I spent a few weeks chasing around wobbles and dings that were missed with the first session of primer. I have a habit of missing small things and having to go back and fix it, then carrying on. I know this about myself and I don't like it, the same goes for when I get busy and absent minded lay put a tool down and spent 5-10 minutes looking for it. It's a character flaw that drives me nuts about myself, so I know eventually, if I take a bit of a break and go back to block sanding a day or two later I will eventually find the stubborn flaws and take care of them.
In this picture I took the time to really block sand the car. I was definitely not happy with what I had done to it in the past few months. The whiter areas is putty where I needed to fine tune the body work. The yellow areas is where I broke down to the skim coat of bondo under the primer and slick sand. The registration for the Calgary World Of Wheels was approaching and my good friend Chad at this time was travelling the world. When he got back he helped me finish block sanding the car to get
it back on track for the world of wheels.
We primed the car and this time it was damn straight. I briefly considered putting it in the show in black primer and Chad brought me back to reality telling me that it was a horrible idea and we should paint it.
I was asked if I wanted to paint the white when Chad painted the dash. I opted out, I really didnt think it looked that bad. I made the suggestion after the green was painted to paint the white, not very well recepted at all, so the white stayed. We spent time sanding the car and it looked like we were definitely on track. I used 3 weeks of my holiday time to bust a move and get it going. At the time Chad was between jobs, so he very kindly helped me.
The image above shows the car prepped and in the booth ready for paint.
While we were at it, Chad suggested that I boxline the entire floor of the car, make it look nicer, deaden the sound and keep the heat of the motor out. I bought a kit to do a longbed truck. With masking off the car and scuffing the floor it took me about 8 hours to have it completely sprayed, there was enough material to do the inside of the trunk, the cab and the inside of the roof. When I drove this car with no interior it was like sitting in a tin can. I was surprised when I sat in the car, how different the acoustics were with the bed liner applied. It should be as quiet as a new Mercedes with actual insulation and upholstry.
Sealer applied. This is where things started going wrong. In the photos you can see how dirty the booth is. Its was this dirty after cleaning it for 4 hours. Chad struggled with chasing dirt in the sealer, scuffing little spots just to get small spots. Once he was satisfied he moved on to base.
Above are some pictures after the base and mid-coat were applied. With the base it was the same drill, spray a coat, let it dry, scuff the dirty spots and dust in the base.
This is how the colour turned out. I was very satisfied with the colour, everything is completely custom mixed. The midcoat is a lexus white pearl with gold added to it. The unfortunate part is the clear was very dirty. We decided that it wouldnt be fit to show at the world of wheels and had to pull out. I was pretty dissapointed, all the planning and time felt like it was flushed down the drain.
When we got it back to my garage we put the grill on it. I Then decided that since it wasnt going to go in the show and I basically had 9 days to continue on that we could start building the lake pipes, do the rearend and transmission swap. Now, I know the order of operations is a little bit askew. I should have done those swaps when it was still in grey primer. Perhaps I let my ego get the best of me or it was the excitement of seeing it painted (latter being the more likely scenario, I just wanted to see it painted!) On the other hand, completing the mechanical on this car would be no different than working on a brand new car, we just needed to be extra careful. Instead of being down on myself I had to take the mindset of accomplishing alot of work in a short time, even though my plans deviated from the track and like a boat small corrections needed to be made to stay on course. I seriously thought that the car could be put into the show, less windows.
The triangulated 4-link kit. The coilovers had been bought seperately of the kit. When I bought them I was visiting my folks which is a 3 hour drive away. I had to go to their city on business and came on a plane, so I had left them at their house and I never had a chance to collect them and bring them to Calgary untill I went to visit my parents because my dad was going for surgery. Without the coil overs I was able to tack the lower mounts to the fram and the diff, mock up the upper bars and start to drill out the transmission mount for the new one.
The above pictures are the lake pipes we started to work on. The middle section is old school ripple pipe that was popular mid to late 50's. Fenton actually made lake pipes then which had this on them. The bends I chose were crappy aouto store bends because I liked the rippled pipe look and thought they would suit the center section of the pipes.
Bottom bars tacked in place.
In the above picture There is a 2 1/2 inch hole drilled in the floor. There is a matching one on the other side. This was so that the least amount of floor was left as undisturbed as possible. The cardboard angle iron sits right over a body mount which the bolt goes right through the frame. From the pipe extending accross both sides the coilover shock mounts will extend into the bottom of the car.
Moving onward is the goal, there is definitely not a time in the garage where work runs out. Energy runs out long before that. Sometimes material, however, sometimes you just dont know what you need for material until you reach that point.
