Flake, Pearl, Candy, Lace, and all things flashy are what full blown Kustom Paintjobs are all about. If you want to flex your painting skills and standout with your paint job you’ll need to learn the process of custom taping, spaying candy, flake, and pearl. We decided to let Eastwood Tech Mike L. paint a skateboard to show you the basic steps to achieving a wild paint job like the pros do.
Archive
Hands On Cars Ep. 4 – Replacing a Rusty Roof
In this episode Kevin is all about undoing the errors of some previous owner of the Zed Sled Camaro Z28. He finishes up with the rust replacement on the bottom of the car, and tackles the cause of all the rot in the first place: A leaking aftermarket sunroof installation.
Upgrading your forced induction system- Installing V-Band Clamps
Evolution is the way of the world in all aspects and your car projects will evolve as you tinker with them or build new projects. Turbo charging or supercharging an engine is fairly simple and can be done inexpensively, but there’s a few places where skimping can cause headaches. Leaking boost flex hoses and clamps are the bane of existence with many DIY turbo setups. A good way to correct this issue is by replacing the silicone or rubber hose connections with V-Band clamps.
Beginners Metal Shaping Project- Making a panel blister.
Metal shaping is one of those things that seems like black magic to beginners. There really is a science behind the process that takes quite some time to learn and understand. The quickest and easiest way to understand how metal shaping works on the granular level is by comparing it to pizza dough. The more you stretch it out, the thinner it gets and the excess material has to go somewhere (in the pizza’s case its the rolled up crust) and the more you shrink the metal the thicker it gets and again it has to “go somewhere”. I decided to demonstrate a great beginner project for gaining experience in metal shaping by making a panel blister out of a 12″x12″x12″ piece of 5053 .035 aluminum. This process is great to help you understand the process and is pretty straight forward.
2014 Eastwood SEMA Hands-On Award Winners
Each year we blow up our social media feeds with our favorite vehicles from SEMA. This year we decided we’d take it a step further and give the owners and builders of some of our favorite vehicles notoriety for their hard work. After some brainstorming the Eastwood “Hands-On” Awards were born. The idea behind these awards are to recognize some of the standout vehicles from the show. We judged on a number of factors from quality of work, execution of concept, and just outright ridiculousness of the finished product. Really the car needed to have something “special” to catch our eyes and earn the award. We’ll admit we leaned heavily on the smaller shops and DIY builders that didn’t have a million dollar dream team of employees and tools to finish the car, there’s plenty of awards out there for those guys!
SEMA 2014- Day 2
SEMA 2014 Day Two Wednesday and day two of the show has ended. At this point we’ve crawled all over every cool car, checked out our favorite new products, and said hello to all of our friends in surrounding booths. I decided to start hitting the surrounding halls to look […]
History Timeline and Types of Automotive Paint
What is the first thing you notice when you see an old car or truck for the first time? If you are like most folks, the answer would likely be the paint. Not just the color but the overall condition of the paint finish. Does it have a beautiful, high-gloss […]
SEMA 2014 Day One Recap
SEMA 2014 Day One Early yesterday morning the doors for the show officially opened and the crowds of show goers pushed their way into the doors to start walking the show. The size of SEMA has only grown and no one is exaggerating when they say that you’d be hard […]
Gotta Love a 6 Pack in the Summer- Sandpaper ins and outs
IF you’re just doing a small project, or you’ve run out of your full box or roll of sandpaper, or it’s just simply not in your budget to buy an entire sleeve or roll of sandpaper, these new 6 and 3 packs are the ticket!! You don’t have to buy the box of 100 and have it sit on the shelf until next season.