Customs The Mild Custom Transformation, mama's 55

Ohhhh, I dunno. They look right, but the trim is in an odd place. Is that at Titus place?

 

Day 5 on the Memorial Day thrash:
Very little visual progress.

Most of the day was spent trying to strip paint around the window frames etc. a lot of the hard to sand areas. This takes an enormous amount of time. It will pay dividends later. It just gets discouraging. The goal is to get the whole car sanded tomorrow and then lay some primer down.



It takes a while to cover this much ground with a 2” Roloc disc.

I knew if she had enough time she would eventually want to pull the rear windows. I was right. Today she was looking at the slight delamination around the edges....”We should change these, since the rest of the car is going to be nice”. Out they came. What a mess. The rear quarter windows don’t have much room in the quarter panels for maneuvering. We will grease up the regulators and get it ready to install.

 

Day 6 of the Memorial Day Thrash.
We have visual progress, but man do the Imperfections stick out. Starting to build back the other way now. 3 qts of sprayable material.

There is a ton of surface area and my gun started acting wonky. 20+years of flawless service from my old Sata 2000. I may have to have some sort of memorial service for it.

Now the guide coat and block sanding party begins!

 

It's been awhile so bear with me, is light color primer now "the thing"? Back in the day we used the darker primer on bare metal which in my opinion you could see, after sanding, any high spots easier because the shiny metal spots stood out from the darker primer.

 

I try to use a similar color primer for the end paint. It covers easier. I'll guide coat this and then the darks will be left in the lows.

 

Day 7 of the thrash: Started blocking today And the wife wanted to sandblast the insides of the doors, so who am I to argue?

I posted some pics for my buddy @loudbang. This stuff is what I use to show the lows etc. it’s made in South Africa. I think it is just coal dust, but I can’t prove it.

 

Today was day 8 of the thrash. We affectionately call it crap day.

Lots of blocking and I started cutting the lower fender out for the replacement panels from @ems customer service. They fit so much better than the China Charlie crap. Thanks for putting out a good product.

The previous owner obviously thought that filler fixed rust....

I’m scared to dig into the rockers.
We have been looking sort of homeless lately, doing all the blocking, so we figured we might give panhandling a shot.

 

thanks for buying from EMS. we are going to add your photos to tech section of the ems auto web site

THE EMS GUY

p.s the panhandlers in Detroit take credit cards and apple-pay

 

Day 9 of the Memorial Day thrash. This is the last day of our vacation. Y’all are probably glad. Today was more if the same. Blocking and filling and more blocking.

This post looks a lot like yesterday. I opened up the driver side lower fender. Some more bondo rust repair. Better than the last.
Everything is mocked up and we were waiting to drag it over to the welder, so we can weld it all up at once.

 

So, we have been going out after work and blocking the car this week. The 9 day thrash kinda sucked the life out of us for a bit.

We had a little primer left over, so we decided to go ahead and spray a coat, so we can add more guide coat and continue blocking.

It gets sort of overwhelming trying to figure out where you are at times. Not much to see.

We found some more hidden treasures from the previous owner/sculptor. I ordered rockers yesterday. I’ll post pics when we decide to tackle that nightmare.

Primer is kinda thin.
Poor people have poor ways....

 

Not much to report on. A lot of blocking and sanding. Then I’ll put it in epoxy and discover I am not a body man.
I did paint a few pieces after mama ran them through the blast cabinet. Makes me feel like we still moving forward. At least that’s what I tell myself.



She made me put a blanket down on top of a bedspread....for safety, you know. Running out of room quickly on the antique bed.

 

Any updates?

Just picking up a 55 customline myself and just found this thread.

You say you're no body man but that primer sure looks smooth from here

-Adam

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I bet his is chopping it behind our backs...

 

No, we have been just trying to tie up a lot of loose ends around the house. Trying my hand at interior, trying to get the roadster finished up, house stuff, wife stuff etc. I plan on getting back on it soon, but not til the roadster is up and running. When I found out it had 6" of bondo in the rockers, it took the wind out of my sails for a bit. I'll get back on it this summer.

 

I'm gonna hafta rehang the doors to make sure the rockers jive. Story of my life. We are in the middle of a snow storm right now. Too cold to get motivated.

 

Been on a sabbatical lately. Decided to do something today, even if it is wrong.

So I decided to start the rear end swap.
Figured I would take a few measurements for reference.

Dropped the rear end out, had to order the bushings for the new springs, so I am on hold for a day or two. I need to power wash the bottom side while everything is out of the way.

 

So, my nephew came over today and I showed him why Bondo is not a solution for rust.
This was the old fill it with caulking first to give the filler something to back it up. The guy actually spent the time to paint the inside of the rockers, like he was doing a real repair.

Henry the Wonder Dog was not impressed.

 

And your probably not done finding surprises yet.

 

Probably not.

 

He appears to be repulsed by the audacity of the previous owner.


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Nice work Root! Looking forward to seeing it on the road.

 

I will get back on it soon enough. I have a couple of loose ends to tie up before I go whole hawg.

 

I know this is an old post, but i have 1 side pipe if you want it. Price is free, come get it. Don

 

If you haven`t already, I`d kind of think you need to strip the whole car. What else is hiding.

 

I have. The whole car was in bare metal.......except for the rockers. Go figure.

 

So, I built a tent and donned a Tyvek tuxedo. Decided to power wash the bottom side of the car. I figured that since the rear end, fuel tank etc were out of the way, It would be a good time to clean it up and put my signature move on it. Raptor bed liner. I should own stock in this stuff. It makes a huge difference when you have to crawl under it and you don’t have dirt and crusties falling in your eyes. It’s hard to see a lot of difference in the pics, but it is a lot cleaner.

I hit it with a weed blower to help speed up the drying process. I’ll probably wait and spray it tomorrow, make sure it’s dry.

 

This will probably just look like more of the same. Hard to see under here. Pics after Raptor was sprayed.



Now, I can at least get that dang 8.8 out of the floor and stop tripping over it. I stuck my new dropped springs from St. Louis Spring Company up to get them out of the way also.

 

Well, today was semi productive. We put the rear end in and mocked everything up. We installed the supposed 4” dropped springs from St. Louis spring company. (I think the company has changed hands, because I called to ask a question about the springs I bought and the guy was a super prick) The car actually went up an inch.

Now in their defense, the old springs were shot, and we are running a 205/70-15 tire, so that played a part. I had a set of 2.5” blocks laying around, so we tried them. Better, but that just made the car level.

The springs feel pretty good. The ride will be much improved. I may look at a taller block, mama wants a tail dragger.


If you remember, I swapped over the front springs with the Aerostar springs. I am sure the springs will settle a bit, but not enough to keep mama happy. Happy wife, happy life.

Also, for the guys wondering about the Explorer rear end swap, it was perfect. I shortened the one axle, that you can see previously on this thread.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/the-mild-custom-transformation-mamas-55.1119265/page-4
It actually comes out to almost a factory 1955 width. I definitely recommend.

 

Not to defend those springs but the car is partially disassembled so when it’s all together it should come down some.


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