It took quite a bit of time for the first coat of the Herculiner to setup in the rear. I have applied another coat and a half to the back area, and am fairly certain that is all done. Now came the time to do the front area, and that is a major pain in the ass. The rear area was more or less for practice. It was a smooth area without a lot of corners and cracks.

The front is much different. Lots of it needs to be applied with the brush, and the areas to be rolled on are quite difficult. It took another 2-3 hours prepping, masking and painting this first coat. It will take 4-6 hours to dry, so a 2nd and hopefully third and final coat can go on tonight for it to be ready by tomorrow.

I am now finally getting around to putting down the Herculiner. I had originally planned to start this back on Friday. Now that it is Sunday, I’m a bit behind. This is due to the rust spot that had to be patched yesterday and the VERY subborn bolts that were broken off.

The first step in applying Herculiner is to clean up everything. You need a very clean (and rough) surface to apply the paint to. I used a wire wheel to scuff up the surface and then hit it with the scouring pad that was included in the Herculiner kit. The kit by the way is available at most autopart stores and costs about $90 for the kit.

The next step will be to mask off all the areas that you don’t want the coating. It is going to be very thick, and very strong. You don’t want this covering up drain holes or flowing into bolt holes. This is one of the most important steps in the process. If you get the Herculiner somewhere you don’t want it, getting it off will be difficult.

For the holes I used silicone hole plugs. These things are typically used in Powder Coating situations where you don’t want powder getting into holes. Nothing sticks to silicone (except silicone), so hopefully I can just yank the plugs out of the holes and remove the herculiner sitting on them. We will see… but so far this is the easiest solution.

The application of Herculiner is fairly straight forward, but this stuff is pretty thick! Its not going to be like normal paint, as it has chunks of rubber in it. Using a paint brush you first go after all the corners and hard to reach areas. Then using the roller, you apply a thin coat. It should be thin, almost transparent. It would be wise to thin the Herculiner with Xylene for this first coat (I however did not).

The first coat needs to set for 1 to 4 hours. So I think I will work on something else while it is setting.

Update time!

Today was spent coating the interior of the jeep, covering up as much white as possible. I also had the windshield replaced, so the car is now borderline street legal.

Current state. New fender flares and rubber cowl seal are on their way from Quadtratec.

Pretty black trim that I treated and repainted today. It was certainly NOT black and shiny when I started.

I absolutely love the contrast between the windshield and…. everything! I need to fix up the interior door panels and reinstall them, so what you see is the white metal door. Also, the dash cleaned up very nicely, no need to replace the dash like I though I’d have to.

Ahhh, new interior! Coated and sealed to a semi-flat black. No rust, and easy to wash out

I also called Jeeps Unlimited down in Erie and found a new box-style set of rollbars, as well as a pair of Sierra Edition sidesteps. So it’s looking like this jeep will be very, very close to the original.