Earlier this year (2020) Big City Signs was contacted by the clients for graphics for this food truck build.

As we went through the process of recreating their design on the truck itself, we came to realize that the truck would need more work to make it look as good as their vision deserved.

Complicating the entire project is this years’ plague of COVID. The clients were living in England and had a great business plan. Then, COVID hit, and they couldn’t emigrate for months!

They got the truck from the builder in San Diego to me, where the scope of the project became clear. The builder had welded in metal sheeting where a serving window had been that needed some work. They had also sealed up seams with very sloppy application of silicon sealant.

What follows is the process getting this project to completion…

When the truck arrived, we found it needed more body work before the custom paint scheme. Here are some “before” photos…

The biggest part of the project would be creating a smooth side there where the builder had roughly patched the driver side.

This required a good bit of Bondo, a LOT of sanding, then cleaning off and checking where it needed more work.

Along with that, I had to use an angle grinder with a flap disc all over the truck. It helped with smoothing the sloppy silicon, and reducing those raised spots.

After battling all of that and taming the wildly bad body condition and pressure washing everything down I did a couple of things that turned out to be great ideas. First, I needed to be able to paint over the silicon, so I smoothed on paintable caulking over it. The other thing was to use simple rattle can primer over areas with remaining Bondo, and the caulking.

You may be as surprised as I was at how successful that foundational work turned out!

Then, of course, all the masking needed to be done.

The truck was painted with satin finish oil based enamels matching the colors of the layout provided by the client. The graphics were mostly computer cut vinyl, except for the white and matching blue areas on the back of the truck.

So here is the finished product…

You might be thinking about getting this kind of project done, Do you know where to start? I can tell you - contact me, Paul Borne (president of Big City Signs) to find out more.

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