Nice work! You're braver then I am to tackle upholstery haha. Beautiful Farmall BTW. My H looks like a rat rod compared to yours.
Pulled out the big dent yesterday in my trunk lid. Years ago when moving the car here from my old home, an air compressor was being moved out of the shop on a fork lift and fell over and dented it…. Anyway, welded some washers in the crease and used the slide hammer to pull it out most of the way. Nothing a little body filler won’t fix I also picked up a paint sample of Ford Vermillion (PPG 4163) from a friend. I really like it. It is the sample without the stick. The camera doesn’t show true color unfortunately. On the second photo you can see the PPG 4163 (left) and PPG 3060 (right) vs original color. Today I did the WFH thing and took opportunity to take a lunch for once and started assembling the paint booth and then finish up this evening.
it’s from Amazon. This one is 14W x 26L x 10.5H. I also bought window filters and the box to attach a blower to and a 3200 CFM exhaust fan and tube. In figured it was a better option than one of those blow up booths which deflate on you if the blower loses power or a circuit breaker trips, etc. I am doing this whole car with most of the panels off of it and it’ll all be in and out of this thing multiple times over the next couple of weeks. I struck out at every turn trying to find a booth to rent locally. So here we are…. When I am done with it I have a friend who has agreed to purchase it all from me for his project (s). So In the end I’ll be out a few hundred $.
And let the festivities begin… took the next week off… we will see how far we get before I run out of steam. I’m a one man band.
It’s been a number of days of prep here. Sanding and more sanding and even more sanding. Doors, front fenders, deck lid, stone shield. Started with the fenders. After a day or sanding and phosphating and some hammer and dolly work I put POR15 on the inside. Cooper and I “autographed” one of the fenders. Maybe someday he will take it off and find it. Not a lot of photos of the sanding but it’s got my arms feeling like jello and my hands stiff. I finished up sanding and cleaning and phosphating any rust I could not sand out. There is some erosion here and there and best I could do was wire wheel most of it out then convert it. About noon today I put the walls back on the booth and got everything cleaned with spray away glass cleaner then grease and wax remover before some back masking and finally 2k epoxy. I was burning through material with this 3M gun and a 1.4 tip so I went to a 1.2 and a world of difference. For ventilation I have a 3200 cfm blower drawing air out but you really need 3 or 4 times this amount. It pulls a negative pressure but you can’t really feel air flow and the cloud lingers after applying material. Tomorrow I have to go to the Daughter’s college orientation but with any luck I can get the outside of the doors and trunk lid and stone guard primed before leaving. Supposed to rain in the PM and overnight… I definitely need more saw horses….
Other than door hinges everything is now epoxied…. I need more room for activities… Time to mix up some body filler and straighten her out.
This morning I was digging around making sure I wasn’t missing anything that needed to be blasted and primed before moving on to blocking when I came across my door hinges… and they had a lot of slop. Luckily, Mustang-ish parts fix it right up and NPD is like 40 minutes from me. So I took an early morning road trip. Picked up this rebuilt kit. You cut the pins to length. Also grabbed some other odds and ends while I was there like new strikers. Back home I knocked them all apart, ran them through the blaster… in the process I deadheaded my exhaust hose against my blasting cabinet glove and my old craftsman shop vac collapsed the 5 gallon bucket under my cyclone and when it imploded and breeched just about gave me a heart attack. That white bucked had collapsed almost flat before it fractured… But back to the hinges…. Bushings had seen better days Emptied the booth so I can put the floor in it… garage is a sea of gray. Sprayed some guide coat on the trunk and hood a bit ago. Think I will give it a quick light sanding on a block to find high / low spots and maybe smear some filler on them.
Yesterday was a looooong 10 hours non-stop day of applying body filler and sanding it off in an attempt to flatten out panels, namely the trunk lid and passenger door that needed some help. The mistake I made was going all iron man and doing it all with a long board and 80 grit rather than knocking it down with the DA first and then refining with the block. Front fenders and half way done with drivers door and I can move on to the chassis. Will reapply epoxy and then apply high build for a final blocking. I did block out the hood the other evening and was fairly pleased with how good Tim’s mold is. There are a few high spots that I can either knock down or put some body filler in… or just let it ride. I’m a wee bit sore today.
Fixed some past person’s sins on the front of the passenger fender where the extension sits. This car had a fender bender at some point prior to me. The extension was blue under the red paint. The body man kinda beat it out I guess and plastered some filler to make it look right but the extension didn’t sit well. I started with the Vevor dent puller but that was not fast enough and I being on a corner it just wasn’t working like I wanted so I got a bar of steel and 3# brass hammer and gave her the business and then a chisel to persuade a corner to form. There isn’t a lot of room for work from the backside behind the headlight shroud deal. Got it pretty well and a little body filler sharpened the corner. It’s better than it was. Spent the rest of the day finishing up filling and fairing panels and got them in the tent and wiped down with spray away and grease and wax remover. Goal for tomorrow is to get them in a seal coat of epoxy and then a few coats of high build before church. While the high build is curing I’ll roll the car out into the driveway and begin working on filling and fairing the quarters and roof. My hand swiping down the side today said I have some work ahead of me. Back to work on Wednesday - I would really love to have her ready for sealer by then. I also need to scuff the door jams and maybe the trunk and decide if I am cutting everything in and hanging panels for final paint or painting it apart. I’ll need to get some small parts in paint if I paint it together… like hinges… Time for a beer or two and off to bed. I’m beat.
Put down a final coat of epoxy before church this morning and afterward I put down 4 coats of JP202 mixed as a high build (4:1:0.5). 3/4 of a gallon. I rolled the car out of the garage and went over it with 180 on a 6” block to reveal low and high spots. Tomorrow I will put some filler on them and proceed to try and improve the shaping of the rear quarters as they aren’t quite right in my opinion. Guess the Vevor 90E will get put to the test. I would really love to have her ready for epoxy and high build by end of the day. I somehow think that is wishful thinking. Lately I have also been considering a 3D scanner as prices are quickly falling and you can get machines with decent precision. With some of the technology out there in the manufacturing space I would really like to understand what it would cost to make replacement quarters… at least the portion below the bottom trim line
Wow I haven’t seen an air file being used since the 80s, I know I have two of those Viking air files and a couple Hutchins in-lines and a Hutchins orbital but none have been used for thirty years. Now it’s all done with DAs and hand boards…
The last few days have really beaten me hard. I think I had to go back to work for a break. Spent the past few days working on the chassis. Filling some small dents and dings and smoothing out some areas and then the last two days pretty much dedicated to the quarter repairs. Getting weld seams pulled out so only a skim of filler was needed - no small feat but the Vevor G90E did its job - there is a learning curve - and lastly adjusting the wheel opening moldings to have the right shape and location. I ended up pulling the top trim line out on passenger side. Drivers side I had to unbond the outer to inner fender well seam so I could push the outer inward. I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry back when to get things done. Now I need to either glue it back together or weld it together. Either way I need to get the tires off and something smaller in there so I have room to work. I figure, 100 more man hours and it might be shiny red. Have been hunting down skinny tires to use while doing body work / painting on this car. Was going to use some trailer tires but they are still a bit large at 205/75…. Then once in a while God takes pity on a poor souls such as me and delivers a gift…. 114.3, 115, whatever it takes… I’ll make em fit, they were free.
Got a couple of hours in on the car today. Really just trying to move metal around to get the wheel well moldings to sit correctly. They have somewhat of a positive camber to them. It seems if you bridge a straight edge across the face and rest it on the spear then it forms a line. Next I will need to pound out the sink spot at the rear vertical welds so I won’t need a bunch of body filler. This all is turning out to be very time consuming. I am just SWAG’in it here for what I feel is the correct geometry based off some photos and how things flow. Right or wrong here I am and in the end hopefully it looks fairly “correct”. BTW - the Vevor works 10X better if you weld the ground to the panel near where you are working…
yesterday I put in a solid day and knocked out a list of small things I needed to do to get her ready for final epoxy and blocking primer. Met the goal of rolling her into the booth by end of the day. Need to get myself moving after my morning coffee so I can get her masked and cleaned. Before we left last week I did bolt the fenders on and sat the hood and trunk lid in place in case we got any weather and my tent blew away…. All of that gets to come back off today. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t wave back to hard when it’s all finished.
Got her masked off this morning and put down 2k epoxy over all bare metal and filler. Then I ran out of steam because it must have been 110 inside of that tent. Sheet metal was hot and stuff was flashing off as fast as it went down. Then Vacuum Orna Metal called and said he had one of my dashes done and needed the paint for the other so I grabbed a big jug of ice water and a little bit of basecoat and headed that way. When I got home I put down the last quart of high build (JP202) and ended up running to town for more so I could get 4 solid coats on everything. Finished it all up about 5 pm including adding more to a front fender that fell over in the wind and had some road rash. I started out with a 1.6 mm fluid tip for the JP and after the first two coats I had a lot of dry spray and buildup from overspray so I went to a 1.8mm to finish it out. In total, 3/4 gallon of high build on the chassis. Unfortunately one od the masks for the drivers wheel well came loose and now I have a gray leaf spring. I need to pull the rear suspension out anyway to move rearend back and inch so guess I will repaint leaf springs. Maybe tomorrow or Sunday I will begin hanging sheet metal to set body gaps and drill and pin everything. Sounds like a good idea, hope it works as intended. Also opened the basecoat and boy is that red bright!
I'd tend to say that thing's got too many body lines to wave, but you're living the dream of "Shiny paint causes stress"
Hung body panels yesterday so I can set gaps and then pin things once adjusted. Doors fought me most of the day trying to get gaps and lines and all that happy stuff all set. Drivers side still needs some work but weather was moving in so I put the fender on to push her into the garage. Still need another set of eyes to adjust trunk. Hood is a bit lacking on appropriate arch along the cowl.
Damn this takes me back to when I used to do this for living, and your work is top notch and as I would have done it back then. The only thing extra I used to do - when I could - is once I put all the primer/high build on was to put the car in the sun for a few days and let natural infra red do its job to ensure no future sinkage of the filler, but that's not always possible. This I reckon is going to be one of the best Cyclones anywhere on earth (there's Jim Kerr's one in Australia I know of and a couple in the US but that's it).
Picked up my gauge bezels yesterday from Vacuum Orna-Metal. I neglected to discuss that this is a Cyclone and the areas above the gauge holes should have been black so I will need to makes and make them so. I plan to use autometer gauges for oil/water/charge/fuel. Been researching threads here but still not quite sure to what extent I need to hack things up or how the gauges are secured. Have a rough idea. Have an extra with the top painted satin black I will likely be selling.
The Jalopy Journal
