Projects Recreating the jesse lopez coupe

I watched the painter at the shop my Dad managed for years pull his hair out when they would change from product to product on him..

 

The front end wont be coming off any more.

 

Looks great!!

 

You've caught me, I'm cornered. Everything that needs to be done is yet to be done, not down the road.
I have a large part of the chrome done. The seats, side panels and kick panels are at the trim shop.
I just put a lot of brass on the ¼ garnish mldg's. I'll cut and polish for plating at the chrome shop with Bernie and Jesse.
I'm waiting for some material to mount the dash board. I still have to make all the knobs.
I'm 1/2 way through the rear lic plate issue.
Finish trunk floor.
Paint interior metal.
Glass template's.
Finish door popper install.
Cut down/fit w/shield seal/glass/stainless.
Install crank mounted fan/radiator.
Finish cowl area after cowl/hood/fender fit.
Prime reworked area's on nose.
Take car to electrician after dash/steering column istalled.
Restore Merc steering wheel while car is gone.
Paint car.
Take car to trim shop.
Do all the other stuff I've forgotten while car is at trim shop.
Buy tires, install
I'm sure there's a lot that I havn't mentioned.

 

Yeah but your to do list is a hellava lot shorter than mine , I know that for sure

 

Awesome, Such a bitchin kustom

 

Jer, the color on the hood looks great. Great work! I may be preaching to the choir, but when painting any metallic color you may want to paint almost all, if not all, of the panels at the same time and paint them in the orientation that you would view them when mounted on the car. Fight the temptation of laying the doors flat on a stand and hanging the hood. It scares the hell out of me seeing the hood hanging up vertically like that knowing the cowl will be painted horizontally later. They may match well. They may not. When I paint, I don't ever take that chance. It may sound trivial, but it is important nonetheless. I know you are a detail kinda guy, I hope I don't offend.

 

Dang you get a lot done! Neat shot of the Junior Conway clone

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Thanks for checkin' in John about this color. Being in collision repair for most of my business life I know that everything can be right but, if the color doesn't match you got BIG trouble. On occasion you'll come across a color that you can "butt match" without blending into the adjacent panel. I think this color is one of those. I painted my skirts on separate days with different guns and out of different cans of material. There wasn't anything I could do wrong. Everything was "dead on". So I didn't think anything about "stringing" my hood up. I wanted to keep the dirt down.

All this is moot anyway because I think my lacquer spray out card is coming next week in the mail. I'm pretty excited about it.

Thanks Dave, I put in (about) 6 hour days.

 

I did all my fitting of the nose with the hood sitting on the cowl in the correct position. When it came time to bolt the hood to the hinges I had a completely different situation. Check out post and you'll see what is called a cowl kiss, not a good thing. What a night mare. To many adjustments on those hinges. I was lost. I actually joined the Early Ford V8 club looking for help.

I thought this was going to be the little sister of unintended setbacks (#2). I spent a week doing other things while I brooded over this. I need all the (final) primer on everything before it goes to the electrician. I finally realized that my friend Bill Dyson (48Ragtop) has been around these cars all his life. He just lives about 30 mins down the road.

To shorten this up, Bill and his wife came up to visit and we spent about 4 hours getting the hood/cowl/fenders close enough to where I can finish it. Our problem was solved when we finally realized that the hood needed to be closed as much as possible when we made an adjustment. The upward movement would change everything.

THANKS BILL, YOU'RE A LIFE SAVER

 

Your not alone Jer.
Lots of people have had problems with the fitment of the front sheet metal on these cars. Looks great though.
This build has been a great thing to watch. If I lived near you I would have been there handing you tools.
Keep at it.
Torchie.

 

Well Torch I appreciate the offer but if you would have been there to hand me the tools we would still be lookin' at each other.

 

If I'm going to send the car to the electrician with the final body work in primer, then the dash has to be dealt with also.

The first pic shows where we start. The second, the destination.

 

These pictures take me back to 1955. My 41 Ford had a soybean plastic bezel across the dash accenting the gages and clock. I spent a Saturday at ''United Auto Parts'' removing a diecast metal one. The parts guy must have recognized me as a new-future customer for he told me to just take it with me, when I told him I was going to have it chromed. I had it chromed at Franke Plating Works, which today is a 3rd generation business in the same location. The cost for plating and polishing was $9.00. That was a weeks pay for delivering the evening news paper to my 100 customers. It looked so cool.

 

Am I understanding you correctly? You will strip that beautiful hood because . . . why? Because you are switching to lacquer and it won't match? Enjoying the build.

 

Brer, the hood is a heat magnet because of the combination of the engine and sun. The risk of failure because of to much material is magnified because of those two elements. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The first step in the dash operation is the dash removal. I used to be intimidated by this but, because of the need to rewire it becomes easy.

 

Aside from the chrome dash, the big hilite is the plastic work.There are just a few greens available. I asked Jesse "is it the one that looks like Jello?", he said yes. I have since sent him a piece to be sure. I'm going to use those bezels for a pattern.

 

I don't want to alarm you Jer, but I think there's a wolverine in your pool.

 

That's actually my son's dog Sadie, our water spaniel that's always "on patrol". She's the "person" that's uses the pool the most.

 

O-kay.. then whose rabbit is in your avitar?

Dave

p.s. Did I miss the entry where you mention Jesse having green plastic dash pieces? Tough to tell there is more than chrome happening from the old interior pics.. That should really make the dash "pop"!

 

As I've mentioned before, for the most part, these things that I have to do I've not done before. I have a lifetime of studying them and being impressed and intimidated by them. So to say that the thinking part of this takes waaaay more time than the doing part is the understatement of the year. Sometimes I'll start something and then put it aside for awhile, while I analysis the situation.

I'd done a small amount of plastic work in the 60's doing some tail light lens stuff on my '55 Chev truck. Then there was the back up light lens deal on Jr's car, but this plastic work that Jesse did on his interior falls into the intimidating category for sure. Do I jump off the cliff just to see if I can fly? I think in this case it's just one part of the whole picture that gets obscured until you finally get to it. How do I get myself into these deals? Ha, I'm claimin' I was pushed. There, that releases me from some degree of responsibilty however, I still have to do it.

This bezel has to be very carefully cut out of the panel so that the lines are straight. Those lines have got to go from straight to straight/rounded with nice rounded corners. The long thin piece below the instrument cluster looks awful fragile to me. It's real breakable when it comes time to polish everything with a powerful buffer. The only thing I have going for me is this plastic sheet. I have might have 25 pieces in it.

Dave, Sadie's right ear has sagged with age.

 

Eeeeaaasssy does it.

 

Are you going to get a blower for the flathead?

 

I can cnc mill that plastic panel for ya with perfect lines

 

jfrolka, see post #6 on the blower. I knew that that kind of technology was available but, didn't know where to get it.

 

Trying to see what its gonna' take to get the correct contour.

 

A heat strip, a copper wire with a battery charger hooked up to both ends will get the copper wire hot. The copper wire should be the length of the final piece. Find a piece of pipe with the diameter you need to bend the green acrylic over.

 

sweet build!! And so close to me, im in Haslet!! Would love to check the car out sometime!!

 

More clamping (after shaping) to a hot dash in the Texas sun.

 

That is cool!