Freedom Wasn't Easy

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Upon the purchase of the Wrangler, the wife wanted the freedom stripes on the fenders like the Ocar Mike edition. About this time Last year, I contacted Rustoium in regards to their Matte Finish black striping paint. Rustoium assured me that this was the paint I needed for the job.

I wasn't willing to put vinyl decals on the jeep as these would either peal off over time or fade. Thus I was going to paint these myself. One a weekend last year, it was nice weather so I went through with the painting of both stripes on the jeep front quarter panels. Masked off the desired areas, lightly sanded, then using an adhesion promoter instead of a gray primer, I was ready to paint the top coats.

The paint sprayed on wet or dark looking, but in a few hours.. something was wrong.. the paint dried to an olive drab color and not the matte black color I was looking for. I wasn't very happy that weekend. Needles to say, before I had even thought about painting these stripes, I had tested several colors on a variety of surfaces just to locate the best color suitable for the stripes. I thought the Rustoium striping paint would work..

One year later, I'm finally able to finish what I started. Using a carbon fiber spray paint as offered by Krylon, the paint was too glossy for what I was hoping to achieve. Using a matte finish top coat.. I was able to achieve the desired appearance.

Finally, I can say that the 2 stripes are complete.. now for the difficult part.. I've been working on a American flag template which would be painted on using 2 templates instead of a single template.

 

Post a pic of the finished product so we can better appreciate your hard work making the Jeep yours.

 

It's all good! Pics are only a bonus for us