Modifying my fleet of vehicles – selling and painting

Posted On June 4, 2022

Cathy and I spent a couple of nights in Vancouver last week – another medical trip for me. I was feeling well enough to take a lot of photos with the idea of writing a blog post about it, but the size and complexity is overwhelming and I haven’t been able to even get that started yet. I can tell you about little things, though, like selling my main car and adding fancy paint to the 21-year-old car that’s now my primary transportation.

Last week I took a photo of the vehicles currently in my driveway or garage. The Mustang convertible isn’t mine, but I babysit and care for it so it rather feels like it is. I’m putting it back in storage today, though. Cathy had her Jeep at work, but I don’t think of it as mine in any way, so I probably wouldn’t have included it even if it had been at home.

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I sold the Cadillac the next day, though – she’d been my primary car since buying her in Calgary in 2013. The photo below is my final photo of her, shot when I delivered her to Haines Junction on Thursday. I had her all polished up but a few miles of construction with watered gravel ruined that.

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Yesterday was so gorgeous that I was going to head back down the South Klondike to see if I could hike up to the historic Venus silver mine. But instead I got a flash of inspiration to add some custom paint to our old Chevy Tracker. Cathy bought “Goldy” new in 2001, but since she bought her Jeep, the Tracker has only been used to tow behind our motohome. I had her almost completely rebuilt over the last year, including a new engine and rebuilt suspension, and that was a large part of the decision to sell the Cadillac – the Tracker drives like new, and I simply don’t need two “like-new” cars. Anyway, this is what Goldy and the RV looked like together yesterday morning.

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I’d been thinking about custom paint for the Tracker for years, and putting them together like this I was able to finalize the design I’d envisioned. I went to town to get the paint and non-bleeding masking tape I needed, and by 1:00 was at work.

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I painted about 20 cars and trucks during the years I ran Restoration Northwest, a backyard car restoration business. I always enjoyed the work, and it felt really good working on this tiny job. Despite what you may think, there’s minimal thought required – the motions are an artistic expression, not a job. I had to put arrows on the tape to keep track of where the paint would be going.

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Exactly 1 hour after starting, I was almost finished masking the car.

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Layer after layer, the silver paint got sprayed on, making sure that it was even. Although I have the equipment to paint the whole car, for this tiny job I just bought a $21 spray can of car touch-up paint at Canadian Tire.

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Starting the reveal – removing the masking paper and tape. This is the most exciting part for me! 🙂

Here’s a close look at the striping.

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The final product. It took a total of 90 minutes and cost $25. Only one side is done so far, but I really like the end result so the driver’s side will likely get done today.

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The Tracker really needs/deserves a complete paint job so this custom paint will get painted over some day, but when that happens it’s easy enough to re-do it.