I have a date booked in at a local spray painting shop so it was time to get everything finalised and ready for transport. Various pinholes in the fibreglass flares/wheel arches were patched up with spot putty and sanded smooth. Some time was then spent making sure they still fitted properly against the body with a small (~1mm) gap for a rubber seal, and also clearance at the ends of the flares around the door sill seams. Once they were prepped, I masked off the underside of the arches and painted a couple of coats of underbody coating on the underside to mitigate any stone chips. Unfortunately I managed to knock two of the arches off a high shelving rack which resulted in a few hairline cracks in some of the seams (from when I split and modified the arch curvatures). I had to grind away a channel into those seams, add some new fibreglass matt/resin, sand and then re-prime it. Other parts that will be painted in the body colour have already been painted in primer. These had some m...
Moving on to the sanding the Mini shell (which already had one coat of high build primer applied), this was block sanded with 180grit to catch any minor variations in panel flatness. For example : After block sanding there were a few areas where I had sanded back to bare metal and needed a coat of epoxy primer to cover those spots : I found a few small chips which were filled with spot putty and sanded smooth then painted some areas with another lighter 2x coats of high build primer, waited a week or so to cure and block sanded again with 180grit. I used LED worklights to illuminate down the length of the shell to help highlight any larger imperfections that needed an extra block sand. The bright worklights are important when sanding larger areas where it's not hard to miss minor imperfections in the paint surface however I found a handheld inspection light held close to the panels worked extremely well to highlight really small scratches in all areas. Inside the boot ...