Project: Hundred Dollar Healey $50 Paint Job

If you have been following along on the progress of The Hundred Dollar Healey you will notice that we did not paint the car the same color as we showed in the rendering. This is for a few reasons after lots of late nights of sanding, priming, sanding, and more priming. We decided that the British Racing Green that the car was originally raced in would a good choice. Since the point of this car is to build it on a budget (unlike other projects) and to build a car that would reflect something that would have been built for racing out of a garage back in the 60’s we decided to paint it ourselves.

Growing up on the farm has its advantages since you learn that Rust‑Oleum Farm Implement Spray paint is not only easy to use but dries smooth and builds up even color. Plus it cures up tough as nails giving the car a good finish. So we went with Dark John Deer tractor green.

The key was lots of light layers building the color up evenly across the body, to get a slightly darker color we primed the car in Black primer. After a few coats of paint, we let it dry overnight, and gave it a light wet sand before shooting several more light coats of color.

We still have to wet sand it again with 1000 grit to just even out a few spots and to take care of the one run we found but for $50 in paint and materials (via Walmart) the $100 car looks pretty good again! We will be adding some classic “meatballs” to the car to really give it that vintage racing look.

Here is how the project budget stands so far.