Hey everybody. Just doing a tech post on a complete redo of a car that started out as a blue with pink/white flamed monstrosity..and will be pretty within a week. I don't have the rest written up yet, and the car isn't complete but I'm hoping to have not only the car finished up save for westanding / buffing but the thread done by wednesday or so of next week - so *please* bear with me! Gives a general idea of the condition of the car prior to starting. The initial plans were a quick scuff and squirt - meaning just blocking out the paintjob already on there, priming it once and respraying it..but we all know how that goes. This car is a driver, not a 100 point showcar being built with a huge budget, it's a budget build but I think the end result will be damn nice for what's invested in it, that's for sure! Not my car, it belongs to Matte & Dawn (I think they're on here - is so hey, hope ya don't mind! heh) This build for me, and I'm sure they can chime in, but to me it's all about a good looking car getting a complete overhaul comsetically while staying within a reasonable budget - something *everybody* can relate to I'm sure. On to the problem areas. The '49 had been hit in the driver's side at some point in it's life. The driver side rocker panel was collapsed (and rusted to some pitiful former semblance of itself...) with a new rocker panel patch pop riveted over the original (seriously WTF people). There were a SOLID 2" thick of mud in more spots than I can count with a good 1" plus everywhere else. Total headache, but that's the name of the game. Here you can see the work just beginning. Starting to rip into it and getting a feel for just how bad it really was. Car from hell...? Or a redneck special.. you decide. Numerous rust spots on the quarters (I'll get there in a little while), fenders, doors, rockers, lower quarters, floor, etc. Tons. All covered with mud, lots and lots of mud. After removing the lovely patch over the rotted out / collapsed rocker. The passenger side had the same deal, though it wasn't collapsed, just rusted out. Same pop riveted / sheet metal screw attachments methods used on that patch as well. Nice. Needless to say that shit was all cutout, and the patch they ghetto fabricated was actually reused after repairing the inner rockers and cleaning up the patch panel so it was solid steel again. Everything is either already, or will be sealed and then undercoated as far as the internal bits go, so this repair won't have to happen again. I was a retard and forgot to take a bunch of before pictures after the sheet metal was found under the heaps of mud. Needless to say I ripped through one full and one partial box of pins for my spot welder to use in conjuction with the slide hammer. That's a hell of a lot of the damn things. This is screwing around with various possibilities for radiusing the quarters. The reason they were radiused is they were solid rust. As such the decision was made to just cut until solid metal was found (ok, there's more to it than that, I had "some" influence there, being a gasser fanatic myself... I think converted yet another - this time the man & woman whom own the car heh) From there once I had a general idea of where I wanted the cutline I started to play with the line in tape as far as the taper off towards the front and rear of the wheel house. Once I had the layout on both sides, the cutting commenced. I just used an air die grinder with a 3" cutoff wheel (went through a lot of those on this car. :laugh: ) to make the cut. Keep in mind there is an inner and outer "skin" that you have to cut through, and eventually figure out a way to attach back together. Between the chunks of rotted metal and 50 years worth of dirt I must have pulled out a solid 10 pounds of crap from each wheel well. Look ma! I can see the frame rail!!! new rolling stock. Running 270's I want to say tire wise *shrug* I should also add buy the tires you plan on running PRIOR to making your cuts so they are RIGHT there for your mockup so you don't finish the car and finally get it on the ground and put your new rolling stock on, only to go oh shit. That didn't happen - because planning ahead is *good*. Remember about joining the inner and outer skin? This is going traditional..electrical conduit!
Electrical conduit. Bent over the spare 35" tire from my truck, though from the gents I've talked to that build 'em back then on Chevys it was Nomad wheel houses usually, but otherwise it wasn't full on electrical conduit but sometiems brake line or such. Anyway, this was laying around so it got used. Like I said, it's a really bitchin budget build. Anyway, skip forward a bunch of welding later, and you wind up with this. Inner and outer skins attached. I used a heavy bodied seam sealer on the inside of the wheel house as well, so no worries there. After doing patch panels and various other rust repair work on the lower fenders, door, etc. and starting to get the thing straight. This thing had more waves in it than the pacific ocean. Marker lights were also shaved on the fenders as well (and sorry if some of the pics show things further along in some areas and not as far in others... they are out of order in someways). More bodywork done, and they wanted a scoop and bought a 2" cowl scoop on ebay - this was with it laying on the hood. I personally didn't much like it, and had the idea to chase down a plastic repro '57 Tbird style scoop. Anyway, in the mean time work progressed and the panels were finally starting to get not only aligned but also straight as well. When I say it was bad, I mean the reflection of a stripe in a parking lot would be like 15-20 waves up and down on just the door bad, bad. It looks like a lot of filler and truth be told it *is*, however it's NOT that thick. It's just *everywhere* thanks to being in as bad shape as it was and the budget not allowing to sit there for hundreds of hours metal finishing the thing. The hood also got filled in - where the bullet once sat. You can also see the cutout in the hood for the (functional!) T-bird scoop. Skip forward a few (I forgot to take pics of attaching the scoop, but I used a panel bond adhesive for SMC plastic to metal and literally glued the f'er on. You can pick the hood up by the scoop..things not going anywhere.) Somewhere in time (don't think I have pics of that *shrug*) the decision was made to convert to a smooth rollpan instead of having the stock rear bumper re-chromed (cheaper that way to boot! and it looks better with the build the way it is) Anyway, there's the reworked hood & grille - with the scoop actually mounted. Skip foward more boring finishing bodywork and the thing finally hit it's first prime. This is where I'll stop for now as that's all I have written up so far. Enjoy. Or not. Whatever.
haha yeah. they were good and nasty! On to the fun stuff.. sanding and technical crap. What I skipped over in the last was how to use fillers / where to take your prep work to prior to priming. For my fillers I'll sand them out to 180 grit in prep for the first prime. I use a long board (17" wooden board) and smaller various shaped sanding blocks, either purchased or improvised (ie: chunks of rigid foam work *great* for odd shaped tight areas with stickit paper). Anyway, the door in one of those pictures looked pure light blue, the reason for that was an abundance of small waves, not worth using a higher build plastic filler on, but still worth knocking out to get a nice finished product. What I did there was use an air in-line sander (again a 17") with 80 grit to knock it down first until I started getting to bare and giving it a good *tooth* for the icing to stick to. Once I had the door at that point and blocked as far as I cared to (experience is the only way to gauge it, nothing I can tell you, just gotta learn that one for yourself) I whipped up a batch of icing. Think of icing as a much tinner plastic filler. I actually pulled a Boyd ( yeah... I know ) and coated the entire door. You can see how most winds up getting sanded off, and the high spots are exposed in bare metal. I actually wound up doing this process twice, as it was a pretty horrible door to start with. From there I let it set up and start attacking it with a sanding board again - this time using 80 grit as well. I'd recommend using a guide coat if your not familiar with bodywork - a guide coat is just a light coat of a contrasting color sprayed over the filler that shows your high and low spots at quick glance. That said -still rely on your hands AND eyes to feel the straightness of the panel. There's honestly around a 1/16" or so of icing on the door in most spots save for the highs which were knocked to bare again in the process. Once I had the panel straight I put 180 grit on the board and sanded it, giving it a finer finish for the primer as it wouldn't have to fill as deep of a scratch that way. For the primer I sealed it with DP epoxy, then laid on 3 wet coats of featherfill - you can use whatever high build you want. I personally like featherfill as it's easy sanding and lays on nice and thick. Sitting in highbuild - it's first prime and actually starting to look like a car again! From there if you will only be priming once I'd recommend starting with 320 grit on a longboard. This I knew would need more than one prime, so I actually started with 180 grit on a longboard and started blocking. Hope your ready to sand, you'll be sick of it by the time you are done! Anyhow skip forward a bunch of sanding later and there was a show coming up so the thing got put into a white epoxy primer *again*, this time with no feather fill. With epoxy's the amount I mix up depends on the car but I always mix up more than I think I'll need and let it "kick" for at ~ half hour in the cup before spraying. Depends on what material you are spraying and that mfr's recommendations, which just goes to show READ your MSDS sheets and such BEFORE you spray. Then read 'em again! Just because. Thing sitting in White epoxy at the show with spray bombed stuff on the quarters. From there it sat in epoxy for a while then eventually got blocked out -again. Remember that whole sick of sanding thing? Yup. By this point I was starting to get a little sick of it - as I've been dealing with a few compressed discs in ol back which certainly don't help. For the last and final prime it got hit with 320 grit then 320 on a softpad as it got sealed again before laying the base. If you were going straight to base hit it with 320 then up through possibly even 800 if it will be a metallic silver. This is a metallic orange, so I would have hit it up through 600 were I not going to seal it. I know I'm risking it with sand scratching stopping at 320 on a soft pad, but ::knock on wood:: I've yet to have a problem with sealing first. Anyway, prior to laying on the final coats I wash the thing down extremely well and take a good bit of time cleaning out the prior huge mess made *in* said garage sanding the high build & epoxy primers. When I say huge mess, if it can get dusty it WILL get dusty, you'll find dust in places you didn't know exist - get it ALL out. Then comes the wipe down with wax & grease remover to rid it of the oils from touching it with your hands and anything else that may be on the car. I personally use DX330 but whatever your preferance is, be it Dupont, PPG, Sikkens, whatever will work. Skip foward more masking, and this is the thing sitting in sealer. I sprayed the sealer out of a 1.5 fluid tip running wide open. I do one heavy coat being careful not to run it, then let it sit for *at least* an hour before even thinking about spraying the base coat. That's where I'll stop for today. The base / clear application will go further into depth so I'm kind of skipping around (/being lazy) on this one. and a teaser (early next week you'll get the rest and the story on why I am switching *everything* over to SATA and saying a big FU to devilbiss. heh. )
Thanks! The DuPont color code is B8028 - med. bittersweet metallic. It's an '81 Ford color actually. I have the PPG code floating around somewhere - I'd have to dig through my paperwork to find it. I can gladly do that for you - if you'd like. I'm aiming to have the last round of updates on the thread Wednesday night / Thursday at the latest.
I'll finally have the finish part to this thread up hopefully within a couple days to a week - reason being the stuff I was waiting on *finally* showed up after going through the hassles of the shippers misplacing a box (read: why I hate UPS, FedEx, etc.heh) ..as such I've pretty much been banging my head against the wall waiting for the stuff to show up.. now that it has.. I can finally finish the job. Sorry about the huge delay.
You bet! Here's some teasers until I get time to finish writing up the rest. Sorry about the huge delay in between updates, apologies. She still needs a wetsand and buff, but I'll get to that soon enough, along with updating the thread with the tech bits on laying the base / clear.
sorry for the delay.. finally got around to starting the wetsand / buff. still needs to be sanded / buffed on the hood / decklid / roof / pillars / passenger side / etc. and then it needs the machine polish / glaze to remove the swirl marks and then a final once over with a hand glaze (no wax!)... but whatever. note the presence of orange peel. it happens. start sanding. sand some more. keep sanding.... get sick of sanding. sand some more. get out buffer, wool pad and compound. first pass on fender. yet to touch door. moved onto door. first pass on fender / door / yet to touch quarter. note door is NOT shut all the way = good. lets you buff OFF edge without running into the quarter, which would = BAD. Then move onto the quarter. open door, buff OFF edge on quarter and then move into the rest of the panel. - you can shut the door once you've got the edge and about 3" inward from the edge done - keep the compound splatter inside to a minimum. skip forward. First pass done on the fender, door, quarter, time for second pass. Do your second passes (still with compound & wool pad) Check for sand scratches. If none, you can move onto your machine polish. not polished, just compounded. note swirl marks. Fine at this stage - to be expected actually, that's what your next step removes. Rough cut compound WILL leave swirl marks with a wool bonnet pad, no way around it. first light pass with polish. then i ran out of polish. don't be like me. plan ahead. I will be the *first* to admit this thing isn't perfect -it's a budget driver job. That said it's a hell of a lot better than it was.
The Jalopy Journal
