Your thoughts?

[silicon212]

Newly painted in an older scheme. Again, the red stripe is actually Scotchlite so it glows like neon when a light source is behind you (or directly in front of, as in headlights) as you look at it. Gives a neat effect at night time.

[silicon212]

More:

[CD Smalley]

I like it. Reminds me of the #3 car from years ago.

I would think you would have a hard time finding your car in the parking lot given how many different paint schemes I've seen on that car. ;-))))

[EngineandJuice]

Hey bring some of that pinned up energy this way and paint my car plz.

[Blue Bowtie]

Needs more rubber. I can't argue with the colors, but it even looks hot there. Doesn't the black get a little cozy?

[PeteA216]

I like it! Though, I thought you steered away from the black before because of heat purposes.

[deesandvees]

Oooh that is nice lookin'.

[silicon212]

Originally Posted by PeteA216

I like it! Though, I thought you steered away from the black before because of heat purposes.

When I repainted it before, I chose red because 1) I wanted to see what it would look like red, and 2) I figured it'd be cooler than black. Wrong.

The paint I painted it with here is the gallon of black I got 15 months ago when I was going to repaint it after the black from the first paint job wore through from so much wet sanding (before I decided on red). The first black paint job was bad, I applied it wrong and had orange peel galore. Wet sanding it smoothed it out but allowed primer to show through in places. I also used so much wax on it trying to gloss it up that the wax became imbedded in the paint, causing problems when I thought I had removed all wax and painted it red. The wax is what caused the red to fail a year after putting it on.

I scraped all of the red (and old black with wax) off with razor blades in a process that took a week, then sanded through the lacquer primer/filler into the original white paint. The black now sits on that old white lacquer so it should now last more than a few months.

That was my FUBAR and is why I painted it again but I took the time to do it better this time.

Blue Bowtie - that is on the upper parking deck of Fiesta Mall here in Mesa, and when I took those pictures it was 110 degrees outside. I used to have 265/60HR15 tires on it, but the 225s don't waste as much fuel (moving friction), and hold the road nearly as good as the 265s did (which, granted, were cheap Pep Boys tires. Never again).

CD, that's why I chose the scheme. Oh, and it's a repeat of the original black scheme from 2006. So, there's still been just 3 schemes, same as over the past 15 months.

[deesandvees]

Is that the pushbar the came on it or is that from something else? I've only found one that looks different, if I find the pic I'll put it up.

[PeteA216]

Why did you repaint it the original white, just to paint over it with the current color scheme as opposed to priming and painting directly onto the metal?

[silicon212]

Originally Posted by PeteA216

Why did you repaint it the original white, just to paint over it with the current color scheme as opposed to priming and painting directly onto the metal?

I didn't repaint it the original white. The white was on the car, I never removed it. It was in good enough condition to serve as a primer coat for the new paint (all 3 times). What I did do was strip the black and red coats from it. I had used a spot filler lacquer primer (which resembles sticky mud) on top of the white the first time I painted it, and there were some adhesion problems due to incompatibilities with the paint. So, it came off too. I didn't want to strip the car down to bare metal as that would have taken too much time I don't have, plus more money to get the bondo on it reshaped and smoothed. not to mention the cost of etching primer and other things such as that.

If you strip the paint to bare metal, then you have to deal with whatever bondo is on the car, plus you have to use etching primer on bare metal (which cost something like $100/gallon). Etching primer is some nasty stuff to inhale, as well, so I didn't want to deal with the fumes.

In the end, I budgeted $100 toward supplies for the repaint (I already had the paint and equipment). I think it came just under that.

[silicon212]

Originally Posted by deesandvees

Is that the pushbar the came on it or is that from something else? I've only found one that looks different, if I find the pic I'll put it up.

It's original - Phoenix Police style. I don't know where it was sourced from, only that PPD used this style from the mid 70s right up until the Caprice was discontinued. All of their CVPIs come with GoRhino! push bumpers, miniature versions of SUV push bumpers for sale to the public. I've often wondered what a Caprice would look like with one of those types. They look RoboCop-ish on a police car.

[PeteA216]

The style pushbars you have on your car Silicon, I've seen only once and I don't believe they were as tall as yours. They were on a newer crown vic police cruiser here in NY.

[silicon212]

That's wild, I didn't know they still made them. At one point, they were rather ubiquitous out here in the Phoenix area. I'll try to find out who made them.

I like them because they are non-marking and they absorb energy.

[PeteA216]

Oh yeah, those look like they can take a serious hit into something without doing much, if any damage to the car.

Oh, I know this is off-topic, but you mentioned something about tires above which for some reason reminded me about a past thread you had posted in quite a while ago regarding tires and how you had blowout troubles. Did you ever think to check the date code on the tires to see if you were sold old tires? Again I have no idea why this came to mind right now.