Land Rover like green cars, (no, not in that way)… there have been many variations of green… Cockpit Green, Ascot Green, Atlantic Green, Bronze Green, Coniston Green, Eastnor Green, Epsom Green, Eskdale Green, Keswick Green, Trident Green, Rush Green, Shadow Green… and then there’s the MOD colours…. Olive Drab Green, Recon Green, Nato Green…. and so on.

LGL was finished in Light Green, also known as Pastel Green, from new. Next to Bronze Green, it happens to be my favourite Land Rover colour. It was tabled to repaint everything Bronze Green but the design department didn’t agree, so LGL stays as the factory intended…. Which is the right decision.

After a month of waiting the new air compressor has finally arrived. It took a disappointingly long time to make the 20 miles journey. My disappointment continued as I realised it had been stored upside down and the pump oil had leaked out as there was no oil filler plug installed. Good work guys.

So after cleaning up the oily mess it was time to plumb it in and do some sample spraying.

The set up I have is a 50L tank with twin cylinder motor producing a max pressure of 10 bar (145 psi). The High Volume Low Pressure (HVLP) requirements of the spray gun (on paper at least) are just a about met. Ideally (so I’m told) air displacement of 250L / min is sufficient to run an HVLP spray gun. The rating of the compressor is 270L/min, so, like I said, on paper its all good.

As all the books say, spraying should be done in a well ventilated place, using breathing apparatus and eye protection.

So without further ado and the garage doors open, fore and aft…. lets spray something.

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PPE… Goggles and face mask…. It’s important that the filters are the correct specification. The data sheet for these 3M 6055 A2 filters suggests they are suitable for filtering out all organic vapour… except formaldehyde!!

 

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Thinners, Land Rover Light Green Paint, (small) spray gun and reservoir. I started out using a ratio of 1:10 thinners to paint as a trial. I ended up using closer to 2:10 after some sample panels.
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Correct mix of paint loaded into the gun and we’re ready to spray something for real 🙂
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So, the first panel to get painted is the sun shield. This isn’t original to the vehicle but something I had on a previous Series 3. (Those of you who know Gracie will know) I decided to keep it as they are quite rare and very useful, not only keeping the sun out of the drivers eyes, but helps with keeping rain off the windscreen.
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First coat laid down. I have since rubbed it back and applied a second coat and painted all the brackets. As I had some paint left over, I also repainted the horn and some of the smaller, easy to prep parts for the interior.

I debated for a long time about outsourcing all of the painting but it was looking to get very expensive. For the cost of a decent compressor, mid range spray gun and some practice, I think I can get away with doing the painting “in house”…. or “in garden” as the case may be come the spring.

The bi-annual ritual of painting the garden furniture is also going to be less of a hassle 🙂