Masking a car off: am I a chump?

[Aurora40]

I QEW'd the Corvette tonight in anticipation of hitting it with the rotary tomorrow. I then masked it off.

I did all the glass and the roof (it's acrylic), and the emblems, but I haven't even done the beltline trim yet (ran out of tape).

The thing is, it took me like 1 - 1 1/2 hours! Is it me? Am I just slow? I couldn't believe how the time went by from when I started to when I was done. What I did was use newspaper and tape it down along the edges. I'll try to snap a pict tomorrow after I do the beltline trim.

Any tips on ways to do this faster?

[Five Star]

taping just like anything else takes practice.. did you think everything is easy? hehe

what i usually do is run the tape edge all the way then fold it over after i have long arms so i usually put down 18 inch sections on the longer sections.



an hour for a outstanding complete tape job.

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Masking a car off: am I a chump?

Originally posted by Aurora40

Any tips on ways to do this faster?

The only tip I have is to do it more often,

practice makes perfect

Having some scissors handy, tinfoil, plastic, newspaper, socks, cardboard, anything else you can think of, it just depends on what you have to cover...

For what it's worth, I take about an hour to an hour and a half for some cars...

Here's an example... this probably took about an hour and half...



Sometimes it's faster to cut an edge with some scissors versus tear the tape and get all kinds of irregular shapes that don't work for the thing you're trying to tape off.




Lot's to tape off on a Lotus Elise...





And cover up...




Note the bed sheet used to drape over the engine and the injectors...







Have fun tomorrow!

[SiriusRIMZ]

I found using the very thin air-brusher's plastic tape works the very best. Granted, its not the cheapest tape in the world, but it conforms to curves and bends much eaiser than white or painters tape. Once you run a line of thin blue tap, the rest of the taping is a breeze.

[gb387]

Re: Re: Masking a car off: am I a chump?

Originally posted by Mike Phillips
The only tip I have is to do it more often,

practice makes perfect

It has taken me a little time to get the hang of it and move quickly. Paint the house a few times, get use to taping off trim in the house and you will be set!

[Five Star]

Re: Re: Re: Masking a car off: am I a chump?

Originally posted by gb387


It has taken me a little time to get the hang of it and move quickly. Paint the house a few times, get use to taping off trim in the house and you will be set!

or vice versa

I painted 2 rooms in my house it took me 40 minutes to tape both rooms

[steveo3002]

i have a tip for taping

if you feel the area you sticking it on is a less than perfect and you fear it may pull some paint off or whatever. stick the tape to you t shirt or pant leg, it picks up a little lint and halfs the stickyness

[steveo3002]

oh and another one

sometimes trims and badges and those side flasher lamps just pull off or have oneor two fixing screws, its just as quick to pull em off. that way you can detail under that piece and give the lamp or badge a good clean too

[Pete-FWA]

Re: Masking a car off: am I a chump?

Originally posted by Aurora40
Any tips on ways to do this faster?

With your Corvette, I know those side moldings are a bit too wide to be completely covered by standard size tape (3/4"), so I use 1.5" tape for those. This way you only have to make one trip around those moldings, instead of two.

If this tape is slightly too wide, one can fold it just a bit in the middle to make it conform to size.

Keeping many different sizes of tape around helps in such situations. I have the 3/4", 1.5", 2.5 or 3", and pinstripe tape in my cabinet.

As far as your time to complete the job...doesn't seem out of line to me. Practice helps a bit, but that job will take 30-60 minutes as an average on most cars even after doing it for years.

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by steveo3002
i have a tip for taping

if you feel the area you sticking it on is a less than perfect and you fear it may pull some paint off or whatever. stick the tape to you t shirt or pant leg, it picks up a little lint and halfs the stickyness

This is a good one, I use this one too...

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by steveo3002
oh and another one

sometimes trims and badges and those side flasher lamps just pull off or have one or two fixing screws, its just as quick to pull em off. that way you can detail under that piece and give the lamp or badge a good clean too

This is a great tip, anytime you can remove an emblem, trim, badge, light component, etc. it will protect the component and enable you to clean, polish and protect the paint around and under the component.

You have to be careful however as something may look easy to remove and become a real headache. I remember removing a lot of chrome script of classic cars that's held on with what are called speed nuts which are basically a piece of thin metal that looks like a nut but it isn't and they often times strip-out, or bend when you remove them that putting them back on can be hard. If you need to replace them, finding just the right size can also be hard without a specialty shop nearby. So always look into what it's going to take to remove the object and make a judgment call. You also don't want to be breaking items by removing them especially if the car belongs to a customer.


I don't remember why we didn't remove the Mercedes-Benz emblem and script but we didn't. I also know I probably don't want to purchase either of these items for the customer in case I broke them in the removal process as they're attached to a very rare 1958 300 SL Mercedes-Benz.



p.s.

The side with less swirls was all done by hand as the paint on this car was to thin to machine polish.

[gbackus]

Originally posted by Mike Phillips
I don't remember why we didn't remove the Mercedes-Benz emblem and script but we didn't. I also know I probably don't want to purchase either of these items for the customer in case I broke them in the removal process as they're attached to a very rare 1958 300 SL Mercedes-Benz.

p.s.

The side with less swirls was all done by hand as the paint on this car was to thin to machine polish. [/B]

Uh Mike, that is why we didn't tape off, we decided to do the car by hand and you didn't want to risk damaging the emblems, or the paint as it already loked a bit, uh, worn in some spots and you wanted to be safe, for lack of a better term.

Which brings up another point, be careful when working on older or even neglected finishes, I've personally pulled off bits of paint before, and thank god it was a personal vehicle.

[Superior Shine]

We tape to protect edges and parts we feel will get damaged if "kissed" the buffing pad.

That being said I take about 10 min. to tape off what I am going to tape off. Usually I just tape of rubber and plastic trim.

I do this for a living and out labor rate is $50+ per hour. If I took allot of time to tape off the car the job would be really expensive if added to what we already charge to polish it.


To clean up splatter we wash the vehicle.

[Aurora40]

Heheh, yeah Joe I can't help but wonder if it would be quicker to just clean the splatter than mask against it (other than trim/rubber).

Here's the car:



It took another 20 minutes or so to do the beltline today. I usually buy 1.5 and 2" rolls of tape. I don't know how you all use the blue stuff, though. I had to get regular masking tape from Home Depot today, and went with the 3M "Pro" stuff that claimed to be stickier than the blue stuff. It barely sticks to the beltline molding. The green 233+ tape sticks a LOT better.

My day wasn't a success, but I didn't mess anything up either. I did the hood already and am eating lunch now.

I tried ZPC with an 8006 at 1,400 rpm, and that did very little. So I changed to a cutting pad (7006? can't recall the numbers). That helped a little but did nothing for the water spots and rids. I didn't want to try DACP because I haven't used it via rotary yet, and I don't want to learn on the 'vette. I also don't have any #84, though never used that either.

So now I'll just Cyclo the car with #80 and call it a day. I'll have to think about what the next step to take on the vette will be.

Here's a closeup of the defects before buffing (they looked the same after). This is all over the horizontal surfaces of the car. But in most light, even in the sun, you really don't see it and the finish looks really nice. Nighttime with parking lot lights is when it is most noticeable.





It's water spotting, and there are also what look like tiny pinholes, though they aren't through the paint, but are the diameter of pinholes, all over with the waterspots. It's like someone walked on the car with tiny cleats or something. Then there are a fair bit of RIDS covering many of the surfaces.

The paint did look slightly brighter, so that's something.

[gb387]

Originally posted by steveo3002
i have a tip for taping

if you feel the area you sticking it on is a less than perfect and you fear it may pull some paint off or whatever. stick the tape to you t shirt or pant leg, it picks up a little lint and halfs the stickyness

I like this one! I try not to press the tape into the surface as hard doesn't really work, just ends up sticking good and damages the surface. But your shirt trick, so simple!