Projects Recreating the jesse lopez coupe

Good to hear from you, can't wait for an update on your car.

 

Happy new Jerry.....when will you unveil ur new custom endeavor?

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Have you ever thought about the Custom Car Revival in Indy.

 

Hey everybody, no, you don’t have to check your calendar, it’s not Christmas.

Years ago when I was recreating Junior Conway’s coupe, some one asked when ’the book” is coming out. When I asked for an explanation the HAMBer said that he’s always been fascinated by custom car guys and wondered how they got that way.

That got me thinking and I eventually banged out 9 chapters of my life from the automotive perspective. I included it in the Jesse Lopez recreation story. I was asked why I said things the way that I did in that story. I explained that it was because of the things that influenced me, and happened to me, and that someday we might find out about them.

Well I’m here to tell you that I’m almost finished with my autobiography, yup, all the blood and guts. It’s going to be about 85K words and 350 pages long.

The title will be JIVIN JER an American life, with the subtitle, cars, sex, drugs, rock n’ roll , and Gods sovereignty.

So Truk, you need to be careful about what you ask for. When I get the front and back covers done I’ll show them to you.
Jerry

 

That's awesome!! I don't want to write a text much less a book! I look forward to the opportunity to read it!!

 

Way to go Jer!

 

Jerry, there is no doubt in my mind that you are an artist, par excellence.

 

Nice Jerry, look forward to seeing a copy ( ok buy one)

 

Red X.

 

Hey everybody, MERRY CHRISTMAS, wishing all the best to you and yours this season. As I said earlier my book now is finished, and is available on Amazon.

 

Will look for it..Thank you. Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas, Jer. Just ordered up, looking forward to a very good read. All the Best, to you and yours.


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Excellent!! I will be ordering one for sure!

 

I just ordered mine!


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After looking at this for a while I realized that this also solves that "so called" problem with the chop, and nails down that grille once and for all time.

 

That... is... so... COOL!!

 

This was supposed to be an ending, a time to take a deep breath and say ok, what a ride, what an experience to have in your life, but no. As I came around the back of the car out in the sun for the first time, I realized that I have a great big problem with mis-matched paint on the right rear roof and the rest of the car. It revealed that the lighting in the shop wasn’t adequate enough to let me see this big paint problem that now exists.
Like the video of Juniors car with Ricky Nelson coming over the radio, that represented that time period, mid-late50’s.
This would reveal what Jesse was listening to that represents late 40’s-early 50’s.
This was two years ago.

 

You can only match paint in natural sun light. That being said paint that matches in natural sunlight looks different in artificial light. Even Mercedes Benz says to view in natural sun light it in their dealer hand book. A silver car thats been spotted looks good in natural sun light, looks blotchy and different colors under artificial light.

 

Cool video Jer. I love this car!
Have you had the car out cruising much in the summer months?

 

The origin of this problem started years back with the trimmer “bumping” the back headliner/roof area to get contact with the glued panels that made up the “back flow” headliner.
I could have warned/instructed him about this potential problem with the skim coat of filler on the roof if I had known he was going to do that. Each bump fractured the filler and I discovered this after the car had sat out in the texas heat/sun. Each fracture was a little star that you had to look into the paint to see. The car got two headliners because when I came down to inspect it he had installed “his” headliner which looked very nice, but he hadn’t checked out the pics that I had brought him to look over. This resulted in a colossal mess with me thinking I had found and repaired all of the “stars” when I hadn’t. Mega paint build up, mega problems,

 

Everything changed one day when I walked in to the house from the shop, and the wife asked, “are you still painting on that car?” She had smelled the lacquer on my clothes. The answer was “yes”.

Her reply was “that does it, do you remember when we expanded the shop up to the street on Central ave ?” My reply was “yes”, she continued, “remember when the crew took you to lunch and told you that they needed you up front in the office instead of the shop?” My reply was “yes”. She continued, “they basically fired you, so I’m firing you from working on that car, I’m calling Dan (son) and he’s going to fix this.

Dan’s reply was “Dad, bring the car to the shop, we can work it in and get this problem solved in our spare time, and the guys will have a blast seeing/working on it.”

I think that this is the place to insert the dramatic music, if we have any.

 

Just ordered. Can't wait to read!

 

This build is masterful work and spectacular attention to detail. It’s well researched and executed to perfection. It is a huge inspiration to all that build and study kustoms. Well done sir... well done


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Awesome to see the finished car. BTW I am the guy that sent you the pieces for your wiper assembly.
Matt

 

So I’ve learned to roll with the punches on this one. I load up all the materials, and that includes all the lacquer, and some of my tools, in the trunk of the car, and load it into the trailer.

I head for son Dan’s body shop in Grapevine, a 82k square foot four year old shop, excuse me, “collision center”, it’s about 30 minutes away. This is Classic Chevrolet, the biggest Chevrolet dealer in the world. Dan is responsible for the production dept, and he trains every new tech for every position in the “shop” area.

I arrive and unload the car, and drive it into the paint dept, they have five downdraft booths, across the aisle from Dan’s office.

I’m trying to figure out how to describe the scene when I stop and get out of the car, and the paint tech’s come over to look at this totally strange “thing” that has invaded their space.

I’m sure that there where a couple of “smartass” remarks regarding “what is this?” There were a few older guys that appreciated the car and the whole “scene” may have been their way of “jazzing” Dan.

I was a little curious when I brought out the lacquer and nobody knew what it was. After a few minutes of explaining what the purpose of the car being here was, I could feel everybody cool off regarding this project interfering with their ability to stay productive and make money.

 

Unfortunately I didn’t take pics of the beginning phases of this expanded, ever growing “fix”. With all the mini repairs, flaws, and transparency issues to the exterior of the car, I was left with the realization that this car actually is a combination of many blended panels.

I was curious about just how many “mils” of paint was on this car, but with a skim coat of filler almost everywhere I couldn’t use a “mil gauge” to find out. I knew that the thickest buildup was on that roof and trunk lid. I decided that I would strip the trunk lid with chemical stripper because I could isolate it from the rest of the car. I was amazed to see how much paint build up was on that deck lid, I was able to keep the primer under the paint pretty much intact. Unfortunately my efforts to keep that stripper contained to just the deck lid, was compromised by leaking in some of the masking to the left and right rear fenders.

As I was being impacted by what a disaster this was turning into, and my overall dissatisfaction with this lacquer paint. This paint that has been a continuous battle to get right, from the very beginning. I was reminded why the need to switch (upgrade) to a better system, back in the last century had to happen.

I started to consider that this was an opportunity to rethink all that urethane paint that I had prepared to use on this car before the lacquer came on the scene. It was still there in one of the cabinets in my shop. I had added the “sparkle” to it and sent Jesse a curved piece of one of the grille bars from Juniors build, and he had said , “yup, that’s it”. The lacquer that Hibernia had matched to a spray out card I had sent them was the right color, but with out the “sparkle”. For some reason I reasoned through this thinking that the fact that this wasn’t going to get by Jesse wasn’t important. It was becoming obvious that the Kustom car God had seen this from the start and the day of reckoning was here.

 

So...is there a a complete strip/respray on the near horizon? I figure this is how the dominoes are falling?

 

You might be right.

 

Well, grandma doesn’t have a lot to say these days as the realization of whats happened dawns on us. I do believe that all things work together for the good for a certain type of person, and this car required many adjustments to what I had originally thought it would take to do this project.

As I’m looking over this situation that I’m in I realize there are two issues. As much as I would like to make this lacquer work I’m learning that it’s an archaic paint system and would require a lot of maintenance. I think that it would eventually require on going explanations about its appearance. There is a reason that it was replaced. The amount of material that’s needed to make it look right is part of the problem.

The base coat/clear coat urethane that we’re all familiar with is “friendly”, bullet proof, AND has the “sparkles” that brings us back to the authenticity issue.

I had a long discussion with the Hibernia guys about all this and they told me that the customers that they see today about the high end restorations that they do won't except anything but the most durable paint to be able to keep the value up on their cars.

This would be an upgrade on this car.

 

The library is off limits due to this virus so I ordered a book. Dirt cheap - I impress easily.