Hot Rods Getting the bugs out -My T coupe build

Looking really good! On the downhill stretch now...

 

We used to push this one about 4 blocks to my friend's grandma's garage between work sessions at mine. Even put my kids to work pushing.

 

Just found this thread. I dig the car and the Kubota orange is a neat idea

 

Great picture Rich. Very much like what happened today only I wasn't taking pictures as I was busy pushing. I have great neighbors. Asked Virgil for help and he was right there. Also helps to have a smart wife who clues me in on a short cut to take through another neighbor's yard. Now to get the garage sorted out so that I can work on the body.

 

Wok, stove in garage, step stool. All signs to an Asian cook in the house?

 

Tman, you are very observant.

 

I like your engine hoist chain mounts. Thats a great idea on how to get around damaging the valve covers or carbs. Im gonna make some of my own. Thanks for posting it.

 

Now that I have made room in the garage to work on the body, I haven't a clue to what I'm doing. Earlier, I mentioned the trouble I've had painting the frame and with winter coming on soon, the obstacles increase. My compressor isn't adequate nor my turbine spray setup. Then there is the temporary spray booth problem, respirator, plus the fact that paint fumes are volatile with my gas furnace. Also, I had just taken my nerf bars to the platers and my exhaust system to get ceramic coated. It looks like expenses keep piling up. How do poor guys pull it off? Can't count on the lottery since I'm too cheap to buy a ticket. I called up a friend who is a bodywork wizard for advice.
He suggested that first I paint the inside of the body and floor with epoxy primer using a brush but first I had to mask off the outside of the body so that I don't get paint runs all over it. This is what I did today and the masking off the body was definitely a good idea since the epoxy primer is made for spraying and not as thick as material made for brushing. After that, I paint this again with a top coat, not just primer. Since it is on a rotisserie, I do the same thing on the bottom side of the floor next; again with a brush but use a black epoxy primer and top coat so that if I miss anything with the box liner next, that it wouldn't show. When I finally get to the primer surfacer stage on the outside of the body to first give a coat of gray primer before black primer surfacer to warn me when I break through during block sanding to go no further.
This might take me a while. I am open to other advice from you guys.

 

Yesterday we started getting the first sprinkling of snow so I was anxious to get something done before I needed to start up the furnace in the garage. The epoxy primer has been brushed on the inside of the cab for a few days now. Too cheap to go out and buy paint so time to get creative. I remembered that I was given this blue metallic paint for free a while back and figured that the price was right. On the can it says that the paint is good for two years after its manufactured date. I've had it for way over two years and who knows how old it was then? Good enough for me. Brushed it on. I see that 12 year old Vince Harms wants to be the new Larry Watson. I'm trying for Jackson Pollock with my technique. There is also a thread in praise of Washington Blue. I'm in for Free Blue. After putting some on, I think that maybe this would have been a good color for the car in the first place. Well too late now.

 

I was considering blue metallic on my build but decided for another color to.
The reason was that i know 3 or 4 other nice looking coupes that is blue.
How much i like blue there sure must be other colors that look good to.

 

Not much slips past me

"Free Blue" I like the sound of it

 

Not a lot has happened. The snow finally came and as usual, I'm having trouble getting the pilot light in the furnace to stay lit. I shut it off in the spring - as if the cost of running a pilot light would bankrupt me. Right now I'm working in a cold garage until it warms up enough for me to deal with it. Got a call from Alberta Plating that my nerf bars were ready so I made the trip to Calgary to pick them up along with my ceramic coated exhaust pipes. When I took my nerf bars in, the chrome shop told me that since I had holes in them for my license plate light that the chemicals would get inside and create problems for copper plating so they would have to drill holes for drainage and go straight to nickel. So of course, I wondered how good this would work. I couldn't very well criticize them for poor work later due to my poor work in the first place. I am pleased to say that they did a god job. The coating on the exhaust looks good too. Initially I had the headers coated in flat black but that company stopped doing ceramic coating to concentrate on powder coating. This time around, I went to a nice shiny silver. Looks a lot better. Installed the exhaust parts in the front garage where the pilot light is out also.

 

Free Blue is a nice shade. Like it. Blue n Orange? ??? [Forgot to add: Kinda a Gulf Oil racing theme tie-in? . Not too late for a color change... . ].
Jackson Pollock ??? Trying to beat Jake n his decoupage' deal? .
Will be a nice hot rod.
Marcus...

 

Got around to painting the underside of the floor in blue since that is what I have. None of the blue should be visible on the finished car unless you look at the underside. First thing to do was to try and adjust the rotisserie so that the body can be completely upside down. Been a bit leery of doing this since the body is bottom heavy and raising the pivot point could cause me grief when the heavy side comes around but everything worked out. My worn out brake rotor locking device works well. The rotisserie has been a great thing to have but I would be concerned if it was a heavier car. Making a stronger one the second time around should be a piece of cake. BTW, blue and orange are Edmonton Oiler's colors; not that I'm a hockey fan.

 

Seems that I've come full circle. When I first got involved with cars, I would jack them up with a bumper jack and set the car on cinder blocks. Now I find myself jacking the body up with 4 scissors jacks on plastic milk crates. The idea is to get it off the rotisserie so that I can paint the areas that were under the rotisserie mounts - Achille"s Heel sort of thing. A bit daunting trying to hold everything up without it crashing down on me. No way was I about to attempt painting it with it supported like that. Tried getting the cherry picker in there to hold up the back end but there was interference with the rotisserie. Got the back end up on sawhorse and I'm still alive to tell the story. After I touch up the unpainted areas, I will make the borrowed body cart fitted properly to the body so that I can finish the bodywork and paint stage. If I come up with some money, I will seriously consider buying a lift even though I have a 8' ceiling in the garage.

 

While it was up on sawhorses, I touched up the areas that I couldn't paint with it on the rotisserie. I mixed the paint in those one pint mixing cups from the paint store in the smallest amount that I could find on the graduated scale on the side and of course that was way too much paint. I watched "Trev's Blog" on youtube where he showed how to mix up way smaller batches of paint by weighing the paint on a kitchen scale and doing the math. I bought a digital kitchen scale online and was pleasantly surprised by how affordable they are. Since my orange paint is mixed 3:1, I mixed up paint with 30ml of paint to 10ml hardener in a single serving yogurt cup and touched up the front frame horns and my rear crossmember where the trailer hitch goes. Went into the house for an hour and came back out for another coat of paint and found out that the yogurt cup was a bad idea. The paint melts the plastic so I was frantically looking in the garage for any empty container to dump the paint into. Good thing I keep old coffee jars handy. Tomorrow I'll probably find a melted coffee jar so into the trash can it goes after I'm done.

 

I have been following Groovy's "United Pacific 5W Deuce Build" and figure if he can paint outside in sub zero conditions, I'm up for it too. Only problem being since I moved the chassis into the front garage, the car previously in the front garage now takes residence in front of the rear garage where I'm working so today, I mounted winter tires on it or else it will be game over when the car moves into the alley with the ice there. That's my painting space. Been thinking over how to mask off the insides of the car so that I can get the epoxy primer on the body. I realize that there is controversy over whether or not you do the body filler before or after the epoxy primer, but since you aren't supposed to sand the epoxy, I went for the body filler first approach. I really don't know what I'm doing so I won't be offended by criticism here. I'm masking off all the areas I brush painted blue so that I don't get dust all over the body when I spray. I purchased a roll of that plastic masking film and when I used it while painting the frame, I couldn't even figure out how to take it out of the box properly - trying to find the end of the roll to start it. Think I got that backwards. It is also folded over in the roll. Anyhow, since I have a lot of open space to try and cover, I didn't even try to use that stuff. I started inside the trunk with a foot wide roll of paper and it was floppy all over on the top edge where there was nothing to tape to. Went to my shed with my gardening supplies and found a piece of wood lath that I normally use for supporting my beanstalks and taped the paper to that; something stiff. I then had an eureka moment - cardboard box - now that is stiff enough to hold its shape. Think I'm onto something.

 

I want to have etch primer before filler for rustprotection.
But most fillers recomend clean sheetmetal for best application.
I have seen paintjobs made both way that had lasted over time.

 

Back at it again. I haven't been documenting the painting outside because it sure gets dark quick in the wintertime. Where I live, there is also the problem of the chinook wind blowing from the mountains. It finally got to where I felt it was calm enough, I started painting and it began to snow. Now that spring is almost here, the days are longer and I dragged the parts outside again to paint. I really hate sanding.

 

I've started painting some of the various small parts so that I can begin putting this car together. I made a 90 degree master cylinder mount that mounts behind the firewall so here's a picture. I started off with a pedal assembly from a '84 Toyota Vanwagon because they mount behind the firewall but it placed the master cylinder in the wrong place. The bellcrank is made up from another Japanese small car brake pedal assembly mounted sideways with another arm added to make it do the 90 degree swing with a bunch of 3/8" heim ends. When I looked at the size of the wheel cylinders on my '58 Buick brakes, I upgraded my master cylinder with a 1" bore master cylinder from a larger Toyota van that isn't available in Canada. The brake fluid reservoir is something I made from sheet metal. It is filled through the cowl vent along with a windshield washer bottle. Hopefully, it is mounted for the last time.

 

Nice work. Your getting there.

 

Looks good, maybe you can get to drive it this fall. ?
I know my own build was kind of slow
I missed plenty of planned deadlines by years

 

The things I do because I'm too stubborn to save up money for a decent air compressor. The turbine paint gun didn't work well and I didn't want to upgrade that system so my latest brainwave was to purchase a little LVLP spray gun from Princess Auto. That's low volume, low pressure; guys. Anyhow, these things are supposed to work with a small compressor. So far, it seems to work better than the other poor decisions I've made so I have a larger one on order. The little things are getting paint.

 

Paint looks good!

 

The few guys that are actually viewing this build may have noticed the cart that the body is bolted to. I have determined that with it mounted there, it is just about impossible to get good paint coverage on the bottom edge of the body if I attempt spraying there. Here is the solution I came up with. I mixed up 50 ml. of the orange paint and did the paint ratio by measuring this on an electronic kitchen scale. I measured how much 250ml of paint weighed along with 250ml of the hardener and did the math. Pouring the correct amount into the cup was a bit sketchy. From there, I unbolted the body from the cart so that I had enough room to paint and went at it with a foam brush from the dollar store. I'm getting closer to the dreaded paint the body stage but with winter looming, I had better get serious.

 

Finally got some paint on the body. My problem is that I'm just too cheap to do things the right way - I mean buying a bigger compressor. I tried the turbine paint sprayer and that didn't get around the problem and at this point I wasn't going to go further down that rabbit hole by getting a larger turbine system either. So therefore, I did the next dumb move. I went and purchased a cheap LVLP spray gun from China. At this point, God gave me a break. The thing actually works pretty good. I still have to paint the doors and hood and other small stuff, but I can start assembling things and clear up some of this mess in the garage.

 

Today I finally managed to return the chassis from the front garage to the rear garage to reunite it with the body. Difference is my next door neighbor's grandson took away his trailer and this resulted in a much shorter path to get around back. Dropped the body back in place and I managed to pull it off before winter rears its ugly head. This means that I might be updating this thread more often.

 

Looks good.

 

Now that I'm putting the car back together, I will try to show the little details. The nerf bars were made to emulate the ones on Roth's Tweedy Pie and Outlaw. After making them, I had to figure out how to mount them. I tried to get the parking and tail lights centered in the nerf bar holes. The front lights are from Ron Francis and they have the wires running through the mounting nut. To attach them, it was necessary to make a wrench from a deep socket. Took a bit of thinking to figure out how to mount the rear bar since I didn't want ugly bars sticking through the rear pan. Ended up mounting it to the trailer hitch but that tended to rock a bit. That U bolt thing is something I bought from Amazon to cure that.

 

In a previous post, I showed my under dash master cylinder setup. With this behind the firewall, I need some sort of bulkhead connector to run the lines to the chassis but I didn't find anything available so I made my own. On the first one, I used one of those brake line splice things that you need if the brake line isn't long enough. Since this is brass and the little plate I attached it to is steel, I silver soldered the pieces together. On the other one, I needed to add a residual pressure valve, so I included that at the firewall connection and used a 1/8" NPT elbow instead. There are 10-32 threaded holes in these plates to screw them to the firewall