Projects 53 Chevy Bel Air "Cleetus" mild custom daily driver

Well tried to price that paint too and ended up with a quart no money out of pocket. Got the same guy as the red and when I went to price it he asked if he bought it for me if I would paint the door for his daily driver when he got it. Needless to say I'm walking down the street with a new quart of black paint lol

 

And my M***IVE amount of progress lol. Got this wire wheeled in prep for epoxy primer. Probably go over it with a Scotch Brite before hitting with primer. Not being particularly OCD on it because it's going on a daily driver where only the outer half inch of the lip will be visible. I don't want paint peeling so I cleaned and wired the whole wheel.

 

And some actual progress. First coat of epoxy primer on the wheel I cleaned up yesterday and the top of my new splash pan

 

Looks great!

 

Gives you an idea of how mint the pan was aside from the torch marks eh? Not one bit of filler on it

 

How much spare room do you have for parts? My shop runneth over. Everything is off of mine except the window hardware and original gauges.

 

Actually a good bit of a 15 ft storage unit left open lol

 

And the bottom of the pan in primer. I read the tech sheet on the primer last summer and learned I can spray color onto it without sanding or anything after two hours and before four hours. As this is the bottom Im not concerned about the resulting orange peel effect. So in about an hour I'll paint the bottom black. Then Friday I'll 320 the top with a DA and finish painting it. I shouldn't be so excited about such a boring part lol

 

And how it looks black lol

 

And bottom of pan is done till tomorrow. Did some roll on bed liner for durability.

 

How well do you think it would work to bolt the pan, fenders, grill and hood together off the car? Maybe the bumper and mounts too. I’m formulating my tilt front.

 

I would personally bolt them together on the car and then remove them again all together

 

Nice coverage for the first coat. Will do at least three more

 

Definitely turned out nice

 

And the first coat on the pretty side lol

 

And ***uming my hardener didn't sour this should look REALLY good tomorrow after it fully dries. This particular paint gets shinier as it dries.

 

And the wheel paint all dry with a new valve stem. Thinking until I get the caps I actually want I'm going to leave the caps off the wheels as I do real paint on them. Maybe stick some cheap spider caps on. I know they're going to get scratched with the new caps but I'd prefer to wait for those to do it lol. Very happy with how this wheel turned out

 

Nevermind on the spider caps. They're nearly as much as the caps I want lol

 

And the nice radio bezel installed. Still need to find a radio face, heater control bezel, and gauge bezel with nice chrome

 

Looking good!

 

Yeah I'm actually getting to the point I smile when I look at my dash lol

 

Would really like to find a factory heater control block off plate someone chrome plated

 

Came across a hamb friendly pic of a 53 with a 57 grill bar. Not sure under the sheet metal but externally for sure it fits lol. Sometime soon I need to score a 57 grill bar

 

Yeah that looks great!

looks like the car got different scallops when it got the grill if that is the same car.

 

Was a guy on a 49-54 Chevy page. Actually it's the same paint just a different angle. Id like to use the 57 210 silver grill mesh behind mine when I do it

 

It’s very similar but they are different. I wonder if there is a hood modification we didn’t notice that required him repainting it?

 

Found it! Made it a one piece hood and shaved the trim to boot!

 

Oh btw the hood scallops in the after pic are fairly similar to what I want on my 54

 

Nice Very Nice!
Dan

 

You can see why I want to do it lol