Alienware M14x upgrade! (custom paint job)

Here is my latest laptop project. Decided to upgrade to an SSD and 16gb of RAM. Also decided to go a little further and take it all apart to put arctic silver and went a head and painted the damn thing. The paint theme is kind of to honor the original blue and green that Alienware was so popular for. Painted by my buddy that owns an automotive body shop. Hope you guys enjoy.

P.S. Sorry pics are not that great just random cell pics.

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Here is some more...

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And the last....

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that thing is sharp. looks great! job well done

 

What paint you use? are those normal spray paint?

 

Very cool i like it.
Some instructions about how to mod this and what to take care of would be greatly appreciated.

The standard rubber finish looks so cheap in my eyes.. i wish i could mod it like this but with my personal colours.

 

I used automotive PPG paint. What instructions are you desiring? Complete disassembly, then took it to my buddies body shop prepped it and painted it.

 

very pretty job - i'm sure some people would pay your friend to do their laptops too (i'm not looking right now, but in the future it'd be nice to change it up) - how much would he charge to do a paid paint job?

 

Very nice! ;-)

 

Automotive paint seems to be the way to go from all the mods I have seen.

 

Yes, he will do them. 150.00 for up to two colors. 50.00 each additional color from there. He will not clean up tedious tape marks though. Not meaning his tape lines are not good, but the white residue left you will have to clean up. Not that hard, just takes time and would raise the price. People can pm me and I can provide information.

 

Oh yeah, this does not include disassembly!

 

Looks amazing, but i have a couple of questions. How did you strip the rubber coating? Please tell me you did not paint on top.

What primer did you use? This bit is crucial, i had primers that pealed or cracked or bubbled on bumpers (I used to work in a body shop). Some were so bad i was wishing i could prime an entire car rather than one bumper.

Once you have a good primer base pretty much any auto paint will stick properly.

 

He light sanded it and used a special primer for plastics. Would have to find out name again. As you can see it's painted and doesn't look horrible. This guy does custom and high end cars. I've known him a long time, so I just left it to him.

 

Not sure I like your color choices, but nice job.

 

I love to see what people do to their M14x's, however I agree with salanos. The blue looks good, the green looks a little off. I've thought about giving mine a custom paint job but I love the rubberized finish too much.

 

How's the fit and finish? Usually painting laptop parts will cause gap and tolerance issues when putting everything back together/moving them. My particular concern would be the LCD hinge area.

 

I actually really love the appearance of the Nebula Red soft-touch finish - It feels like good quality well-treated plastic rather than rubberized, plus it has such a lively specular in bright light.
I just wish it were dusty blue instead of red.

 

You can add the soft touch after you paint it. Alsa.com sells it.

Alsa Corp | The World's Most Exotic Paints and Finishes

 

I'd have to import an expensive special paint? Uh. I'd rather save the trouble and leave my M14x red...

Or wonder if Smooth Creations takes that kind of request.