Toy Baby Gets a New Dress

We have finally decided to give our 1988 Toyota 4x4 long bed a new dress (new coat of paint).

We bought it new in 1988 and painted it right after taking it home. We two toned it with a metal flake charcoal bottom and Murano blue flip flop over red on the top.

The early flip flop was a pseudio color shifting paint and the truck would be pink or red, or blue, or purple or blood red depending on where you were standing and what angle the light was hitting it. It would shift colors as it drove by which I am sure was interesting to anyone who had not seen color shifting automotive paint before.

After 25 years the original custom paint was looking pretty sad. Long gone were the days of OH WOW. Now it looks like it has been sitting in a field for a while as it is faded and pretty shabby.

I am lucky that we have a very good custom paint shop here in town and the owner has been receptive to redoing the old truck. Bummer is that Murano is long gone and so is their flip flop metal flake color shifting paint

We've decided on the newer urethane chameleon paints from UreKem and are going to use a red (of some sort) base coat and squirt some of their Konfusion KF-09 Psychotic Illusions blue/purple color shifting paint over the red and HOPE that we get something close to what we had originally.

http://shop.thecoatingstore.com/searchquick-submit.sc?keywords=psychotic+illusions

these color shifting paints are designed to go over a black base coat so all bets are off putting it over red. this week the paint guy is giving us a test plate with 4 base colors with the chameleon over top so we can see the run from light red to dark blood red base and how the chameleon shifts based on each of the different red base colors. The chameleon is semi transparent so the base will show through if it is not black.

If you are not sure what color shifting automotive paint looks like here are a couple videos. Ours will be different because we will be using a NOT black base coat. We should end up with a pink to blue to blood red shift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvmsqcFu3vU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4qT3ImQfqo

the past two weeks I have been under the old truck with a scrub brush, tooth brush, and black paint detailing the fame. Everything is off of the truck except the driver's door handle and lock which will come off when it gets to the shop (ya gotta get in and out some how).

A few pics of what I have been doing. More pics of the in-progress paint once it gets started next week.

About the best shot I could get of the old blue flip flop metallic.







had to put it back down on its 4 paws today to get some building supplies. Hey it is a work truck after all

Love those 80's Toyota trucks. yours looks to be in great shape (besides the paint).

I'm going to be in the market for a new paint job on my old Volvo come spring. what kind of estimates are you getting for your truck?

FatboySlimadjustable said:

Love those 80's Toyota trucks. yours looks to be in great shape (besides the paint).

I'm going to be in the market for a new paint job on my old Volvo come spring. what kind of estimates are you getting for your truck?

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we bought the truck new and it has 86k miles on it. It is in pretty decent shape (no dings or dints no rust)

The cost of the paint job is more than I would care to admin.

No other estimates as there is only one person within 100 miles that I would trust to squirt the chameleon and have it come out as I want it. It's not going to be an Earl Scheib special paint job (29.95 - in by 9 out by 5)

Custom paint work is not inexpensive. the UreKem paint is reasonable for custom paint but the same effect in PPG or Dupont paint was around $3500 in just the paint alone.

I will be getting 4 different paint jobs on this truck . 4 separate tape offs and sprays: 1) base red, 2) bottom charcoal, 3) semi transparent mid chameleon over the red, 4) tinted clear coat. The chameleon and charcoal will be striped this time, not a clean single line (hard to explain unless you see). I wanted to morph the charcoal and chameleon but SWMBO wanted a clean line two tone so we compromised and the two colors will be intermixed where they join together

It will take me a few weeks just to pick out the color combinations as the mid chameleon will be different when used with different base colors. I may need to fire up my compressor and shoot some samples to get exactly what I want as I don't want to tick off the painter with too many color combination requests as he will need to do 3 different color coats for each test panel. He will be showing me 4 options today. I've painted a number of cars but this is a bit over my comfort level. http://www.toymike.com/diesel/pics/new_dress/

Keep us posted, Turtle. We look forward to seeing the finished product.

Ya gotta pay to spray, right?

what other mods are you doing to the truck? be nice to find some N.O.S. goodies.

FatboySlimadjustable said:

Ya gotta pay to spray, right?

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If it were a simple paint job I'd spray it here. Way too much tape off and too many coats of different colors for me to want to do it at my age. I told SWMBO if she wanted it straight toyota red I'd make it red for her but she whats it pink chameleon

FatboySlimadjustable said:

what other mods are you doing to the truck? be nice to find some N.O.S. goodies.

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Did all of the mods on it when it was new.

headers
Cam
Downey racing intake and air filter
Downey racing suspension (springs and torsion bars)
super trap free flow 2 1/2" exhaust
Bilstein shocks
Auto meter capillary/mechanical gauges
3 core radiator
outboard oil cooler
outboard oberg oil filter
positraction diffs
3/8 plate steel front and rear wench bumpers
Few extra skid plates here and there

Been a fun truck over the years

I've had a few Broncos over the years and I know, it gets expensive really quick.

last one I had was traded for a baby 13 years ago. never regretted it for an instant

have you got any pics of the drivetrain? love to see them.

FatboySlimadjustable said:

I've had a few Broncos over the years and I know, it gets expensive really quick.

last one I had was traded for a baby 13 years ago. never regretted it for an instant

have you got any pics of the drivetrain? love to see them.

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Broncos are nice. I have a friend that has 2 of the first versions, one enclosed the other a cab open pickup back. VERY COOL indeed they are.

under the rear of the toy

velocityboy said:

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Was I the only one that was checking out the gas prices? I dont remember 1985 since I was just born, but gas hasn't gone up much in 30 years.

Didn't "get er done" last year so back into the garage until after winter she went.

It has taken a bit of time for the custom shop to put two weeks aside to do the work but the new dress makes her look like a teenager once again.

Still a few more "bits" to put back on her but oh wow what an outrageous subtle radical she turned out to be. Dark red, pink, blue, and purple all in one shiny new dress.

1988 Toyota 4x4 standard/short cab, long bed.

The 'Yota looks absolutely awesome. Well done. She looks like new.

Nice Toy-Motor

I was hoping for more radical but I am getting to enjoy the subtitle radical.

chamalien paint is designed to go over a black base coat and the manufacturer said I was nuts to put it over anything other than black as each additional coat of chamalien would cause the overall color to shift and they were right. The first attempt caused the truck to float completely pink. The second attempt cam out between a lavender and purple. The third and final came out with the deep red base showing and the color shifting polymers to show from pink, to blue, to purple depending on where you are standing and if there are clouds in the sky or it is a clear day.

I purchased an entire GALLON of chamalien and the shop used over half of it on the multiple attempts.

We did do a large test panel before starting but that was of little help and the last "squirt" got as close as we were going to get.

Under the florescent lights in the spray booth the truck looked completely pink with no color shifting but once out in the sun.... wowzers.

I am glad that I found someone willing to do this but they were pretty empathetic NEVER AGAIN.... I am still trying to talk them into using the remainder of the chamalien over our white V90 wagon.... NEVER they said but they have a test panel for me to look at today

Who knows, may be the "grocery getter" will get a new dress soon too

An idea of how bazaar things can get with different number of coats of chamalien over their non-standard black base color, here is the test panel with 1, 2, 4, and 6 coats of chamalien over the same red base coat which shows the spectrum from pink to deep purple just because of the number of coats of chamalien that were applied over the base color....

It drove them nuts but I told them it would

I like the turtle on the front bumper.

Duckster said:

I like the turtle on the front bumper.

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We put the front and rear winch bumpers on when we bought the truck back in 1988.

The turtle mascot and the Winch went on the week after we took the truck from the dealer.

We did the the first custom flip flop paint job that first week too.