Projects Recreating the jesse lopez coupe

sorry to hear about the paint Jer, you always figure it out and I'm sure you get straighten out and looking way it should... Thank you for the updates..

 

As I’m traveling back and forth from Dan’s shop I’m thinking what would be the best way to remove all this lacquer material. There was the thought of just prep the topcoat for adhesion and recoat this with the urethane that’s been sitting in that cabinet wandering what it’s purpose is. That thought didn’t use up very many brain cells before it was discarded.

The big elephant in the room is the amount of material on this car and the unstable nature of it. Lacquer takes years to cure, but this amount of material is it’s own unique problem.

Chemical stripper is completely out of the question unless I want to go back to bare metal, and I don’t.

I have a valuable old Hutchins palm held DA with a 6” pad that is super smooth and stable to operate. I bring it to Dan’s shop, and with a sharp 80 grit pad the next day. I start on the roof because it’s flat, I can see how this is going to work, and I can stand while doing it. I can keep it flat, and move back and forth, very much the same motion as a “double wet” spray pattern with a paint gun. The key is to keep moving at a steady pace, any unsteadiness will dig holes, and make more work to restore the surface to perfection before paint.

I will post pics soon, I just was distracted by all the alligators that needed immediate attention at the time.

 

Hutchins also was a sander that applies water as you use it and doesn’t tend to gum up like doing it dry. If you get too aggressive with it dry it tends to melt and smear. And use a lot of paper. That’s why we use to cut grinding disc like stars to cut better. Where is Dan’s shop? Frank

 

Frank, Dan's shop is Classic (chev) Collision Center in Grapevine. The things you're hearing about here took place almost two years ago.

 

Thanks Frank I worked at Jame Wood”s body shop in Denton the last 10 years before I retired before that I worked for the same Ford Dealership thru 4 owners. Miracle Ford, etc. Before that I worked in a independent shop for the same men since high school till the mid 70’s. Been around this shit since I was 11 years old the only time off I had was in the Military. We were just down the street from Jack Simons who built the rancheros out of Mercurys Knew Jacks don Tony .

 

you might want to check in with the medical people to see if you can get that fixed.

 

As I was aggressively, but carefully sanding that lacquer down, I was surprised that the 80 grit paper wasn’t clogging, and/or melting the lacquer like I remember it doing back in the day. When you’re methodically careful about keeping all these passes equal, it takes awhile before you start to see the primer just starting to become visible. How much and how even depends on being consistent with your pattern, Hey, this is going to work.

In spite of this “setback” I’m feeling real good about “things”, and I realize that if I’m stripping the car, I must stop sanding and start removing all the trim, and applicable parts. I’m putting in four hour days, and it takes two days to remove the bumpers, grille, side trim, spotlights, and the front and back glass. I have to remove the door garnish moldings because I have to have access to those window opening “fuzzy’s” that are against the paint on the window opening. I keep my head down and concentrate on the task at hand, so I dominate the shop atmosphere with all this noise.

The shop part has 26 tech’s, this includes parts and the detail area. I make friends with the sweeper guy that has a big treated dust mop and makes two passes a day through the shop area. This keeps my car from being covered in dust, what kind of a “body shop” is this? Without my racket the shop is pretty quiet with the most common thing done being panel replacement. The office has 12 employees .

This is definitely a “culture shock” for an old “body shop” owner like me. I equate chaos to production, and it’s the atmosphere that I do best in. When you here people from back in the 50s talk about the Barris shop, eventually you will hear some one say “we couldn’t believe that all those cool custom’s could come out of a dump like that.”

 

There is more replacing today , the Printless dent repair has taken a big portion of the repair work out of the shops. Body shops smell like chemical factories now. You use to smell the tinning compound and the smoke off the oak paddles while running lead and the paint even smelled different no more thinner just reducer or water born not much cutting with a torch either or pulling hail dents with a torch And file.

 

And no more grabbing the wrong end of the rod when using a torch.

Did it once until my mentor showed me to make an angle on the cold end.

 

I still bend my rods on the end

 

I brought my floor jack from home, and my wheels and tires off of my parts car. I took my super cushions home and with the front end in the air I took my hammer and dolly and compressed the inner fender lip on both sides. This will give me a little more room to turn the wheels, and this is the perfect time to not worry about the paint. It took about 45 minutes and I’m sure the guys that knew what that unique sound meant perked up their ears a bit.

It took about two weeks to remove most of the lacquer from the car. If I remember correctly I almost used up two rolls of that 80 grit paper. I was careful to keep that DA lubed.

This is an opportunity to get those little things that have bugged me dealt with. The not so little thing that has aggravated me is the hood. It has a low spot that I can’t get out. I can see it when I sit behind the steering wheel. It’s about a foot out from the back of the hood on that side. Most would miss it but it’s stuff like this that just curdles my milk because I know right where to look as I walk by.

I had to get my “new” friend Frank Palmer to cut down my garnish moldings for the doors and ¼ glass, way back then. I knew he could metal finish them for the chrome shop when the “MM” ones wouldn’t work. I brought my hood down to him to get that low spot dealt with.

I met Frank way back at the beginning of this project when my other “new” Texas friend Bill Dyson took me over to his place to have a “sit down” and talk about the chop on this car.

We all remember that comedy of horrors as I tried to make something work that couldn’t work with the insertion of expertise from “afar”.

 

I hear ya.

 

As Larry Roller would have said ........ damn

 

Frank Palmer is an east coast transplant to Texas. He’s one of those guy’s that was captured at an early age by this custom stuff, like many of us were. I don’t remember how long he said he was in Texas, but it’s been decades. He has attained hero status in central Texas and for all I know way beyond that. I do remember seeing a pic of an old guy sitting on a lawn chair just outside of Franks shop watching him doing some custom mods on a car that was at the doorway.

I could be wrong but I’ve never seen any sign of a mig welder in his shop, and any time welding is needed out comes the vintage oxy-acetylene outfit.

I observed an early Olds engine, and Pontiac bumpers that looked vaguely familiar. When I asked him about them he revealed that he was a Bettencourt/zupan Merc coupe fan and these were items that could be used in a recreation project that he’s been thinking about for years. I confessed that I’ve always been a big fan of that car and it was cool that we have that in common.

I thought to myself as I was taking all this in “hot damn this is my guy, and he’s a half hour away.” He was impressed by how serious this project was, and mostly quiet as I explained how important it was that the chop be done how Jesse had explained it to me. Looking back on this now, it was a tragedy that I was trying to explain all this without any “hands on” experience, like I got when I actually had to do this myself. When I was finished with my description his reply was, “I don’t see how it’s possible to make this look like these vintage pics doing it the way that you’ve explained it, I’m not your guy.”

 

I was very happy to be able to have Frank help me with those garnish moldings, we became friends after awhile with me visiting him a couple times about how the work was progressing on those moldings. I enjoyed sharing with him my fascination with all this stuff, and it was fun talking about the various cars that had impacted us in our youth.

Frank has never seen either Junior’s or Jesse’s cars in person. I couldn’t get him to come up to Fort Worth to visit me. He has his own “fat Ford” project, I think it’s a ‘46 long door coupe, all chopped down, molded and smoothed with a late 40’s Olds grille. It will be a “killer” when it’s done.

He told me that when he got the “new” moldings chopped down to match the ones that I’d brought down to him, he held them up to see how they compared in size to his car. His reply regarding the difference was “that’s a heavy chop.”

I was very interested to see how all this would come out as I worked with my local plater. Over the years they’ve gone from a polish shop that uses a plater that’s out of town, to a full plating shop with all the components to do triple chrome. They loaded them up with copper and they came out great.

 

I called Frank and told him I was bringing my hood down to him and why. I arrived and showed him the problem area and left. With what was going on with the rest of the car he knew he had plenty of time to work it into his shops schedule.

I was thinking when I left that its not often (or ever) the he has a hood to work on that’s just as shiny on the underside as it is on the top side. I think I said “try not to scratch it”, and left.

This was over a year ago so I can’t remember if I showed up unannounced, but the sight that met me, made me sick. The hood was still all shiny and it looked like he was treating it with kids gloves. There isn’t a lot of filler on the hood and Frank had confined the work area to about the back half on the left side. The work area was all black from the heat and had the shrink spots that you would expect to see. The thing that brought my stomach up into my throat was the back lip of the hood. It looked like that edge had become molten from the heat, and had collapsed into a semi corrugated shape. I was shocked to say the least, and I think I was able to keep Frank from seeing it.

I was able to make my visit brief, but when I walked out of there I thought to myself, “I’ve got to locate another hood.” I thought that I heard Bill Dyson say that he had a 41’ nose out in his pasture.

I didn’t want to think that I was actually going to need another hood, so I let some time pass, and after I sweated it out a week or so, I called Frank and he said “comin’ get it.”

When I arrived I went into his shop and he was ready to help me load it up in the bed of my truck. IT LOOKED GREAT! I was ready to pay him and the amount that he wanted was below what that job was worth. He had undercharged me for those garnish molding also, so now I wanted to know what was going on. He looked up at me and said, “I should have done that chop.”

 

It would be great if you could convince Frank Palmer in doing a build thread here.

 

Frank is active on face book, I told him that he was being talked about on the HAMB. We bantered back and forth about, "good or bad?, what are you sayin'". I replied "mmm not sayin'", this went back and forth for a couple of days. I told him that he needed to see for himself, that's when he told me he doesn't know how to do it. I think this means that all he has is his phone, but I'm not sure.

 

Before we say goodbye and thanks to Mr. Palmer, I need to say that the two of us made a cool discovery. Last year with our relation ship growing Frank and I realized that we were part of the same big family. The kustom (living) God family, we’re brothers, so when I was done writing my book, I sent about 30 out to select people to review for me. Frank was one of them, and when he was done I asked him to give me a good review on Amazon.

Unfortunately as we just discovered, Frank is not as tech savvy as he would like to be, just like many of us. He tried to get his daughter to help him, but they were unable to navigate the path successfully. He is however on face book, as we now know, and he gave me a spectacular review (my best so far), thanks brother.

 

Ok, I gotta get to be able to post pics on here, and I failed at the first try awhile back.

This project, as it was initially planned to be done at this huge fancy shop, er “collision center” has not turned out like I thought it would. One of the painters is a young guy that knows what this car represents and he’s Dan’s friend. He’ll do the paint gun work, and Dan will do the prep work.

I don’t know how many coats of “hi build” primer went on there, but it looked like a bunch. Dan could be (is) a custom painter, and so as I said earlier, he trains and over see’s every job type in this shop, er facility. For the painters he calls it gun management.

Whatever street cred the JLC had when it arrived, evaporated after the need to make a living took over and dominated the environment, as it should.

I stripped the hood, and the skirts, and they got primed with the car. I removed the cowl vent, and carefully masked the headlights.




 

I'm sittin' here thinking about this situation and remembering that I had to use ppg urethane because I had to restore the cars to "pre- accident" condition, and guarantee my work for the life of the owner ship of the vehicle. This is high end stuff and to protect my business this is what you do. Classic uses azko-noble another high end product, so this is kinda like going from the out house (lacquer), to the pent house. The JLC isn't complaining, so that's always a plus.

 

As I have mentioned earlier this transformation took place awhile back. Once the hi-build primer and guide coat was on the car, Dan tells me that he didn’t want me to work on the prep part of this job. The car was just across from his office and was positioned there so that he could have easy access to it, when he had some spare time. So I guess you could say that I got fired for the third time, I’m beginning to see a pattern developing here.

I did make an effort to label, and organize, all the parts that were removed. I think calling in a pro to install the windshield and back glass in their rubber gaskets, is going to be the right thing to do.

 

I have spent a good part of this last week reading the Jesse Lopez and Junior Conway threads along with the Jivin' Jer book. Good stuff.

 

Thank you very much for your kind words, all profits go to a christian ministry that is named in the book.

 

Dan is working on the car when he can and I’m left in limbo regarding day to day progress. I guess its time to look at all this as a vacation of sorts.
This continues to be quite a ride and I had no clue as to what I was getting myself into at the start of all this.

Being able to immerse myself in the culture that both Junior and Jesse cars represents has been an all consuming experience. There were other places in the country that had pockets of custom activity that captured the youth of our nation, but none that matched So, Cal. in the late 40’s,50’s, 60’s and beyond.

Junior was a transplant from Kentucky that had been captured in his early teens, and woke up one day to find out that he was going to custom car heaven with his family. His dad was an aircraft machinist and got a job at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach California in 1952. To say that he adapted and thrived would be a major understatement. It is a privilege beyond being able to communicate what an honor it is to fill the hole in history that the demise of these cars represents. On his build thread it was not unusual see someone say “we wondered what happened to that car.”

 

Did somebody on here say “growin’ old aint’ for sissy’s?” Well I’ve got an arthritic hip joint, and the fix is physical therapy, my body’s reaction to this has been “whaaaat?” The first session was extremely stressful on this body that insists on comfort and ease. Fortunately that was last Thursday so I had 4 day’s to recuperate before the next one yesterday. They are “doing” my core so this last one I was ready for. I took 2 Tylenol’s about 45 minutes before I arrived. It was a rough afternoon and I took 2 more on my way to bed. I woke up this morning and felt amazing. I spent some time at our big Wal-Mart and it was a pleasurable experience walking that store. This is like “food” for my body, so this time I need to find a way to be able to continue this at home, after the insurance runs out.

The last post looked at Junior in his youth, ending up as an employee at Barris, and then going on to become “the worlds best custom painter.”

Jesse’s growing up was just the opposite. His Interest in cars started before he got into his teens. This is the iconic Bell California, smack dab in the middle of the of the “hot bed” of automotive creativity after world war two. He would “pump his bike” over to Bell auto parts where all the cool guys hung out. They would pull in, in their A-v8’s and T-v8’s, and there was Jesse on his bike taking all this in. Jesse went to Bell hi-school, in the hot rod and custom car “cooker”, where all kinds of outstanding examples of automotive “art” were started/thought up. Jesse started his famous 41’ coupe in 1947 after he graduated from hi-school, while working at the Barris Compton shop.

All this and much more is waiting for you at Michelley’s thread, JESSE LOPEZ-LO! & BEHOLD.

 

Son Dan is blocking the primer down using 180 grit on a Dura block, the long narrow one. He's sanding it dry, using 800 wet on the edges.

I asked him what kind of responses is he getting with car just sitting there. Shawn, one of the techs there, and Dans friend, mentioned that he was a bit concerned with the car sitting next to all the unibody bench's and heavy equipment. Shawn's dad had a shop back in the day, they're Mexicans and he knew exactly what the car represented.

 

Think I've told you this before but I'll say it again. Learned this phrase from you and when I told it to my now-deceased father he flipped out, it became his favorite motto because, of course, it is Universal Truth! Hang in there Hoss!

 

Hello Jer, glad ur still hammering away. You inspire me to keep at it,im 60 now and feeling those years,but in regards to Bell,ca, it's still a cool car mecca ..only it's dominated by the old school "bomb" crowd as well as the lowering community.
But customs are seen on the streets on occasion,this is so cal after all. I just picked up a 1940 Merc.
Your book is a blast to read,especially when sitting on the toledo..very interesting life of a young guy trying to figure it out,at a time that does not exist anymore..I highly recommend it.

Sent from my SM-T560NU using The H.A.M.B. mobile app