Note: This was an old post that for whatever reason was still in my draft folder.
Way back in the summer of 2019, I decided to paint my roof black. I thought about wrapping it, but the clear coat was definitely gone and I wasn’t sure if the vinyl would stick to the exposed base coat.
In most photos, it kind of looks like a matte blue wrap but in person it looks pretty terrible. I don’t plan on making this car super clean, but I would like it to look a little bit better.
Removing the roof trim is a little tricky. But there are 5 or 6 hidden clips that need to slide out from their homes. I used WD-40 and trim removal tool since these things probably have 200k miles of road grime on them.
The rear windshield clips are tricky as well. I broke a couple before I figured out how they work. They have two little clips that grab the glass. If you pop those loose and then pull the trim toward the glass to roll the clip off and it should pop out. If you pull straight up or away from the glass they will grab harder and snap.
I wanted to remove the front and rear windshield trims but they are glued in place. My replacements are pretty cheap but I wasn’t sure if this rattle can job was going to work out. So I just taped them off.
And then the sanding begins.
I ending finding more rust that I had expected. Yay.
Once everything was sanded down, I hit the rusty spots with some rust converter.
Unfortunately, I was way behind schedule because of the rust, so the next morning I just went ahead and just started spraying paint. I’ve had a good experience with Rustoleum 2X paint, however, for a sunny day, it was about the windiest day possible. I seriously thought a tree was going to fall over.
So I took zero pictures during this process…
The orange peel was insane and I had dust nibs all over the place due to the crazy wind. I was able to mitigate a lot of dust by closing the garage door in between coats but it was still pretty bad. I was able to wet sand most of that stuff out.
I placed the WRX wing on there to see how it would look. While I liked how it looked, especially with the side skirts, I broke a couple of the studs and ended up trashing the wing.
Overall, I like how the black roof looks. It’s not terribly hotter inside the car, which was a concern considering how hot it gets in Tennessee and how poorly my a/c works.
I put the roof trim back on after a few days after letting the paint cure.
I am going to sand the black paint down in the spring or summer and respray and then clear coat it.
Cheers!
B.黒曜石 