenders that I didn't want painted so I used some masking paper for the large parts, and I used the masking tape for the smaller areas. I had to use a lot of little pieces of tape to cover the small areas inside the flames. After about two hours of masking, the flames were masked off and the car was ready to be painted.

As I explained earlier, I did this paint job as cheap as possible so there would be no paint booth. My paint booth was mother nature's paint booth. After I got the car to where I would be painting it, the wind started to pick up which made masking off the rest of the car a real pain, but it had to be done to prevent over spray. I covered the front tires and used more masking paper to cover the rest of the car.

Once I was satisfied with my masking job, which I admit was not great, mostly because of the wind and threating skis, I sprayed my first layer of white. I used a lot of white because not only would the nose of the car be white, but white would be the base color for the flames. After spraying the first layer of white, I decided that it could use a little more on the nose so I concentrated on the part that would be showing as white. I made sure that I covered everything and I took my time so that I didn't miss anything and leave a bunch of black exposed.

Once the white was complete, it was time to move on to the yellow. The exact color is Sun Yellow. The wind was picking up so it became difficult to get the blend from the white to the yellow that I wanted, but it worked ok. With the yellow I created my blend, then sprayed the rest of the flames lightly with the yellow. In order to get the color blend that I wanted with the yellow and orange, I started spraying the orange while the yellow was still wet. With the orange I created a blend from the yellow and then sprayed the rest of the flames with the orange, laying it on heavier in some places to give them a more detailed look.

With the white, yellow, and orange blending to my satisfaction, it was time to move on to the red. The color I chose was Fire Red and it is pretty bright. With the red, I wasn't trying to blend from the orange/yellow mix up as I did with the other colors, but I was trying to basically highlight the edges of the flames. I sprayed around the outside of the flame pattern to give it a highlighted look. Once the red was sprayed, I used some more orange to lightly cover the red, making another unique blend.

One of the neat things I like about flames, real flames is the mixture of colors that appear, my favorite being blue. I tried to recreate this effect by spraying some blue onto the tips of my flames, but the blue I chose was to dark and it really didn't look very good so I went back over them with the orange again.

I was now satisfied with the look of the flames and would wait for the paint to dry so that I could peel away the mask and see how they came out. After about a half hour of dry time, keep in mind I used quick dry spray paint from Wal-Mart, I began peeling the tape up. One of the problems from the masking tape was that some on the black peeled up with the tape. I wasn't to concerned about this because I planed on doing some touch up anyway. Once the tape and mask was all removed I used the black touch up paint to touch up the areas where the paint had peeled away. I also used the touch up paint to correct some of the areas in the flames that either pulled up, or didn't look like I wanted them to.

For the final step on my flames, I took a blue paint marker, which I bought in the craft section at Wal-Mart, and outlined the flames. I chose to use the paint marker because it is water based and while wet, would allow for corrections. Once the flames were outlined, my flames were complete.

Now, as I have said several times in this article, I did the entire paint job on this car cheap. Under $50 for everything, paint, masking materials, and fine line tape. Would I suggest you do it this way? If you are a beginner painter like my self and you are painting a car that is barely worth more than the $50 you will spend on the paint, yes. It worked for me, and that is what I needed it to do. I would like to practice some more in the future and use the proper tools for this type of job. I think that would be a great learning experience. Another question that I have already gotten is, what happens when you wreck? Well, I hope it isn't to bad. I know that the paint will get scratched on this car, hell, if you look close at some of the pictures you can see where I just painted over the already existing dents! If it gets scratched up or bent, I will just use some touch up paint and touch it up.

Photos of the entire process:

Fresh Black Paint

1/8 inch striping tape

Full view of hood with 1/8 inch striping tape

1/4th inch striping tape

Hood completely masked off

Close up of masked flames

Quick masking job due to incoming rain