Birth of a Phaeton - Part 8

8/14 - 9/1

(Want more detail?  Click on image to enlarge)

We caught up with the coach again after lunch.  It was at the Belmont facility.  Belmont is huge compared to the Main Assembly area and it is hopping.  I used to think of Belmont as the Paint Facility, but in reality, it serves many more functions.  Also located in Belmont is the Tile Shop (floors), Final Assembly (awnings, toppers, ladders, etc.), Leak Testing, Fueling, and so on.  

The Paint Shop is the largest part of the operation.  Coaches are sanded, masked, base coated, striped, touched up, clear coated, baked, sanded again, and clear coated with something new for 2014, Super Clear.  There a large number of people involved in the painting process.  This is not work that is done by robo spray equipment.  All of it is a process that requires hands.  You'll notice in the following pictures that there are teams of people working on the coaches at any given time.  I've compressed the time here a bit.  What the pictures represent is a three day process.

First up, the Sanding Shop

Every square inch gets sanded.  There are four stations in this building.
This is our coach at Station 1.

After sanding, the coaches are prepped for the base coat of paint.  This is a 40' Phaeton being readied for its base coat.

This is our coach going into base coat.
This was about 24 hours after its arrival at Belmont.

Base coat being applied.  Not much to see but there are usually four painters working at one time.  Two spray the lower area and two the upper area.

After the base coat has cured, the stripe team gets on it.  The stripe masking material comes in rolls specific for the model being painted.  

  

The next day, ours had been painted and was in an area known as Strip Repair.  Areas that hadn't passed inspection were re-masked and re-sprayed.  

Masking done and ready to roll back into the spray booth.

Paint and stripe touch up is very much an individual
process and it takes a bit of time to complete.

 After the stripes were repaired and the paint cured, the coach came back out of the spray booth and all of the masking tape was removed, and the paint gone over by a couple of young ladies with razor blades.  They would feel along the edges of the stripes and use the razor blades to take off any high points between colors.  All of this was done prior to the first coat of clear.

 First clear coat application