Projects Saving a 54 Mercury Custom 2 Door Sedan Build Thread

A quote from and old HAMB post on this subject,

From body school in the 60s. Grounding the chassis will help reduce the amount of overspray by minimising the static charges that build up in the paint and the body. Airflow through the hose makes a static charge that is transfered to the body via the paint spray. Subsequent coats are repeled by the static charge induced by the previous coat causing increased overspray as lighter particles do not go the the surface.
When spraying lacqueres the reduced overspray was very evident as was the reduced dusting on the painted surface. It also seemed to polish out quicker. On Enamels the reduction was noticable, but the main thing was orange peel just didn't happen. My experience.
We did some applied static painting. Practically 0 overspray but it also attracted dust, dandruff, hair, thread from clothes, bugs and small animals.

As to all of that thoroughness Texas57. It seems like we are always finding things we missed even though we thought we had fixed everything earlier. Art some point you just have to say it's not a Riddler contender and move on.....

Yes, those soft sanders have been very useful! Well worth the expense.

 

Thanks. I knew it was a dumb question......


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I didn't think it was a dumb question. Not everyone agrees on it's effectiveness ,and many do not do it.

 

We have been busy with paint prep since my last post. I have been working on some side projects too. Today I will cover the repair of the steering wheel. Nothing new here but i will cover it anyway since it is an important part of the car.
Dons' wheel had several cracks and since I had always wanted to try restoring a stock steering wheel I studied up on how to do it and dove in.

The wheel was cracked in several places. The cracks at the base of the horizontal cross bar were the worst. I used the dremel tool to gouge out the cracked plastic.

The material we chose to use was PC-7. we were able to buy it at the local Ace Hardware Store. The PC-7 mixed into paste form. I was able to glob it onto the wheel. Not too much fun to work with.

The material stayed where placed. I was surprised to find that it took a full 48 hours to cure,

I used this round file (fairly course) to rough out the filler.

I used 80 , 220,360 and 400 grit to finish the PC-7. To fill some of the low spots I used some body filler. It took 3 or 4 trys to get it ready for primer.

Don applied a sealer primer and then filler primer.

I made this jig to hold the wheel.

Cracks are gone. I don't know for how long but it looks good for now.


I found a few little nicks or indentations on the face of the wheel. Rather than use body putty to fill them I tried mixing a little bit of filler primer. I then blobbed it on with a small brush. I first sanded it down to the tape. Then I removed the tape and finished sanding the primer down to the contour. It worked great. I don't know f it was the right way to do it but it worked better than using finishing putty and more primer.

We will wait to paint the wheel until the main body is done.

 

I've used Superglue and baking soda to fix stuff like this; I've even reconstructed a few parts. Get wherever you're trying to fill/repair spotlessly clean, then heavily wet it with Superglue. Apply baking soda over it until it dries (almost instantly). Repeat until built enough to work or filled. Rough-shape with a file, then follow up with paper. No waiting for the epoxy to dry..... Don't glue your fingers together... LOL

 

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I have never heard of that technique Steve. I will have to try that some day. How do you contain the super glue while it sets up?

 

What does the baking soda do?

 

Nice tech, Sam. I have been looking for repairable wheels for the truck and was hesitant about doing the repairs. How are you doing on the painting prep?


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Paint prep is proven to be very time consuming as we continue to learn the art of painting.
We took the spark plug wire holder bracket off of these brand new valve covers the other day before painting them.

The cowl needed a little wet sanding and buffing to smooth some small runs.

The masking technique we used on the door jambs didn't work quite as planned so we had to carefully wet sand with 360 and 600 paper to fine tune the edges.

We will be mounting the trunk lid and start painting the doors door jamb area today.
We will soon be trying to paint the white part of the two tone in these jamb areas. That should be interesting.

We have also been distracted by the job of prepping my other dirt floored shop bay for a new floor.

We installed some hydronic heat plumbing.
Some insulation was used and #4 rebar 24" on center.

We are finally ready for the concrete guys to do their thing. They should be here next week to do the pour.The bay is 26 x 30'. It has always been a dirty catch all for parts and mostly stuff I should have gotten rid of many years ago. I started clening it up last fall and hauled many tons of stuff away to get it ready for this project. My hope is to have this area kept very clean and tidy for parking the finished cars....but we all know how that goes.....

Don has also been wiring his Grandson's 50 Ford pickup the last couple of weeks. The young man has been very hands on in the building of his truck. It has been fun watching his whole family work on the project. He just turned 16 and is very anxious to get it on the road.

 

I had to chuckle at the comment “ stuff that I should have gotten rid of years ago “ as I’ve been doing the same. Besides, it’s better than sanding.
Keep it up; you guys are a force.


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You usually don't have to 'contain' it; just wet-coat the area you're filling/repairing with the glue, then cover the wet glue with baking soda. I've found that it's sometimes helpful to 'pack' the soda in with a small stick. It dries instantly. Repeat until it's built-up enough to file/sand to shape. It's better to do multiple thin coats rather than thick coats. If I'm filling a hole, I'll back the hole with masking tape, then remove the tape after it's filled. The toughest repair I ever did with it was a plastic motorcycle side cover that had a plastic tab that stuck out with a 'hook' on the end of it that engaged into a 'lock' to retain the cover. Someone broke the hook completely off the end, I built it up with the glue/soda mix (basically a 'glob' on the end of the tab) then filed it to shape. The finished repair worked just like a new piece. Sometimes I'll 'reinforce' the repair on the back side by adding a layer over/around the repair.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but it really works. As long as the glue 'bonds' with whatever you're repairing, it works great. But you do need to test to make sure it does bond, as Superglue doesn't stick well to some plastics; nylon and polyethylene are two that I've had issues with. The glue as 'binder' and the soda as 'filler' forms a tough, hard 'plastic' that bonds extremely well. Some will even use the 'dust' from grinding/filing the to-be-repaired part as the filler for the final coats. No waiting multiple days for the epoxy to cure, then wondering if it will shrink over time. While I haven't personally (yet) repaired a steering wheel, I know guys who have with so-far great results.

 

We worked on the trunk today.

Made some paper patterns for the dyna mat.


Transferred the paper to the dynamat.

The tape was for match or alignment marks so we could place the dynamat where it needs to be.


Finished

Trunk is ready for the lid.

 

What a great thread. Its a fun one to follow along with. Ive learned a few things as well. Thanks for sharing!

 

that is VERY great knowledge!!never would have thought....-thanks!!

 

As usual you guys are doing a terrific job, and inspire the rest of us to try harder. I noticed your radiant hydronic system, what type of foam is that? Haven't seen that before.

 

Thanks for the compliment daleeric! The insulation is by NUDURA. I have included a link to a PDF that explain how to install it. It was pretty easy to install. It was like working with giant flat lego pieces.It took quite awhile to get the dirt floor flat and level enough to install it. I bought it from a company in Ellensburg WA.



file:///C:/Users/Sam/Documents/North%20Shop%20Projects/hydrofoam-information-sheet.pdf

 

I've actually done this for two of my bikes. It can be brittle and break off, but I just rebuild it with the super glue and baking soda dremel to trim to fit. It works. Use gloves! Super glue works the best on skin!

 

Medical grade in the ERs.

 

Here is a fun project I did a few weeks ago for the Mercury.

I was rooting around in my shelves looking for something else and came across this old oil bath that had been on my 40 coupe when I got it. Since Don is wanting a very stock appearing engine with no chrome or polished stuff I thought this would be an excellent candidate for an air cleaner for the Merc.

I was amazed at how complex this filter was. The amount of engineering required and the expense of all of the steel stamping required to make one of these filters had to make them very expensive to make.



So I started cutting the filter apart. It was like an autopsy for me as I was very curious about the construction of this thing. My intent by the way is to convert this oil bath into a new air filter cap for paper filters.

I used my trusty dremel tool to slowly cut this thing apart.

This is the aftermarket filter base used for a pattern of the cut required.

As you can see this filter was used on a stromberg 2 barrel .

I thought I would just cut the bottom out and remove it. I was wrong.

I cut the inside of the circle out. Did I mention oil yet? Oil every where!


Another cut reveals another chamber. Some of these chambers you would never be able to get cleaned out.

Finally after several hours of cutting and lots of oil clean up I got to the final rim .I left some tabs thinking I would be able to use them in the welding process (for the lid).

You can see the three tabs in this picture.



I was going to weld the lid on with the three tabs but it was too hard to get the mig welder in there and still see what I was doing so we went to plan B.

I decided to use this epoxy to glue the lid to the filter body.

After bead blasting the the filter body and lid .The lid was carefully centered on the body and the seams taped. The all thread and stick held the lid tight to the body.

I used two tubes of the epoxy which was applied into the seam.

The epoxy worked great.

The next step was to build a simple jig to hold the filter for the needed body work and paint.

The jig allowed me to work on the filter housing in the flat or 90 degree position.

Some dent removal and filler was required. The bottom section of the filter had a lot of stretch marks or fretting from the pressing process.

After a lot of sanding I still had a couple of small holes so I mixed up some sanding primer and filled the taped off hole.

When I removed the tape I had this small raised section I could sand off. This seems to work well for small holes. You do not have to paint and sand the whole piece this way.

Finally it was painted the same color as the body of the car.

A trial fit on the motor indicates the desired look.

It was a lot of work for a little detail on the engine but it is different than the standard aftermarket paper filter and looks kind of stock.

 

Good thinking.

 

Lost count of how many of those oil bath filters I sent to the dump. Back in the early '60s nobody wanted them. Nice bit of remake.

 

Thanks guys! it was a fun project. I will show the filter elements and finished engine some day in the future. we are still working on body fit right now. We put the passenger side door on and decided it needed some more work to meet our standards. So since there is no date the car has to be done we we took a big step back to fix it before proceeding.

We are close to putting the front end on the car though. Should be in two or three weeks. Don has to go fishing and relativing for a week or so first.

 

Good job,Sam. I've been looking for something similar for my truck, since I'm keeping the flathead fairly stock looking. I'm guessing that project was a welcome break from sanding.

 

Thank you Joel! Yes it was a good break from sanding until I had to bodywork hammer,bondo, and sand it! I got shop my floor poured last week so I am busy trying to do some carpentry and electrical on that this week while Don is away. This is a nice break from sanding also.

 

Nice attention to detail, great to see you guys are taking the time.
So easy to rush through certain aspects of a build..with quality suffering.
Thanks for keeping us up to date.

 

Thanks40FORDPU! We consider a lot of the things we fuss over most people would never notice.....but we would....so we do them over until we will be proud of the finished product. We realize it is not a riddler car but a driver. That is no reason to skip over the little things that will bug you while you play with the finished car. From previous experience I can say that there are enough things you miss during construction that you don't need to skip over the things you see during the build.

 

love following this build with your attention to detail and simplistic approach and of coarse the car itself....
it reinforces that a project doesn't have to cost a million dollars to look a million dollars......time and effort gets you there.
well done guys

 

Thank you jailbar joe! Interesting name....Hope yo are the keeper and not the internee.
Well it's been a long time since I reported but some has been getting done so it's past due time for an update.

The underside of the hood was the last of the pieces we had to paint on the body ( we hope) before taking it to the painter . The painter will hopefully only have to paint the exterior of the ca.


Yes even this gets wet sanded. It's not perfect but it looks pretty good for the underside of the hood.

This rear hood brace originaly had some kind of composite material stapled on the bottom side. We could not find any of that material so we glues some 1/8" black rubber gasket to the brace. This is material usually used on large valve flanges in the industrial pumping industry.

The motor and transmission were bolted together and installed.

This front sway bar kit was installed. This one bolted right in.


Here is the pat number for anyone that might want to use one of these.

So I moved on to the rear sway bar. I think this is the one Don had to wait a long time to get.

This was an interesting way to attach the top bracket. I had to drill the holes in the tube frame section and insert this U bolt into the frame. It actually worked pretty well. Make sure you have a nut attached to one end when you insert the U bolt or you might loose it in the frame.

For some reason the link arm bolt and spacer shipped with the kit was about 2 inches short so I had to make some custom spacers and washers to lengthen this link.

The ADCO number for the rear bar.

The most likely cause of the need for a longer link bolt was that the rear axle has a 2 inch spacer.

Things are a little dusty down here after months of body work. We will need to clean that up.

That is all for today. We have a lot more stuff to install on the engine before we put the front sheet metal on so I should have some more updates soon. thanks for watching.

 

Looking good! Glad to see an update!

 

Thanks for the update Sam. I would be happy with the underside of the hood; it sure looks good from here. The sanding dust is a mess; it gets everywhere. I've been using a shop vac to pick it up so that I don't blow it around with an air. Mediocre at best.