Without question, the first order of business was to get rid of our H3's shiny paint and chrome. The chrome was easy. We simply replaced the chrome mirrors and door handles with factory black units provided by our friends at Hummer. The shiny paint, well, that took a bit more work. We entertained several ideas for the exterior of our H3, including a vinyl wrap, but quickly decided that flat clearcoat was the hot ticket for the all-business, no-bling look we wanted to achieve. Bear in mind we didn't repaint the truck; we recleared the factory Victory Red paint using clearcoat with a flattening agent added to it. This task was completed by Dan McKeag and the team at Burnsville Off-Road and Auto Body in Burnsville, Minnesota. Some of you may remember McKeag from Top Truck Challenge 1999. He was piloting the fire-breathing Viper-powered TJ that he built. Currently he has a thriving off-road shop, Hemi-to-Wrangler conversion business, and he's quite active in special projects for the OEMs. What you may not know is that he has over 24 years of experience in the body and paint field, and his body shop is staffed with talented body technicians that know their stuff.
Naturally, this project needed refinishing supplies. For that we turned to Keystone Automotive. We worked with Keystone when we restored the body on our Project Fiery Redhead F-150 and the experience was outstanding. Keystone sells an incredible variety of refinishing supplies, and they have 136 stores in the U.S. and Canada. They sell to walk-in customers as well as dealerships and body shops. One of their stores is conveniently located in Minneapolis, so we were good to go.
In this installment we'll show you the highlights of what it took to transform the finish on our H3 from nauseatingly shiny to righteously rugged.
1. The first thing the team at Burnsville Auto Body had to do was strip the exterior of the H3. This included, but was not limited to, the grille, hood, fender flares, cowl, exterior trim, inner fenders, door handles, and mirrors. They separated the parts into those that were going to be painted and those that were taken off just to get them out of the way.
 2. To remove the front outside...  2. To remove the front outside door handles and the outside rearview mirrors, technician Dennis Fink had to remove the inner door trim, window trim, and the windows. The rear door handles and the cargo door handle were able to be removed without disassembling the door panels. |  3. Here's our H3 stripped...  3. Here's our H3 stripped and ready for sanding. |  4. The process of applying...  4. The process of applying flat clear is sort of similar to repainting a vehicle. The first step is to carefully and painstakingly sand the factory finish. Body tech Trevor Peterson used Keystone Automotive-sourced 2000-grit 3M sandpaper on a DA. This sanding gives the new finish something to adhere to. The trick is to sand the factory finish without sanding too deep, which will screw up the factory finish and force a repaint. |
 5. All of the smaller items...  5. All of the smaller items like the grille and flares had to be hand-sanded with Keystone-sourced 2000-grit 3M grey scuff pads. Here, technician Brent Meier carefully sands one of the fender flares. Using a DA on these small items would be a disaster. |  6. Once the truck was sanded,...  6. Once the truck was sanded, it was brought into Burnsville Auto Body's Tech-Cor paint booth. The roof and hood were sprayed first. A total of three coats of flat clear were applied to our H3. The areas that weren't getting sprayed were wrapped in plastic. The plastic was affixed to the vehicle using Keystone Auto-sourced 3M Auto Refinishing Tape. This tape offers a tight seal and it's designed to be removed without tearing or leaving a residue. Here Peterson wipes the roof with PPG wax and grease remover in preparation for the flat clear. |  7. After the roof and hood...  7. After the roof and hood dried, the rest of the truck was masked off with paper and the 3M tape so the flat clear could be applied. |