Northern Kentucky JP12

[cptcrunch]

I ran out of space on the previous reply:

This evening I went outside to do a final test fit of the light on the lightbar before bringing it to the painter for the red paint


Our Rhodesian Lab mix wanted to be internet famous


Weld's look good


The final test fit made me very happy. I'm starting to get excited again about finishing the build.


Angle shot


Detailed shot showing the light fits perfectly on the new plate.

The painter finished my friend's CJ7 today and should be moving onto mine very soon. I'll make sure to keep this thread updated as progress continues

"Find Nedry! Check the vending machines!"

[cptcrunch]

I've been searching for the proper winch, late 80s early 90s Ramsey REP6000 on eBay, craigslist, searchtempest, smoke signal, you name it, and had been very unsuccessful. So I started just searching google and found an 87 model REP6000 in Oklahoma. Only problem is, thats a 13 hour 841 mile drive, one way. The only way I was going to be able to get this winch is if the buyer was really trusting and was ok shipping it to me. Thankfully, Adam, was super awesome and agreed to do just that. We spoke a few times over phone, text and I paypal'd him a lot of money and I received it a few days later.


It needs a little cleanup, but nothing a few coats of black spray can paint and degreaser wont fix. It is the exact model they used in the movie so I'm super happy

I visited the paint guy yesterday and there was a lot accomplished. He stripped all of the old, bad paint and used some body filler where necessary. I had mentioned that the jeep was in an accident about 1.5 years after initially purchased and that they had used an aftermarket/1995 hood on the Jeep even thought it was a 94. As the paint guy was working on removing the old paint, he had found that they had also resprayed the entire body a few years ago, and did it the maaco way. Several seals were painted over, lots of paint flaking/chipping, and just all around bad prep/paint work. So he had to strip the entire Jeep, which was more than he wanted (and more than I wanted as the cost just went up) but in the end, it will be a factory or better paint job.


The front right fender was aftermarket and the body shop in 95 did a poor job, they didn't even paint the part of the fender that rests inside the engine compartment. You can see the original sticker showing it was aftermarket and date of manufacture.




A little bit of body filler on the rear side to hide the spot welds.


Same story on the driver side.


The front driver side had similar issues to the passenger. They did not paint the inside of the fender here either, and something hit the cowl that required a bit of body filler. The paint guy is going to leave the existing body filler and just sand it smooth.




Doors, rear hatch and hood all stripped from the previous couple of paint jobs.

The jeep should be going into primer today. The paint guy will be removing the front end that I did not have the time nor expertise to do. He will paint the front end properly, so the only green paint that will be left on the jeep will be the firewall. I will remove what I can and paint it black so it wont look out completely out of place.

I dropped off the lightbar and discussed painting the Jabsco lights. They will be painted along with the Jeep in the next few weeks.

Current ETA to have the paint done is by the second week of August. I've been discussing with friends and internally the proper gloss for the paint job. Low gloss/matte was used for the movie, but the red seemed to have a little bit of gloss to it in some shots. What I am really afraid of is that if I go with low gloss, I will be unable to wax and take good care of the paint over the years. So I am thinking of going with a semi-gloss, to keep the shiny down, but to be able to take care of the paint as needed over the next several years.

Any thoughts on the gloss for the jeep?

"John Hammond: There is no doubt our attractions will drive kids out of their minds.
Alan Grant: What are those?
Dr. Ellie Sattler: Small versions of adults, honey."

[fantomas]

The way my father in law was trying to explain it, if I remember correctly, is that he is now trying to steer my towards the single stage because there are time restraints on how soon after the top coat needs to go on the base coat. I have no idea how long it will take me to tape off the red stripes so I'm guessing it is to avoid having to spray the tan, top coat it, tape it, spray the red, and top coat that. My personal opinion is that there are jeeps here that have been plasti dipped and they look great (at least in pictures). He's kind of a perfectionist and so he's treating my car like he does any other "classic" in his shop.

[cptcrunch]

I talked to my paint guy and he primered the jeep a few weeks ago but ran into an issue acquiring the paint. His initial intent was to the order the paint and flattener after the jeep was primered but that fell through. The paint he was going to use has been discontinued due to EPA regulations on emissions from the painting process. So the new paint is in stock but they still need another week to get the flattener in stock. He and I are both hoping it is in stock asap so he can get the base coat down and then we can mark the red.

I started working on some other pieces that also required paint/customization. First up was the rear amber fog lights. I purchased a set of these: http://bumpersuperstore.com/i-11436894- ... d-set.html. They are very close to the KC lights used in the movie with two exceptions. 1) is that they have a rock guard because these are front fog lights and 2) they have a chrome backing instead of black.

I got to work cutting off the rock guard.



I've used my dremel multimax before to cut plastic so that was my tool of choice



I made the initial cut as flat as possible to match the existing. There were some rough edges that i cleaned up with a exacto knife and then I then used the sandpaper attachment for the smooth and rounding. First I used the medium grade to start beveling the edges to make then round like the bottom section. Then the fine grit paper to finish the smoothing and beveling.



I finished the lights by painting the rear chrome piece with black plastidip



The plastidip stuck well to the chromed metal. I wasn't sure if regular paint would work on the chromed surface so the plastidip was my safe option. I think they turned out as great substitutes for the rare and expensive KC lights.

Last year when I traded my marine grade interior for sahara interior I knew the interior pieces would need to be painted. The YJ Saharas came in two interior colors, green and tan, with green being in the movie. I was happy to get the interior swap so I wasn't going to be picky about the color as long as they were the oem pieces.

I needed to paint the pieces from tan to green and researched how best to do that. A few people were able to get the interior paint color, dark green #47091 in a spray paint can from their local autoparts store, but I wasn't as lucky. All of the stores I called were either not able to mix paint, or were unable to mix the dark green in a spray can. The only way I could spray this color of paint was if I had a spray gun and air compressor. I have an air compressor, a 3.0 gallon campbell system that I dont think could provide enough air to paint well. Add that to the lack of spray gun and I had to look at alternatives.

So I went to the local parts store that could mix paint and had them mix a half pint of the paint and bought the pre-val paint system. Its a pretty ingenius system that can turn any mixed paint into a spray can. It comes with a glass bottle to mix the paint and reducer and a nozzle that feeds a propane based sprayer the size of a small hair spray bottle. For $5, its an economical way to spray any type of paint you can get mixed without a lot of equipment.

While at the auto parts store I picked up a can of plastic/vinyl adhesive promoter so the paint would have a better chance of sticking to pieces I needed to paint. I sprayed my first coat of the promoter, waited 15 minutes and reapplied. I waited another 15 minutes and mixed the paint and got to spraying. I did 3 coats on each piece which covered extremely well. I finished with spraying 2 coats of gloss clear coat to protect the finish.

Finial results:





Considering I have little painting experience and the $5 equipment outlay, I think you wouldn't be able to tell the parts were initially tan. I'm letting them dry completely and will try to scratch the surface to see if I need more clear. I used about 80% of the half pint mixed and have over 3/4 a quart of reducer remaining (the smallest quantity they had was 1 quart of reducer). The alternative to this method was to buy a hunter green spray can from home depot, but I wanted the door panels to match the other pieces 100%. This way was definitely more expensive, approximately $65 with paint, reducer, promoter and pre-val system, and I think the investment was a good choice.

I also repainted the winch, which was a huge challenge because I was not happy with the first coat. I stripped everything to the metal and repainted so its better, but definitely not 100%. I've decided to leave it as is because I dont think I can do a better job. A few of the decals were original to the winch from 1987, but are old and need reprints. I'm working with a friend to redesign and print them so I can put them on now thats the winch has been repainted.

"How do you know they're all female? Does somebody walk into the enclosure and look under the dinosaur's skirt?"

[crayZcollegeKid]

I'm
so
jealous.

Can't wait for yours to be finished, so you can come help me haha, but seriously man you're knocking this build out of the park.

[fantomas]

Very nice. Isn't the wait for the paint painful? I swear you said it was going in to be painted like a month ago

[cptcrunch]

I'm
so
jealous.

Can't wait for yours to be finished, so you can come help me haha, but seriously man you're knocking this build out of the park.

Thanks! Its taken a lot of time, money and has really taught me to be patient to get this far. I'm trying to prep everything before the paint is done so all I need to do is reassemble instead of working on anything else.

Very nice. Isn't the wait for the paint painful? I swear you said it was going in to be painted like a month ago

Let me tell you, the paint wait for this has been, challenging. It was supposed to go into paint March, then May, then June. It finally was delivered end of June but the paint guy slotted someone else in front of me for a quick job and then went on a 2 week vacation. And then the paint ordering problems was unexpected, but happened over 2 weeks ago. I swear its been nothing but "in 3 weeks" we should be able to do x y and z. Its been very frustrating, but it has allowed me to source some rare parts and get things finished properly at a slower pace.

One of the last and rare items I need is the green sahara carpet. I can find a green carpet only for $300 but it looks too green. I missed the one online by a few hours and am kicking myself for it.

[cptcrunch]

Over the past few weeks lots has been happening with the JP Project. After the primer we had to discuss the paint and the appropriate color. The painter went to his normal paint supplier, Sikkens and sprayed a color sample. Well, it was more silver than what the jeep color should be so we had talk about another paint company. After getting a ProSpray card sample and spraying a body panel, the ProSpray color was the correct LJ1


Sikkens on the card and ProSpray on the rear tail gate

Here is the final result





On the 10th of October I went to the painter with my friend and we finalized the lines for the stripes. There is a nice guide on jurassicparkjeep.com that shows distances, angles and where the stripes go.


We then started placing decals. On the movie Jeep there are few decals, just the JP Logo, Jeep decals over the stamped Jeep letters and a rear 4.0l High Output decal.

After the decals we started marking the lines for the front stripe.

We then needed to work on the front edge of the front stripes. The difficulty here is taking a straight line across the hood but making it curve to match the front edge of the front stripe. This part took us the better part of 1.5 hours to get everything right. We did our best to match the lines on both sides of the hood with tracing paper.



Painting took place the next day







Part of the red stripe painting process included placing decals in certain areas that are painted over and then decals removed to reveal the base body color beneath. This worked very well for the front fender numbers and hood JP12.

The final result is simply amazing







With the windshield installed


On the past Saturday I rented another uhaul auto transport and retrieved the Jeep





It is now home and reassembly started yesterday. We got a few things done while trying to organize what parts we have and how everything was removed 8 months ago.

[fantomas]

Looks amazing! Congrats on the paint being done. just in time for winter though

[walke2jd]

Looks fantastic. What did the paint job end up costing you? I am trying to figure out if I should salvage my stock paint or get a new paint job done, and cost is the biggest factor.