Projects DRAG SNAKE "Vintage Terror!"

Well boys and girls. As they say: "Lord willing and the creek don't rise" we are squirting some color tomorrow!

Sent from my SM-G970U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Gold ?


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Gold is not in my top 10 color list,but white is always a good choice for a base color to build from. And having been a fan of custom paint for over 50 years and a custom painter for almost 50 years. I can tell you one thing is certain. You never no if a concept is going to work un till the last tape line is pulled! But the main thing is we are going to see PAINT!!!! I love this build! Larry

 

Nope...first layer. My favorite Ford color if all time. Good Ole Wimbledon White!

Sent from my SM-G970U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

I love the Ford COE car haulers. And I agree with you that the quad headlight years look the best. Here are a few images I have saved over the years. The cars may be too new but the haulers certainly are not.

 

Sent from my SM-G970U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Ya know, if I were your dad, I'd finish up the lil Cobra too. Make YOU do he Cabover!

 

You boys remember last night when I mentioned the creek rising? Well she got pretty deep around here today and I was getting fairly worried for a while. But we finally managed to pull it off and tonight the Cobra is a very nice shade of Wimbledon White...just as planned.

We started off this morning with Dad wanting to make a few quick final touch ups to a body work areas. He said it might take him an hour on the outside. So my daughter and I started getting the shop ready. I had 25' rolls of plastic drop cloths that were 10' wide. We cleaned and swept the shop and then stapled the plastic to the wall on one side and the top of the lift on the other. We stretched a string across the back third of the shop from the wall to the lift and before we long we a very nice temporary paint booth well underway.

We zipped tied more of the plastic to the garage door and then opened it up to about 9 feet and secured both sides to the plastic already in place. With the Cobra sitting just outside in the morning shade we waterdown and cleaned the floor really good. Then we put the big shop fan in the door blowing out and set about helping Dad. We had already decided to start with the trunk and hood. The trunk needed the inside or underside painted as well so that was the plan. Get the gun all adjusted and tested on the inside of the trunk then paint the outside of it and then hood and then the car.


We had to work over the hood scoop quite a bit and in that process we lost several of the holes we used to poprivot the stupid thing to the hood. Last week using the few remaining holes and the inner aluminum hood panel, we carefully redrilled them. So I decided while Dad finished up his body work, I would go ahead and carefully reinstall the scoop. I have no idea what or how it happened but several of the holes did not line up not to mention I only had 2 rivots left in the box with .5" grip.

No problem right, just hit the autoparts store real quick. Well believe it or not they didn't have any, nor did Lowes or the local farm and home store etc. So I had to go to Springfield to get some. By the time I got back Dad was ready to roll the car into our plastic booth. We decided to take a few minutes and get the hood ready so we could shoot it and trunk as planned. However it is still being a total pain in the backside. The rivots are not pulling down like they should. Not breaking when and how they should. I start to chalk it up to cheap rivots (which they were not!) until I thought of something...air preassure.

Dad had been playing with the regulator on the Devilbiss dryer and his gun trying to get the right balance etc. AND that didn't leave me enough pressure for the rivot gun. It was a mess, we had to carefully drill out a bunch of half baked rivot attempts and start again. Of course in the process I screwed up the body work. Nothing serious but we would have to touch it up a bit and I am not happy at all about it. Suddenly in all this mayhem, there is loud a crash. We had bumped the table that we had been working on out under a tent. The trunk which was obviously, perilously perched on the other end of the same table fell off and actually bounced and did a sort of a cart wheel before coming to rest upside down on the driveway! What are you going do...right? Laugh or cry! LMAO!

So for what Dad claims is about the 15th time, he starts working on the trunk again! While he is at that, my daughter and I wash down the Cobra really well, then push it in side, put it on jackstands and set bout removing the wheels. After that we began the a full on masking job of the entire car. I don't know how long that took but it was well into the afternoon before it was finally ready and we broke for a very late lunch.

By about 5 p.m. we have not even tacked the car down but we are close. Dad gets suited up and I mix the paint and thinner and stir well. We have the 1.3 tip in the gun and pressure set at about 10 pounds or so and Dad shoots the underside of the trunk. It is hard to tell anything as it is mostly unfinished fiberglass that will later be carpeted but it seems to go on pretty well. I asked him what he thought and said he was not sure, it felt pretty good so he decided to shoot the hood that was set up just to the right of the trunk. We promptly oranged peeled and pinholed the holy hell out it. LOL.

After playing around a bit, I found the 1.3 tip in the 1.8 plastic container so you guessed it, the 1.8 was in the gun! So that will not work at all. After getting the correct tip in the gun and upping the air pressure a bit, we finally got it to spray nicely. It took the better part of day but the I am really happy with the results. Eitherway, she is Wimbledon White! AND I love it....








We have a few minor over spay areas, nothing we didn't expect with such a swoopy car, not to mention having the roll cage in the way etc. But we have plenty of paint on it so should be no issue buffing it out a bit. It sure is good to see her one solid color again. It has been a long time coming. I am pretty excited to get her out in the sun tomorrow. Not sure if we will have any here but you never know.

 

What an exciting update! I'm all in for the new paint choice. Now the question is, what shade of gold are you going to use for the accents? Yellow-ish or tan-ish? Is there a factory color of some kind you're going after?

 

Looks good from what I can see, big hurtle jumped and off the list

 

What a day
Car looks great!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

You should get the HAMB Medal of Honour!! Dad too.

 

PAINT!!!!!!

 

Man I sure dig the Wimbledon White. It has always been one of my favorite colors. It is certainly a good feeling to have it one solid color again and on the ground. We caught a little sunshine yesterday. Since we did not bake it or anything we are going to let her set for the week and catch as much sun as Mother Nature will provide. Then hopefully by the weekend we can get back in there and do a bit of 1500 wet sanding and buffing etc.

Dad did a killer job on the car, there is very little to no orange peel at all. But being such a swoopy car we have a bit of over spray here and there and of course we have some dust specs. We did a good job of cleaning the shop, hanging plastic and wetting the floor etc. to keep it to a minimum. But it is hard even in a killer spray booth to be 100 percent. I think we can make quick work of it and move on the next stage.

 

Looks good, did you paint the top too?

 

The car looks fantastic! I love the look with the slicks sticking out past the fenders - it looks like a real bruiser.

 

So here we go with something fun. I need it! The whole paint thing this weekend just about stressed us out to no end. Long story but it was crazy enough running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to put the final prep on the crazy thing. Let alone trying to prep the shop at the same time etc.

Now I have never pulled any punches here on these builds, if we jack something up, even it was a bone head move, I report it. Pretending something didn't happen to simply save face doesn't help the next guy that might make the same mistake etc. Sunday afternoon I thought we were staring into one big ass bone head situation. I have bought a lot of paint over the years. All of it PPG and we have a great rep here in town. He has been doing this for over 30 years. I trust him implicitly.

A month or so ago when we started putting the final plans of the build together before paint, I hit him up about a good single stage option. After talking about what we were doing etc. he said man if it were me I would shoot it with our Shopline JE Acrylic. It is very cost effective and good paint. I said done. I gave him the color and he said he would get a little kit put together for me etc. When I picked it up there was no data sheet with it (it may have blown away). With all the covid craziness, I paid with a credit card and it was sitting in a box on the sidewalk outside the front door when I arrived. I called to ask about mixing it, my guy was at lunch but the other counter guy said no problem, 4 to 1 and shoot it.

That is exactly what we did. In fact I remember Dad confirming four to one from behind the plastic. I said yes. I said make it easy on yourself. There are two quarts of paint there so just mix two cups in with it and lets go. Now, Sunday afternoon comes and we are removing the masking etc. and contemplating the next step. I decided to go online and see how long other folks have waited etc. before doing any wet sanding, cutting or buffing. The first thing I read just about made me vomit.

Google says, depending upon the temperature it was when painted, the kind of acrylic and the kind of hardener used it could be workable as quickly as 24 hours. The "choke" word there was hardener. I sort of had it in my brain that acrylic didn't need a hardner and since my guy from PPG didn't say anything about it, I never gave it another thought (until that moment). You know we had been so crazy busy getting ready and jumping through hoops that I simply did not slow down long enough to have any lucid thoughts about what we were spraying.

But now the deed is done. The paint is on there and to be honest it looks really good and seems hard enough to the touch etc. However the internet has a different story. I am getting everything from 90 days to 2 years to NEVER actually curing completely without some kind of catalyst. I am like a guy having chest pains and using Google to diagnose a heart attack! Trust me, it was not pretty! LOL

We spent several hours pouring through the internet and pondering if we would have to scrape off all the Wimbledon white and start again. I mean it was obviously too hard to simply scrape it off and if the internet is right, too soft to sand it off! It appeared for all practical purposes to be a complete debacle. There were a few issues with the trunk lid (all stemming from its humpty dumpty antics the day before. We decided since it would have to be addressed anyway we had nothing to lose by breaking into its surface. It took some doing but we managed to basically scrape all the paint off (not to mention a good bit of previous body work etc.). Certainly not something I was looking forward to doing to the entire car!

Other than that and calling a few friends that might be in the know etc. we stopped right there. Shoved the car back in the shop and found other things to occupy our hands and minds until I could call my guy this morning. There is good news. Many Industrial Acrylics do take tons of time to dry and some actually never do fully cure etc. But that is not the case with what we sprayed. Sure a hardner would have been nice, it would have certainly got us to the next step much quicker. Not to mention it would have been a harder shine and it durability better. But we are not talking about 90 days or anything. My guy said just a few days and we can go forward without concern. We had already planned all week and hopefully catch some some etc. He said that was perfect.

So we are breathing again. BUT BACK TO OUR COLOR PALETTE!


So the blue is what we had originally planned when we were headed for the only Wimbledon White showing on the car to be a set of stripes down the middle. AND the gold is what we switched to after going with more of a vintage panel look on the sides of the car. I will be honest with you, I am still having trouble deciding. I wish you could see these two colors in person, the photograph above simple does not do either one of them justice. They are both amazing. AND last night I actually comped the car with the same panel layout but put the blue inplace of the gold and it looked awesome too!

SO believe it or not, what I have decide to do is both! Same graphics on both sides with Gold Florentine Leafed letters but the background panels will be the blue on one side and the Gold on the other. Then just for the hell of it we will have a blue and gold hood stripe (blue on the blue side and gold on the gold side). Not the standard 8" stripes but much smaller, the combo just as wide as the hood scoop.

I have to tell you, I am really excited about it again. I can just see a racer back then doing this sort of thing. Depending upon which side of the strip you are on, you have a different look to the car! Both amazing and both extremely fast. I was texting with James @saltflats the other night and he jokingly asked if we were building a show car or a race car? I told him both. When we are at the track, I want folks in the stands to say they can not believe we drive that beautiful car so damn hard! LOL!

 

Nope it is finished as a black vinyl top.





Sent from my SM-G970U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

There used to be a Road Runner around here that from the front was white with black stripes, from the rear it was black with white stripes. From the side, it was black, with about 2” from the top of the front fender to where it turned up at the back of the rear side glass.

Just throwing that out if you want to use all the colors on it, might look better than one side one color and the other something else....

 

My alignment guy is a famous racer around these parts and beyond. He is a die hard Ford guy and his killer 65 Fastback Mustang is red on one side and white on the other with a red and white stripe respectively down the middle. I love it. I think there is a shot of in here back a few pages when the Cobra was on his alignment wrack. (edit: Yep...Post 2027)

 

She's been out catching some rays all day!







Sent from my SM-G970U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Damn that is a good looking MGA! LoL

Can't wait to see this one finished although I do not look forward to this thread ending.

 

He has a couple years of sorting it out at the track to go thru before this thread ends.

 

The main thing is Randall never changes things mid build! lol As a Ford guy it is my second favorite color the,first being Henry's BLACK! love this build!! Larry

 

Yep...we will be around a while longer. Lol
Saying that, I just noticed the our post count on this thread...approaching 2400. That is already 600 more than Dragnasty and we have not even been to the track yet!

Sent from my SM-G970U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Guess I better get the Willy’s ready so I can blow this off the track just like I did the Austin lmao mokan opened tonight for tnt


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Must be about time to unveil the next project.

 

Jackson I think you should feel fortunate the Willy's has no paint on it! LMAO!