Prepping for paint - Things got out of hand!

Wow....what a job. I'd prepped a bit of stuff for the repaint/refurbish project,  but boy was I in for a shock as to how long it would take and how much work was involved.

So much so that I wasn't able to complete regular blogs on all the work I did. It was not so much that there was too much work to do, it's just that we had a deadline so there wasn't enough time to set aside for the blog.

To give you an idea of how misguided I was with my timing, I thought I'd have the car painted before I went back to work on 18 January. But no, it was finally painted on 13 March and that was after spending every waking hour after work and 12 to 14 hour days on the car for both days of all available weekends.

So in short my estimate was originally 24 days in the holidays, but I needed a further 6 weekends (12 days) and 38 evenings after work (the equivalent of another 12 days).....yep it's what they always say.....when building a hot rod estimate the cost and treble it...estimate the time it will take and double it.

Anyway enough of that, what happened through all this time?

Really it was just a lot of prep, getting things to fit right and look right. The rear guards were a lot of work as I mentioned in my earlier blog, but after all that I still wasn't happy with them. The radius of the opening was too big and it made the car look like the wheels were too small for it. Ugly as.

In addition to that the guards when I bought them, must have laid on their side for a while after coming out of the mould as the sides had caved in. You can see in this picture how my finger is at least 10 mm further in than the top edge of the guard.

So the decision was made to cut the sides off the guards and make new ones that would be flat and not concave, and also would have the right radius. Here is the template I made.

My mate Bill Dobbin kindly made a board with the shape routered into them, that I could use to lay up some new fibreglass sides.

Here is the first one out of the mould.

The old sides were cut off and these new sides bonded on. The opening and side was much better. That said the shape of the outer edge was too square, so I had to attack that too. In effect after doing all this, all that remains now of the original guards I purchased is the mounting flange. 

Anyway following on from that, to get the swage line nice and uniform on the lip of the guard I created this fancy special tool. Its cut from a piece of 3 mm steel and I ground the shape of the swage using the bench grinder. I deliberately ground it one way so that the upper face is smooth but the rear face has a grinding burr on it. This made it perfect to spread the body filler using the smooth face and then once the filler was partly hardened, use the tool in reverse and allow the burr to act like a blade to cut off any high spots. It worked a treat!

Most of the other work I completed was body prep related. Body filler, sanding, filling, sanding filling, priming, sanding, filling, priming, sanding, filling. To be honest if I saw a piece of sand paper right now I'd probably start rocking in a corner somewhere in the foetal position. I have totally had enough.

I had a few issues with paint reactions as I didn't go back to bare steel with the whole car. It was a case of just contending with these bits as they came up. They weren't widespread and I found that if I went easy with the amount of paint I was laying down (not too heavy and wet with thinners) for the most part I was able to avoid any reactions.

I did get there in the end though and while I knew it wasn't perfect it was as good as I could get with my first attempt and given the time pressure I was under. Here it is off to a spray booth that Bill Dobbin kindly organised for me. Man was I glad of that, there is no way I think I'd attempt anything beyond primer in the pop up gazebo or on the driveway. Fine for primer but not for top coat.

This is it just before going in the booth.

Here I am in full swing.

And here she is heading back home. Thanks John Winks for the tow!

Fairly happy with it and love the colour. It goes from Navy Blue in the shade to quite a purple colour (lots of purple pearl) in the half light, and quite blue in full sun.

Once the car was home we still had a lot of finishing to do. In fact there were 104 jobs on the list to do in about 2 days and 9 evenings. Some fairly trivial, like mounting the number plates, while others were pretty full on like repairing, priming, sanding, re-priming, sanding painting clear coating, polishing and installing the window trims.

Thank goodness Janine was able to pitch in and help.

Another part of the re-assembly was to have Jeremy from Bespoke glass, put in the newly cut glass we ordered back in December.

And here we go...ready to go to Beach Hop. Still something like 20 jobs on the list to do, but we can tackle some of these at Beach Hop. It was getting late and we needed to get going to beat the dark as the headlights still weren't even wired.

It was a pretty emotional and proud moment sitting on the drive taking this pic. I am just so happy with the result and more importantly, so is Janine.

As it turned out the daylight was against us and when we got to Drury I made the decision that we would be wise to wire the headlights, so I did that at the BP Service Station. After a bite to eat we hit the road again and made it to Whangamata without any issues.

The next 2 days were spent fitting the bailey channel and getting the windows to go up and down, fitting interior panels and door cards along with power window switches etc.

We then had 2 more days left and we bit the bullet and made the decision to try and get the car wet sanded then cut and polished. Again Janine pitched in and despite us both being completely shattered and sore, we got it finished at 7 pm on the Tuesday night with the first official run of the Beach hop at 8 am the next morning. Talk about cut it fine!

Here it is on Waihi run.

Now to just enjoy it for a while. There are still about 30 jobs to do, but we can chip away at those while we are driving it. I need a nap!

Prepping for Paint - Doors - Part 1

I had the doors refurbished by Steve Simpson at Panel Restorations. They were mostly pretty tidy but a bit of rust was cut out of the bottom and new patch panels welded in.

I also had Steve drill out the hinges and fit new over sized hinge pins as they had flogged out a bit with 60 years of use.

Here is the door with the silver zinc spray added by Steve after he had done his repairs.

You can see here the repaired corner

This is the new over sized hinge pin ready to be driven home after the car is painted and I have finished taking things off and on.

The first major change I'll be making is to install a power window kit in lieu of the old wind up windows. I am also putting in new channels. I have chosen to buy the stainless edged channel, just because I think it looks a bit better. I purchased this from Basis in Renwick. Make sure when you buy channel that the exterior width will fit in the channels in the doors and that the internal channel will take the thickness of glass you are intending to use. Also a word of caution.....if you need to bend the channel to fit, make sure you get bendable channel. There are rigid channels also available for cars that have straight window runners. It's cheaper but don't be fooled into thinking you can bend it with any success. You can't! Pay the extra and get the right stuff.

Firstly I fed the end of the channel down into the door through the window opening.

I then located the bottom end into the retaining clip at the end of the channel.

Then it's just a case of working the channel into the curves, up and over the top of the door frame. Really take your time when bending the channel, do it gradually and slowly by massaging the channel to the desired curve. If you try and bend it too quickly or in one movement, you are likely to have the channel pinch and buckle. Just take the time and be patient.

Before you go too far, pass the other end in through the window opening.

Then ease everything into place.

Once I had everything in place I taped the bailey channel to ensure nothing moved before going ahead and fastening it. 

I then went back to the start and drilled a small hole through the channel and into the door.

I used stainless screws to fasten the bailey channel to the door. Again start at one end and work your way around.

Now to mount the power window set up. I used a Dolphin brand kit from the States. These are really nice and flat so fit nicely in the narrow doors of older cars. I have used units from an 80's Ford Laser in the past in a 34 Coupe, but even these wouldn't fit in the Pop doors.

I was pretty pleased with the Dolphin kit. It comes with everything you need to plug and play.

Here is the unit sitting in place. 

Note the centreline I have marked for the centre of the glass. It's important the power window unit is centred and vertical or the window won't run up and down nicely.

I made a frame from angle iron so that I'd have some strength there. I cut away sections to fit over the existing door brace.

Here it is in place and you can see it will pick up the 3 mount points on the Dolphin unit as well as bolt to the door itself.

Here it is bolted in place. When I mount it for the last time I will get hold of some countersunk head bolts so that everything is nice and flush and won't interfere with the fit of the door card.

Lastly I used the strap supplied to secure the motor unit to the door edge.

Should all be good to go now. The only thing I'll need to do now is maybe pack the mount points away a bit from the angle iron frame I made, to fine tune things and ensure it all lines up with the glass. I will do this later when I am installing the new glass.

Prepping for Paint - Widening Rear Guards - Part 2

The next stage after cutting the guards in half....straight down the middle....and widening them by adding in extra fibreglass, is to fill, sand, fill, sand and prime so I have a nice finish for paint.

As you can see here I have spread body filler over the new fibreglass. Body filler is in fact resin with powdered fiberglass in it to make a spreadable filler that bonds really well to raw fibreglass.

I sanded it roughly to shape and then spread a guide coat over that. A guide coat is used to cover the entire area, then as you sand the guide coat disappears (is sanded off) wherever the sandpaper is making contact. Obviously if the guide coat remains you either haven't sanded that bit or its a low spot that needs filling. The guide coat can be a spray on paint or as I have used below a dry powder that you rub on with a sponge pad.

You can see here after sanding I still have lots of low spots.

I did a bit more filling, guide coating and sanding then once I had things looking reasonable I primed the guards.

I used a PPG primer. Note the spray gun stand. These are really handy and help stop you getting in a mess by trying to hold the gun and pour paint one handed. A small investment that makes life a lot easier.

The mixing cups are essential too to mix primer and thinners. This should then be run through a filter into the gun. ALWAYS FILTER the paint.

Here we are ready to go.

Once primed there were still some low spots that required filling so these were touched up with a bit more filler. I guess a pro would have these right by now but this is the first time I have given anything like this a go, so yeah a bit more time involved but I'm getting there.

Another tip when sanding compound curves is these flexible sanding blocks. Sanding large areas with a piece of sandpaper by hand wont get the desired result. Your finger tips just follow the indentations/hollows and its near impossible to get a nice ripple free, hollow free finish.

As I do a lot....I asked around at a panel shop and a car painters supply store to see if there were any tricks or tips to sanding a compound curve (a panel that is curved both front to back and side to side). Its important to ask as there are often many little tips and tricks that can save you a whole lot of time and effort if only you bothered to ask. Even asking your fellow hot rodding mates can bring up new ideas and ways of doing things that you hadn't thought of.

With these blocks you can use a self adhesive backed sandpaper. Another example of something I'd never heard of before.

The blocks themselves flex (particularly the smaller ones) and follow the shape of the panels curve, but as you can imagine, when used with sandpaper, these will knock the tops off any high spots but not fall into any low spots. Bam! Nice curves!

What you do is you lay your strip of adhesive backed sandpaper on the curve you are going to sand, then press the block onto it. There you have it the adhesive sandpaper holds the block to that shape. This made life much easier and as an amateur, even I was able to get what I thought was a reasonable result.

After much more sanding an filling, I was able to finally prime and fit the guards. Here they are fitted up with tail lights and all!

I'm pretty happy with the result. They still have a couple of blemishes but a decent coat of primer filler and final sand will deal with those before paint.