1952-59 Ford Doing it the hard way: My LS-powered 1954 Customline build thread

An update, just because I haven't been on here in a while and I'm feeling nostalgic. And depressed.

Hoping to start in on the Ford again in the next few months. Below are the most recent pictures I've taken.

 

Hang in there.......you'll be back to it before you know it.

 

Car looks great man! And I can relate with the move throwing a wrench in your build.... I've moved 3 times since I started on the car. It'll get done eventually haha Loving the LS setup by the way

 

At least you have a CLEAN garage to work in....

 

Thanks man.

Very true. I spent a lot of 2016 getting the garage into its present condition. I'm just looking forward to messing it up again with spare parts and grease.

 

Mine is too far gone and concrete block wall. The new addition walls will be covered with thin smooth plywood. I did that with my machine shop area and tacked up plastic drop cloths, walls are still like new.

 

Garage looks great. Now I'm gonna have to update my build thread with a pic of my '57's soon to be new home.

 

Wow, all of my old pictures disappeared and I have no idea how to get into my photobucket account, which I haven't used in years. Awesome. Hope their support folks can help me out. This thread is useless without pics...

 

http://www.csoonline.com/article/32...ed-millions-of-images-with-ransom-demand.html

 

Holy ****.

 

Almost all operating systems have a "Pictures" storage file so you don't need crooks like photobucket charging you your hard earned bucks and with these built in files the pictures stay as long as you want them and cost you nothing. To save storage space you can transfer the images to an inexpensive flash drive in case you want to bring them up later. You can also use this to shrink your images (also free) http://www.picresize.com/ When you click on "upload a file" your pictures will come up and you select the one you want and click on it and then hit "post reply" and it's a done deal.

 

I'll be joining your club soon, picked up a'56 that some had the Thunderbird motor out of. 5.3l turbo motor going in it

 

Very cool, Gotzy. Make sure to post pics when you get going on the project!

 

I may start a new thread for this car, since the work I'm doing now doesn't have much to do with the engine (plus all of my old pics are gone). Here's a pic from a few days ago. I have both front fenders and 3 of 4 doors stripped down to bare metal, with some repair work started. Hoping to spray everything in epoxy primer this weekend while the October air is still relatively warm and dry.

 

Any bodywork to be done on the lower portion of the doors?

 

Yeah, don't let the pictures fool you. There are dents and dings everywhere. Two of the doors have some rust at the bottom, and I know the rear left door (the one I haven't stripped yet) filled up with water the last time I washed it because the drain holes were plugged. The front right fender is rusted through down low - I may invest in an EMS patch panel instead of trying to fix that hole myself.

 

The rear right door is probably in the worst shape, dent-wise. I finally bought myself a MIG welder, and my dad and I went in together on a stud welder, so this door has been my guinea pig for the new tools.

 

For some reason, I can't edit the post above. So here's the before picture, after...

 

Looking good Paddy, Clecos right? Havent striped my doors yet, but I'll most likely have to weld in long strips of new metal. Easier and better than to patch. Warping is my concern, as it will likely be a nightmare to solve on such large panels.

 

"Looking good Paddy, Clecos right?"
Rui, what you're looking at in the pic is the stud welder studs.....unless you were asking how he held his patch panel in place.
Nice job on the repairs, Paddy!
I also bought a stud welder. Harbor Freight. It worked great, but the slide hammer that came with it was really poor. I ended up buying a slide hammer from Eastwood. That one was great. I had a guy on another forum tell me not to use the stud welder too much because it shrunk the metal. Just my 2 cents, but I thought that was exactly what I needed to do since the metal gets stretched when you get a crease or dent.
PS: If the door's corner to the left of the row of studs is as close to the fender as it looks in the pics, this would be a good time to correct that.

 

Yeah, as Texas said, those are the studs for the stud welder. I don't have any clecos and haven't ever used them. I know what you mean about warping repairs, though. I'm trying to be extra cautious - and PATIENT - with my welding because I've ruined patches before.

 

Thanks, Texas. Feels good to be back at it again. I also have the HF setup, and I also do not care for the slide hammer. I saw a few youtube videos of guys not even using the hammer - just a T-handle to pull with constant force while they hammer around the outside. I guess it's like using a dolly, except for places where you can't get to the other side to actually use a dolly. I may look around for one of those handles just to try it out.

The door corner looks terrible in the picture but it's not really that way. The door isn't closed all the way, and even when it is, I put the striker and latch in quickly and without measuring just to get the door to close, so the alignment is way off.

 

Took advantage of the nice weather and unusual lack of other responsibilities and made some decent progress over the weekend. Some fish-eye in my epoxy, which I attribute not to laziness or poor cleaning/prep, but lousy pre-paint solution quality. I'm going to pick up something better before next weekend. Good lessons to learn before base/clear time.

 

On your pre-paint cleaning, I always use 2 types of solvents......a water base and a petroleum base. either one by itself won't get everything. For the water based, I like POR-15's Marine Clean and/or (oddly enough)sprayway gl*** cleaner for last minute fingerprints, etc.. I don't have a preference on the petroleum based, most of the prep-sol type wax and grease removers have worked just fine.

 

That explains a lot. My water-based one was recommended by my paint supply shop, but they didn't say anything about also using a petroleum-based product. Before I used the water-based stuff, I just used whatever grease/tar/wax remover I could find at Autozone. Seemed like that worked better. But I will start using both as you suggested. Thanks for the info.

 

I sanded down the back door so I could re-epoxy it after going with Texas57's recommendations. Glad to say the respray went much better. I can't believe how dirty bare metal can be. Anyway, just as I was getting comfortable with epoxy, I tried spraying high-build primer on one door and it was such a pain in the ***. Gun wouldn't adjust right, primer went on all thin and spattered... I don't know. I just kept adjusting and hosing it down and ended up going through almost half a quart of primer on one stupid door. That doesn't seem right to me. And it will cost me a fortune to do the rest of the car if it is right.

 

Salvaged my weekend by doing a little sandblasting, welding, dressing, prepping and epoxy priming a bunch of other stuff. I now have the whole p***enger side and most of the front end in primer. I didn't spray the lower sections of the front fenders because they're both rotten and need to be patched. I'll order patches from EMS later this week, but I didn't want to leave the rest of the fenders bare until I have time to do the patching.

If the weather holds, I'll try to strip, prep and spray the driver side doors this weekend. I know there's a lot of sanding and blocking in my future but it feels really good to be getting this "big" stuff done after staring at sitting there for so long.

 

Man, you got lots done in a short period. Looking good!
most of my blocking was done with the high build. If memory serves I used about 2 1/2 gallons.......@200+ per gallon. I had to thin it about 10% additional to the activator to spray half decently. I can't remember my nozzle size, but it was pretty big......2.2??
The high build is kinda like filler.........you mix alot, but most ends up on the floor after sanding.
metal prep, epoxy primer, high build primer, sealer or primer/sealer ,basecoat, clearcoat...it gets expensive.

 

Yes, Marine Clean rocks. On my floor and rear quarters job I used it and was shocked at the ammount of "dirt" that came off from what I thought was a clean part.
Looking good Paddy.

 

Thanks, guys. Texas, my paint gun kit came with a 1.3 and 1.8, the latter of which I used for filler primer. I sprayed the epoxy with my HF gun with a 1.4 tip. I've been checking and my "nice" gun doesn't have a tip bigger than 1.8 made for it (Devilbiss starting line). I will try thinning the primer next time, but I really wish I had done more research when I bought the gun years ago. My neighbor just finished painting his '54 pickup - maybe he has a gun I can borrow to spray the heavy primer with...