Doing things over you have already done.

I'm sure that most of us have heard it from either our parents or a mentor, "Do something right the first time so you dont have to do it again." Its good advice, most of us know better than to either purposely or neglectfully do something wrong or improperly. Some of us become hasty in our excitement to get something done. Here's where this blog entry comes into play. The subject matter is my 1951 Chevrolet Fleetline. I worked on this car for many years and for a few things I could see the end of the road to getting it on the road. There are more than a few things I regretfull didn't complete properly. This entry is about how I started to fix that problem.

Shot from world of wheels Calgary, Alberta, Canada 2012

 

It looks pretty good! Heres where things started to go terribly wrong. My friends and I extended the quarters 5 inches at the bottom and 2 1/2 at the top. Our goal was to reach the world of wheels with the car in primer.

 

A picture of the car 3 weeks before the show, hard to see but compare the rear quarters.

 

When we finally had all of the bodywork done on the quarters, we were all excited to paint the car. I wanted to paint the car green but could only get grey primer. We decided to raid the paint cabinet of all the yellows, blues, blacks and greens we could find. We mixed and mixed and mixed until the right colour was found. We exitedly Sprayed the car, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, we were off to the world of wheels.

 

The car sat inside for a few days to let the primer dry before putting it out into the Siberian like weather of  Edmonton where it sat for 2 days before being loaded up into the trailer for the show. When we brought the car into the show we noticed, man this thing really smells like wet paint still. By the end of the show some of the paint was starting to peel, HUGE bummer. I figure that with us putting every known type of paint to man into the primer, some sort of chemical reaction happened. I drove the car for the summer with primer spots after I picked off all the peeling paint that I could. I dont like to drive crappy cars, especially crappy cars that I built AND especially especially when my good friends helped me, so the descision came to basically start over. My Good buddy Chad and I hauled the car over to his house where we thrashed on it. The following picture is after about 5 days in total (spent weekends on it over about a month and a half)

 

Stripping the car of all the badness.

 

When I purchased this car, there was very little rust on it, I repaired about 2 sqaure feet in total of the floor in various small spots. The rest of the car was in great shape, I spent alot of time detailing the engine bay and the inner fenders, rewiring the car with cloth covered wiring. I really like small details, especially things most people don't notice. ie. the extended fenders no one notices untill I tell them.

 

1955 235 with edmunds 2-holly 94 intake, fenton exhaust and some wild tubing I bent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dPT1j1OLfk

 

I admit, I extended the quarters and didnt check for rust under the gravel guards in front of the rear wheels, in retrospect big mistake.

DAYUM!

 

Decided to replace the rockers at the same time, Only the rear ward inner on the pass. side needs replacing.

 

Here is where we left off over this weekend, More to come!