1996 Chevy Lumina APV GTP - $2016 Soccer Mom Challenge

 Thank you everyone for the compliments. I don't think I've seen so many filtered curses in one place on this forum before. I to am extremely happy with how the paint has turned out. I was a little nervous that it was too ambitious, but it came out well.

Now let's backtrack to a year ago and explain how we got here. While at the $2017 Challenge I decided that I wanted to bring the van back in 2018 for one last hurrah. I told many of you that I wanted to repaint the van in something like a red white and blue IMSA-themed paint scheme. And that's where it stayed until a few months ago due to lots of life (new job, moving 160 miles, new house, etc..).

I finally sat down and started researching the paint scheme. I couldn't really find a good red white and blue scheme or any Chevrolet scheme that I liked. In the course of this I did rediscover the existence of the G6 GXP.R. For those of you who don't know, the Pontiac G6 GXP.R replaced the Pontiac GTO.R in the Rolex Sports Car Series when the street legal GTO went out of production. It was essentially a tube frame race car. LS2 V8. 450 hp. Rear wheel drive. Carbon fiber G6 GXP body panels. Built by Pratt & Miller. And this was the picture attached on the Wikipedia page:

Cool, but not what I'm looking for. But it did guide my next Google images search, "G6 GXP.R" where I found the website of ESBG Designs who made the livery for the GXP.R of Stevenson Motorsports. 

And I'm like, "That's PERFECT!!" Red, white, and blue, AND a tribute to the car chassis that the van was set on. Thankfully, the website included many reference photos including one of the side of their trailer which had the full eagle.

Now I needed to figure out how to adapt it to the van and make it work. So I grabbed this photo from the $2017 Challenge coverage...

...did some Photoshop magic and tracing on the windows to get some coloring book line drawings...

...and started doodling with a black pen and some colored pencils. This was about the 4th version where I was finally happy with the position and scale:

With the design settled I started gathering supplies. Red and blue tractor paint, 1/8" wide masking tape, 4" wide foam paint rollers, and foam paint brushes.

Now, as you know I borrowed a video projector to display my reference image on the side of the van to trace with making tape. This is what it looked like:

Outline the colors with making tape, covering the white that I am saving...

...freehand the outline of the stars...

...and color between the lines with making tape to finish masking off the white...

Repeat for the driver's side with a few close ups of the details. I measured the passenger side to ensure that the driver's side was about the same scale, placement, and angle...

You might notice that the projector just wasn't big enough to display the whole eagle at once. I had to do the body and wings, then legs and claws, then finish the tail...

...and add stars and color in the lines with masking tape...

Now I had to figure out how to transition from the blue in the front to the white in the back and what to do with the wings at the roofline. I decided to wrap the wings up and over and let them just touch in the middle. I sat on the roof and started freehanding the wings...

Looks a bit like a Christmas tree :P

Next up: paint!

Such patience. Such determination.

The "inverse" of it all would have drove me crazy. That is, every thing taped blue will be the white areas and everything left white will be the blue areas.   Would have been too much for my feeble mind! 

Not sure what to be impressed about more, the results or the execution.

One thing I dont get...

Dont you lose the image when you get in the way to do the taping?

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

Yes and no. As you are thinking, if I was directly in front of my work the image would be projected onto my back and be completely useless. What I ended up doing was working from the sides; aka sticking my arms out to the side. At that point the only thing blocking the projected image is my hands and the masking tape that I'm putting on. If you've ever sat through a lesson taught with an overhead projector (video or transparency), you've seen a similar technique, usually with a long pointing stick.

When I started a new line of making tape I would actually pull out say, a two foot length from the roll, stretch it out over the body in the projected image, and then stick it down starting a little bit beyond where it actually began. After I finished with that I went back and cut the tape to size with a razor blade based on the image and any other tape lines that intersected with it. This works out in my application because the whole body is plastic, not metal. No need to worry about cutting through the primer to the bare metal. Also, race cars don't require perfection.

Now for paint. I started with the red. Overall I tried to use the roller as much as possible because it was the fastest and gave me the best texture. Yes, texture. You know how most new cars have "orange peel" that you can see in the color under the clear coat? Yeah, this van has orange peel that you can not only see, but feel. Now, having said that, it did come out very glossy and you can see reflections in it.

I had to be careful around the edges and not color too far beyond the masking tape lines. For the most part I would do the edges with a 2" wide foam brush and then fill the middle with the roller. And I did have to sit on the roof to be able to paint it. That was part of the reason I started with red.



Next up, blue. I decided to pull off the front bumper. I figured it would be a lot easier to paint all of those complex curves sitting on a shelf at hip height than 1 foot off of the ground.

All of the blue around the feathers was done exclusively with the 2" brush.

I finished this first coat of paint at about 1am the day I flew out for a business trip to Seoul, South Korea. This worked out well because it helped me to sleep on the plane and mitigated some of the jet lag.

South Korea is interesting. 80% Kia and Hyundai (of course, being based in South Korea). But it seemed like they mostly came in dull grayscale colors. I was on the road for maybe 8 hours during my 3 days in country. I saw 3 yellow cars and 5 red ones. And maybe 6 decent blues. Perhaps it's a cultural thing. And only one model of pickup, the SsangYong Musso:

Which is also made into this cool crew cab tow truck. You can just see the hydraulic arm on the back:

Barely any semi trucks. Most transportation was done with these ~1 ton, cabover, dually flat beds. Notice the the back tires are shorter than the front for more cargo space:

Also, lots of "villages" of identical skyscraper apartment buildings. It felt like someone was playing Sims and hit copy-paste a few too many times.

I got this a couple of times on my second day there. It should say something like "Big, nasty typhoon inbound. Take cover." But I wasn't able to copy it into Google translate to find out. It had Mrs. ShawneeCreek worried. Thankfully it ended up being no more than a heavy rain by the time it got to us.

Overall, a successful business trip. Met some wonderful suppliers. Put some faces to the names I had been working with. And ate some delicious food. But I was ready to get back home and see my wife and continue working on the van.

As I said earlier, both colors needed a second coat of paint. While I did this I also painted up a new license plate for the rebranding. The font is "Good Times", which is what the Pontiac G6 logos are written in.

Finally, I could start unmasking. Thankfully I was able to pull the tape out from under the cured paint without cutting it out, other than the very acute tips of the stars and wings. I started with the section that I'd been teasing you all with: the tail feathers on the passenger side:

...then the window above that...

...then the eagle's head...

...and then I got super excited and went all Christmas Morning on it and unwrapped it all without taking any more pictures. I was having fun 

And mask off and paint on the beak. It really made everything pop so much better for such a little bit of paint.

Add in a little reassembly, painting the mirror stubs...

...and painting the panel gaps...

...and we're all caught back up to the present.

I've got a few decals to add and the pinstripes to do. Then it's just documentation and cleaning for the Challenge.

Until next time.

-Sean

I'm late to the party.... holy berktastic!

Have you driven it on the road after the new paint. I'm pretty sure your going to get all kinds of "thumbs up" & smiles every where you go.

In reply to Indy-Guy :

Not yet, but I expect to see a lot of that during the 2,500 mile round trip to the Challenge and back with it on the UHaul trailer.

I have a new and MUCH greater appreciation for pinstripes. It is really challenging to be consistent. My line width varies. It's all a complex balance between pressure, speed, angle, and paint consistency. And all I'm really doing now is tracing straight and barely curving lines. Let's just call the variation "character."

Before:

After an hour's work:

It's a subtle change, but I think it's an improvement. Back to drawing lots of thin, black lines...

-Sean

This is dope.

Roof done

Until next time.

-Sean

Wow! That is an insane amount of work!!

i really liked this build before, but now with the new paint job i love this thing!

With all of the positive buzz that the van is generating I was able to pick up a few sponsors to help with running costs. NOS, Alpine, Greddy, HKS, Momo, and Pirelli all stepped up.

...ok. So maybe it's eggs, milk, bread, ham, bananas, and pepper. And maybe I actually had to buy the decals at cost. But it's the thought that counts, right?

-Sean

In reply to ShawneeCreek :

Love the decals! Stoked for this to be sponsored by eggs.  

Mndsm said:

That is a thousand times better than anything I could have possibly imagined. I sense a magazine cover in your future. 

If this doesn’t end up on the cover I’m protesting by waiting a whole decade to renew my GRM subscription!

ShawneeCreek said:

With all of the positive buzz that the van is generating I was able to pick up a few sponsors to help with running costs. NOS, Alpine, Greddy, HKS, Momo, and Pirelli all stepped up.

...ok. So maybe it's eggs, milk, bread, ham, bananas, and pepper. And maybe I actually had to buy the decals at cost. But it's the thought that counts, right?

-Sean

you should have pinged mazdeuce... pretty sure he would have made those up cheap... 'cause I think the traccord needs a set too

Eh, it only cost $15 for two sets of the decals. Seth would have had to put in more than a few hours time to duplicate them. Plus, he's working on tshirts for everyone.

If you had told me a Lumina build thread would be one of my favorite threads on GRM I would've though you were nuts.

But I'll be if this isn't one of the coolest looking liveries I've seen on any build in a while.

Erm, I have a problem. I read the whole build, and now there's no more. Aaarg. In all seriousness, such a cool build! That paint job is incredible! Love the switch to the 200tw tires! You work in the tire industry? Neat.

The rear spring think kinda threw me... Typically, more coils = softer spring rate, more length of coil wire being similar to walking further out on the diving board. Did I read correctly that the PRHT springs had more coils? Apparently they work, just confusing me. I would guess a high rear spring rate would really help that car turn. I know you said you were looking into sway bars so that's something. I did some napkin math and to get a nice stiff ride frequency around 2.5,at 50% motion ratio that's 1000-1500lbs/in! Please excuse the unrequested comments, I just think your minivans really cool and I got a little obsessed.

In reply to DDT :

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yes, I used to work in the tire industry designing passenger car tires. But now I design halfshafts.

As for the rear coil springs they have the same free, aka unloaded, length. And the convertible springs do have an extra coil in them with what appears to be the same wire diameter. Given that these things are equal, the best way to imagine how this makes the convertible springs stronger is that each 360° coil of wire supplies X-number of pounds of force. More coils equals more force which gets me the higher ride height at the same weight. There are limits to this analogy, but it gets the basics across for this situation.

You might be thinking of how when you cut and remove a coil out of a coil spring it gets stiffer. That's because you are changing length of the spring. In my case the springs are the same length.

No worries about the comments. That's half the fun of writing a build thread. I'm glad that it inspired you.

I have no idea about the build other than the paint but I LOVE it. And those wheels look fantastic too