Legal?



I'm wanting to do something a bit different to my notch. I was originally planning to paint it matte black but this caught my eye. Are you allowed to show any bare metal? Even if its covered in some sort of lacquer?

I cant see why not,its not rusty just bare metal,i think that looks better than flatt black

yep paint has nothing to do with a faulty car and i like it to

That looks awesome

As VWMAD said, it'll look way better than matt black (IMO).

Can't wait to see your thread if you do it.

I was at a custom car show at Queenscliff ( Geelong VIC) there was a car that was street registered, fully metal finished with a coat of clear over the whole car, it looked insane!! could see that there wasn't a skerric of body filler, just pure raw metal.

Don't see why not?
As long as it is covered in a lacquer type covering- should be ok?

Let me know if you need a hand sanding it back!

You do have to have a colour on your registration. A bare metal car could be 'silver', a rusty car could be 'brown'. I think it is based on the most prevalent colour, as lots of cars in years gone by have been multicoloured. Even our bus has different coloured flames, but the description is the main colour.

Doing it like that would be better than Matt black

What about doing it two tone.......top half bare metal, the bottom a colour

nice!
a ratty look that i like.... Finally

What an awsome Rat, love the blue carried through to the interior. My favourite Rat I have ever.

NICE!!!

That paint job also has metal flake in the clear.

Wet sand, cut and polish. Ankor Wax will also help with keeping this effect.

Check Jer-Fab's ride out.

http://www.jer-fab.com/blog/ 

Check out the kombi in Issue 25 of VWMA, plenty of lacquer over bare metal there and it appears to have rego.

I think I know what I'm doing this weekend then! My notch is a mustard colour at the moment. It has a light blue undercoat which I'll try and bring out as much as possible. It won't look exactly like the above car, but I hope to get it very close.

Paul at East Koast Kombis in West Gosford created that bus. I got to talk to him and the owner about it. He said they were always being pulled over by the cops, but just so that they could get a closer look at it!

As far as I'm aware, that paint job would not be legal in WA.

I can't remember the exact words, but here a car must have an "acceptable" paint job.

I assume that a rat that has "un-modified" paint is O.K., but to modify the paint to make a car "look like a rat", is I believe, illegal.

Personally I disagree.

Benjamin Franklin said, "You cannot legislate aesthetics."

In other words, what anything looks like cannot be enforceable in law. Look at all of the really ugly cars, office buildings and houses that are completely legal. I doubt if a refusal to register that car here in WA would stand up in court. (I'm not a lawyer.)

Ok, I have never even attempted this on a car or any painted metal, but I have done something very simmilar on painted timber (old furniture that I wanted to give that look to ) I found the best way was to use a painters scraper (I can post a pic of it if you want) to get rid of as much of the top coats as I needed to, and then smooth the rest, edges etc, and in some places down to bare timber with a small palm sander. Worked well on timber and did not end up with mountains of clogget abrasive paper.

I got nothing against rats, hell I was gonna build one myself and know several that stand out better than alot of show cars but sooner or later someone will be complaining the council towed there car to the scrap yard thinking it was an abandoned vehicle

im not sure if it will affect your ability to get it on the road.
but personally i reckon it sucks.
get a nice gloss black or something like a prismatique black
which looks black in the shade and then like a fleck of rainbow
in sun.Thats what i would do anyway.
~Jas~

Hmmm. I'm only new around here so my opinion doesn't count but I'll say it anyway. I think it looks crap, but if everyone liked the same thing then things would be boring.
Legal? Well I think so but I remember something about condition of vehicle compling with manufactures standard, something like that. I'll check it out at work.

Check what Jerry has done here. If you check the before and after shots, you can see the changes in the paint after a wet sand. After which he clear coated.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=342031&postdays=0&po...

Thank you jjwebb123 and Luke for your opinions. Just because you're new, doesn't mean your opinions don't count

Squizy, that is incredible. That clear coat...I just want to...lick it.

I like and the colour & on rego could be colour code UNK
unknown out of the 24 colour codes

I started working on this on the weekend. At first I started sanding by hand with a block and it was taking FOREVER and no real results. I started using an electric "mouse" sander which was working quite well at first. But after about 10 seconds all the paint clogs up the sandpaper and it doesn't sand anymore. The paint seems to get very moist and "glug" up. It doesn't seem dry at all. This seems to be preventing me from sanding.

I think I'll have to use paint scrapers like Donn said to get as much off as possible. I was even thinking of a paint thinner to loosen it all up. But I'm worried it'll take too much of the paint off. I'm quite new to all of this :P