Bodyprep Kirkham - How hard is the sanding ???

[Stephan427SC]

Hi guys,
how hard is it really, to bring a Kirkham body from filed to a brushed finish ?
Who of you guys did it by himself ? What's your experience ? Would you do it again ???

Thanks
S.P.

[xlr8or]

More tedious and dirty than difficult. I paid for it on my car but would probably do it myself if done again.

[JJCobra]

I agree with xlr8or. It is not that difficult, you just have to have the time and the patience. The aluminum is hard and does not sand as easily as you would think, but with it really isn't that bad. The 100 or so hours to get from filed to brushed using the method on the KMP website is spot on.

Would I do it again? If I had as much free time as I had when I started, then yes. It is just one more component of my build that I can say I did myself, FWIW.

[CobraEd]

Only takes 15 min to wax a painted car twice a year.


.

[ST]

All I can say is, I would never do it again. At times it seemed as though I was never going to finish.
Countless trips for more sandpaper, Scotch-Brite, and paper towels. Plus the fact of trying to keep things clean.(including my nasal cavities)

I’m sure they have refined their procedure now, but no, I wouldn’t do it again.
I would probably just have it painted.

[RodKnock]

If the car is still at Kirkham, then I'd let Kirkham do it for $8,000, although they recently raised the price from $5,000. I know I would screw it up, plus I wouldn't want aluminum dust everywhere.

[RON N BKFLD]

S.P.....Yeah it's easy,,,2 days tops........ Not really! Try approx 300 hours ,file to polished finish. plus reassembly. very messy, about $500. in materials. you spit silver for about a month. I wouldn't do it again. Kirkham does an xlent job........Ron

[Jamo]

Moved to Kirkham forum for more input from folks.

I wrote a check...it only hurt for awhile.

[Tony Ripepi]

Good question.....

Another question is what does it take to go from the file finish to the point where it can be painted?

Kirkham delivers the car with the file finish but, going to a primer ,base coat/clear coat and getting it smooth must take some additional work.

Tony R.

[Jamo]

"Different" work might be a better description. You're putting a "grain" on it for the brushed finishes (a few different levels of that, in fact...al the way to satin). You're not going to be doing that for paint prep.

[xlr8or]

I would think for paint prep you would just machine sand it with 80 grit and then a 180 or 220 grit. The grain is irrelevant in that case.

[RedBarchetta]

Exactly. Use a high build primer and a guide coat. Repeat until it's super straight. Then work up to 600 and shoot it.

Just putting the satin finish on my engine components (see my gallery) took diligence and effort to get it right. I can't imagine doing a whole car, but given significant free time (i.e. retirement) it could be tackled.

-Dean

[RodKnock]

S.P. I very briefly considered doing it myself, but everyone that I spoke with had anywhere from 200-300 hours into sanding the body. I'm not retired, so there's no way I could ever spare that kind of time.

[KM480]

I have seen some photos of it being done with a DA... even photos from Kirkham. For you guys that have done it...can I use a DA or does it all have to be long boarded with linear sanding...

I don't mind paying myself $26 an hour to drink some beer with a couple buddies to work on a Cobra. Plopping down the cash do have someone else sand it might be the only option for some or by far the more practical...but to me it is about intimate involvement in my car... I didn't pay the neighbor to build my 1/24th models when I was a kid either

[RedBarchetta]

Originally Posted by KM480

I didn't pay the neighbor to build my 1/24th models when I was a kid either

Good point. How about when you poured lighter fluid all over them and wedged a firecracker under the hood?

[Tony Ripepi]

Hmmmmmm,

Memory lane walk......I had the baking soda powered rockets when I was a kid and when I was tired of them putting the M-80 with the right fuse length and a little lighter fluid in a balloon to time the air burst was the thing to do.

We build them, we drive them, they break, we fix them and start all over again....no garage queens.

TR

[Rich A]

When I see people do there own bodywork and have no experience I see
flat spots on a rounded panels and waves like the ocean on a flat panel.
It's sad to see people spend so much money on a nice car and cut corners on paint and bodywork.

[David Kirkham]

My comments...

Sanding the cars is a BIG job. You will look like the "Tin Man" from the Wizard of Oz before you are done.

We have had SEVERAL people buy the car in a filed condition and try to sand it only to bring it back to us to finish (fix).

Rich is right, you can really screw the car up if you don't know what you are doing.

I would not be surprised by someone taking 200-300 hours to sand/polish one of our cars. Think of the money you could make seeing patients, clients, etc with that time. If you look at it that way, then you can just take the Jamo approach-- "it only hurts once."

Now, that said, years ago, Pat Buckley sanded his car by himself and it was quite beautiful. Frankly, it was more beautiful than anything else we at Kirkham had done to that point--so, we got better. Pat raised the bar for us.

Originally, we sanded the cars in 80 grit and left them there. Even our advertisement at the top of this page is a car that was only done in 80 grit. Then, like I said, we saw Buckley's car and we have since graduated to brushing our cars in 220 grit.

We do all of our work with a DA--all the way to mirror. We polish at 1000 or 1200 grit. If you want to paint your car, then, I would just DA the car with 80 grit and start priming and blocking. (Make sure the car is absolutely CLEAN before the first coat of primer or you will learn how to strip paint!)

Finer and finer grits obviously evolved into our now well-known mirror polish. Almost all of our cars now leave polished. Polishing is a monster of a job but nothing looks a good as a polished car. Like Larry Ellison told me, "David, I can't believe how much attention I get in your car! My McLaren F1, Ferrari Superamerica, and Bentley GT combined don't generate as much attention as your car!" That was probably the nicest compliment we have ever had. (He is a pretty cool, down-to-earth, car-nut type of guy.)

David

[RodKnock]

I wonder if Larry Ellison stood in line for his SB100 exemption...

I can back up David's comments. The mirror finish does literally stop traffic. Have Kirkham do the work, they know what they're doing.

[David Kirkham]

It wouldn't surprise me if he did. He is quite nice to deal with. His car was the first one I ever saw with that white California SB100 tag on it.

David