Well, after months of waiting, I finally had a chance to paint flames on my bus! I was either at work or the weather wasn't cooperating. Oklahoma is a windy place and I don't have access to a paint booth big enough for a bus. Finally this weekend, there were light winds and no chance of rain! Masking the flames was pretty easy. It only took me about 20 minutes to do the outline of the flames. I used some blue vinyl tape that I bought at O'reillys auto parts. I had to use two rolls at $9 each! Ouch! But it was worth it. This stuff bends around curves really easily. Then I filled in the areas around the flames with regular masking tape. After that, I drove it out to my dads house where he has 15 acres. I didn't have to worry about over spraying my neighbors cars. I'm sure I wouldn't have been very popular then! Once there, I removed the mirrors and headlights and used a giant roll of red paper to mask the big areas and the front tires. The roll of paper was only $5 at Home Depot. I could mask the whole bus a couple times easily. Here's some pics...
All masked up ready for paint!
Mixing the DuPont Imron paint. This stuff is NICE! But it can kill you if you breathe any of it in. Make sure you use a good respirator if you're spraying.
Spraying the yellow.
Glad I didn't do this at home! Look at the yellow fog. My neighbors would have been super pissed I'll bet.
Adding red highlights on the flames.
All finished and masking tape removed! It took almost as long to remove the tape as it did you put it on! I am also going to add a thin gold colored pin stripe around the outline of the flames. Should give them some more depth! There's only a couple areas to touch up. One of my dads cats walked across the left wheel well, but it's not too bad. I can touch it up with my airbrush.
My teeth are falling out! A couple had fallen off already. They were white plastic and I epoxied them on. But the sun breaks down that epoxy glue I guess. A lot more came off when I pulled the masking tape. I am going to replace them with some chrome diamond plate teeth and screw them on! They'll stay put then I'm guessing. I'm also going to add some red LED lights behind the grille so the "mouth" glows red at night!
I'll get some better pictures in a few days when the bus isn't sitting in a shadow. I'll also have the pin stripe put on and hopefully my diamond plate teeth!