Paint shop preparation

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 minor imperfections fixed then sanded with 320, 400 & 600 grit sanding pads.

Radiator slam panel (also the bonnet latch not show in this pic) :

Hinges, covers, trims etc :

The engine cam cover had rough casting marks and casting seams ground off with an angle grinder flap disk then heavily sanded in some areas to smooth down the main surfaces. 

then a few surface imperfections corrected and the primer touched up.

The side mirrors I'm using are from a UK Rover Mini and these were disassembled to have the main (rear) piece painted in the body colour. 

The last prep task was to run a thread tap through every captive nut or rivnut over the entire shell, engine bay and panels to clear out any excess primer that had built up in the threads.

Finally, I had to confirm a paint colour for the Mini. A long time ago I had selected the colour Ford Blood Orange however I recently walked past this Ford Ranger Raptor and no longer felt 100% on the colour choice.

I had a paint shop mix some sample paints and I primed/painted some large steel test sheets. Blood Orange (used on the Ford BA Falcon) on the left and Code Orange (Ford Ranger Raptor 3rd Gen) on the right. The Ford Raptor Code Orange was chosen.