Right now, I'm doing some body work on my '66 pickup. I have most of the large rust areas repaired with patch panels. The rest of the large holes should be patched by next week. But, the body has lots of dime size or smaller rust holes and some less than stellar poprivit repairs from the previous owner. Almost 1/4 of the bed is pinholed. We're almost done with school for the year, and I want to have the truck painted in 8 days so my students can have some experience painting a whole vehicle instead of just practice panels. I know I can fix all the rusted and wrinkled areas right by making panels and welding them in, but that's alot of patches, and I'm getting short on time. It's been suggested to me that I could just use tiger-hair to fill in the pinholed areas, and make everything flat. I really don't want to make that many patches, but I feel guilty about not doing it right. I'm planning on selling it this summer anyway, but I think I'd feel bad about the general half-assedness of the quick fix areas, knowing that they'll come back to haunt the new owner in a few years. I know the old saying "if you don't have time to do it right, when are you going to have time to do it again," but it's not me that'll be doing it again. Anyone else ever been in a similar situation, or am I alone on this? -Jeff
jeff you gotta do it right.. otherwise there will be 30 students thinkin that its ok to do it wrong.. this kind of EASY fix comes back to haunt you sawZall
From my experience do it right the first time around,or it will bite you later on down the road.I also agree about teaching the students the right way.
Thats kinda the feeling I have too. I don't really like the fix it good enough to sell it idea, but I'm running very short on time. We have 11 school days left, and I'm already spending 5 hours a night after school on it. But at the same time, it's the beginning autobody class, and it is geared more towards in the driveway autobody, not in a shop autobody. We're dealing with mostly the kind of repairs students can do at home without alot of equipment, but I see your point. The other thing I'm dealing with is the previous repairs. Some of them don't look to bad, but they could be better. I can't decide it I should leave them the way they are 'cause they're good enough, or fix'em. When is good enough good enough? I'm painting it a flat color anyway, so the whole thing doesn't have to be perfect. If I can get a camera, I'll post some pics of some of the stuff. -Jeff
Have a bunch of the kids and area HAMBers come down on a saturday and have a big BBQ/HAMB patch 2004, make it fun and give the kiddos some incentive and they should want to. maybe that will give enough time to fix it right. OR you could spend the rest of the school year patching the right way and then if you can have the kids that want to learn how to paint the whole thing come a couple days during the summer. Just some ideas.
[ QUOTE ] jeff you gotta do it right.. otherwise there will be 30 students thinkin that its ok to do it wrong.. this kind of EASY fix comes back to haunt you sawZall [/ QUOTE ] I have to agree here. I may go overboard on stuff, but i'm a firm believer in 'if it's worth doing, it's worth doing it right'. I know your on a time limit, but you already know you should take the time to fix it right or you wouldn't be questioning yourself. Good luck. Tony....
If it's the bed that's holding you up, why not just have the students concentrate on the whole cab and front clip? They'll get an idea of what's involved on doing a whole car; pickups by nature are a little different from cars anyway when it comes to taping and masking, so I think they would get the gist of what's going on...You could explain to them that they should assume that the bed didn't need work, only the front half of the truck...this is more real-world than you may think...
Take the bed home with you and you and class paint the chassis and cab/frt clip.........it will be finished and then you can repair the bed properly at a later date-Maybe first order of bussiness for next years class to "try and "match" OLD work!.....a good lesson
alot of good correct suggestions so far , but i'm gonna throw in another for ya. that there school your at got a welding and fab class too? how about trying to call in a favor from that teacher and have some of his guys come down to learn a little about doing on the spot repairs. you might can reach your goal with a little help. maybe someday he'll need something painted and you can return the favor. we did this alot at the vo-tech school i was in in high school. we actually did something similar with the auto mechanics class. they were rebuilding the drivetrain for there old shop truck. well the teach wanted to suprise them when they had it done early so when he saw they would be done about a month before school got out he came over and talked me, a buddy of mine and the teacher into secretly giving the truck a nice paint job. well we hid it in the pre paint room where we told them we were storing it and the three of us went to town even came in after hours a few times all while they had no clue. got all the body work done and it sprayed in a nice mixed from leftovers red about 10 days before the end of school. that monday morning they came to get the truck to put the drivetrain back in and there it was with a nice fresh paint job. they nearly shit their pants. well of course they worked there asses off getting everything back together and we fired the truck and all went for a ride around the parking lot everyone from both classes all piled in that friday afternoon whilst having ourselves a little celebratory cookout. it was just an old ford truck with just a plain old red paint job but i would have to say it's one of the paint jobs i'm most proud of(yeah i'm the one that actually sprayed it). again this is just a thaught but one you may want to consider...ken....
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