Slow Progress at Zippy Performance

An update on the GTX for...anyone who cares I guess....Most of this is already ancient history, but some expressed interest.
FB friends already know + I'm filling up memory cards on an old clunker device I leave in the shop for stuff like this.

I'd fired up the 572 Hemi on 4-26-20 after having worked from home about a month and a half.
The extra time with the commute gone really helped me wrap up the engine project.

It was peak CV time and emotions were high. Maybe more on that later, or not.

The GTX was the most logical destination for the engine.
Couple friends said just throw the engine in, but I felt that was not a great idea as I
knew there was a small weak spot on one frame rail directly
opposite where the motor plate would attach + the car just looked bad and I wanted to get after it. So I tore the fenders and front end metal
off and repaired rust, replaced both front fenders with some better OE ones, converted a 68 fender to '69 in the process,
blasted and epoxy primed the exterior stuff,
filled, block sanded, 2k primer/blocked some more and stopped at a middle of the road point, when it was ready for 320 blocking.

Also stripped, blocked/filled, and reworked the fiberglass hood, but tbh I am not sure I will use it yet/may look for a better one.
The end refinish of the hood was posted here:
https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/2893208/re-an-organisol-adventure.html

Also the right apron looked like swiss cheese on this car, + had a tear in it from a previous altercation.
Previous owners installed the coil and ignition module in apparently
5 different places, and I admit I was not kind to it either. the appearance of it drove me nuts for a long time.
So I cut that out and welded in a repro.

Not pictured...also rounded up the stock air grabber hood that I ran for a short while in the early '90s, which will help with front
end fitting + I might as well restore an original style hood too, while I'm at it. might use it someday. The car did not come
with an air grabber originally but other than the weight I liked that style of hood without the ducting, it was very useful on the street for letting heat
out.

By early fall (no leaves on the trees, as you can see), I had the front end where I thought it needed to be.

I took the Liberty of adding the bullet turn signal indicators, mine is a September '68 build, (edit) as best I can tell the car was built with the rectangular
style (it had holes in the fenders)but I never cared for those compared to the bullets....

Wanted to go after this stuff for a long time. Now was my chance.

Very cool, glad to see you making progress

Work from home continued. Couldn't really do much. Fall '20.
I finally subscribed to motor trend on demand (Now + or whatever), they had a $2 a month special on black friday.
This was good for when I was wore out, waiting on parts or whatever.

Needed a next step. I'd patched and painted it to the best of my ability back around 1991, it got the car on the road for what I could afford to do back then
but it never looked right, and I'd learned alot since then...some out of necessity, some out of choice. Started to look into more metal replacement.
Couldn't talk myself out of it. "You always wanted to do it, now is your chance. You may not get a chance later." was the mindset.

Full speed ahead.

The trunk floor was pretty good, had a couple small patches, I blasted and epoxy'd it years ago and it held up well. But the rear crossmember was not good, and the back of the trunk floor was welded to it. So, whole trunk floor, both extensions (gone years ago), both quarter panels (gone years ago, then patched poorly by me, now about gone again) all had to go..... was considering mini tub, when AMD introduced the wider inner wheelhouses. So, decided to replace inner and outer wheelhouses too.

You've been hitting the "like" button from the beginning of this mess, thanks buddy.

Dang, DUDE
Thats some serious work
You've got way more ambition and skills on body work than I could ever imagine having
Good luck, keep after it

Wow, talk about mission creep - I get it, my 1st RR went from fixing a torn rear seatback cover to being blown apart for a restoration...

Might a well move the rear springs in...you know, "while you're there"...

I've really enjoyed watching this thing take shape/get rebuilt! I really need to do the same thing to my cuda, but can't bring myself to tear it apart yet. Plus I have to get the truck I just bought on the road, lol.

I started removing rust from the roof/original vinyl roof car, and it was so thin it holed through.
To patch, or replace? Went through a few scenarios. Could have patched it and did vinyl again but decided to ditch the vinyl
and make it as close to new again as I could.

So, I ended up replacing all that other stuff and the roof skin too.

All the problems you've heard about with reproduction metal fit+fit of OE parts where they interface,
are all true. I had to rework all the same stuff that everyone else did. I've documented all that with my own pics
and can get into that later. Those areas and the rework of them are why not anyone can just replace the panels, and you need
considerably more skills than just a "parts replacer". I knew it going in and just took it as a challenge. Overall I'd say the products
are good, but definitely are not perfect. Part of me wants to complain, the other part of me that wants to learn and
exercise skills shrugs it off. Maybe more on that later.

The roof skin was the nicest fitting repro metal of all pieces used. The dutchman panel was the worst.
Plenty of pics to show later, possibly.....

Had to get creative more than once, The rear down bars were flexed and held up with a ratchet strap to (just barely) allow the one
piece trunk floor to be slipped in from the side, with the wheelhouses and quarter panel cut off. Wasn't sure that would work until I tried it.

Passed alot of time doing all this stuff. I probably make it sound like nothing but it was a pretty big deal for me.
I've since heard from a few FB friends that they found the little incremental progress pics I've posted for awhile
to be uplifting and positive. That was part of how it started...I needed that myself.

Thanks buddy, Glad to have you there on that other platform and glad you've enjoyed it.

Well, the 3" wider inner tubs lead a person down that path, and I always just liked the look of a slightly bigger tire, so it was in the plan from the beginning.

I've wanted to get after it for at least 10 years, but: (insert all the usual reasons/excuses).

Tried to investigate a few resources and would have paid good money to someone to do it, but when I asked the most logical and reasonable
resource, the answer was "No, I won't work on it". The next one wanted $900 to paint a door exterior, I knew not to ask anything more.
The next one was almost 3 hours away, easily leading to "Sure! Trailer your car here, I'll tear it apart, and then we can talk": no thanks.
Eventually I got tired of asking. That was in 2018/2019.

Thank you sir.

I got the car on the road best as I could with patchwork made from old metal gas station signs or whatever else I could find, attached with pop rivets, and smoothed out with bondo. I knew better and had desire, but did not have the money/means/knowledge/tools/place to do better. Had fun with the car anyway and learned alot.

That was 30 years ago, those efforts totally failed a long time ago but I'm still here and so is the car...Might as well do it right while I have the opportunity.

Also just looked the thread on the hood painting and think you should run the one you've already finished

Yes I keep up with you on FB, thats going to be an AWESOME GTX !!!!!!

That took some dedication and hard work so great job!

Thanks, I am pretty satisfied with that interpretation of Organisol. It looks just like the best cars I have seen.

Nice thing about it is, even if I don't use that hood...once arriving at that finish now I can duplicate it in other places and on other parts, which I will want to do.

Thanks! Have tons of pics but just hitting some highlights here. I haven't made it to the present day just yet.

Everything behind the quarters was repaired as well, lots of time spent on structure and so on.

Awesome progress and fantastic work. Only thing I would point out is that if you put all this content on YouTube instead of FB, you could have 1000+ subscribers and you could be making money every time you posted. People love seeing a guy in the garage actually making progress on a project.

Thanks, I do have a few videos, it could happen at some point.

I've picked up on a couple of the less-flashy styles on youtube, and
would probably be better at Richard Holdener-style voice over picture stuff, or "the gunman" (painter) action shots with voiceover, and might head down that road later.
It's really a huge effort to do the kind of video 1000+ people want to watch, and will probably end up taking more time than the project itself.

There are so many examples of perfectly good videos and creators that have almost nothing for views or subscribers, it's pretty discouraging and I think a person
would have to not care if anyone is going to watch their material and just try to put something decent quality out there.

Example, None of these are monetized.
I can sort of see why, there's nothing really scripted there, but not sure I'd entertain anyone much either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx7flhbZbpM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxTrSoUc-7A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5NEfLKdKBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B221wNtXP2M

Also been suggested "Homebuilt hemi for regular gearheads" youtube content.

We aren't quite up to date yet as alot more work has happened................

I have about 200 subscribers to my YouTube channel and my videos are just short clips shot with a cell phone. Some have voice over, some are just dyno pulls or engine shots with no narrative. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoSY4bQ7I23XK834NLVTC9w

I'm going to start shooting with another camera and working to improve the quality of the videos. I don't think I'll make much money off of it but I think I can provide tech information to a wider audience using YouTube than the old magazine article gig. The magazine stuff has just about gone away.

Project creep is an artform that you have now fully mastered!


Looking good, Zippy!

Nice to see your progress Zippy! I remember your car running pretty good waaaaay back for a 451" streeter b body.


I will try to find it on stupidbook and follow along.

Glad you’ve been making strides.

On the bullet turns, you made the correct call. Those are WAY cooler. On that note, I had an Oct 68 built 69 rr that was a lynch rd car. It had the bullets so I’m not thinking your car is off base. I’m sure they just used what they had laying around. I’ve never heard if you had a choice when choosing the option on early 69s.

That's a deep dive right there Zippy, once you get into it at that level there's no turning back.

I had my Charger on a rotisserie in my garage for 2 years over a 4 year rebuild so that was eye opening for me to say the least. Thing is, once you get past the initial fear, it just happens. But geez I'm jealous at you guys being able to easily buy decent replacement sheetmetal, I had to track down NOS parts that are over 50yo for my project; I cant buy new tail panels, qtr panels, hoods, nose cones, fenders, decklids, trunkpans or any of the stuff you can over there.

Looking forward to see it come together and finished, great work man !

Nice work Rich! I always enjoy seeing progress made! They wouldn't call them projects if they could be done overnight!

TY....You're probably right. I am no expert, but it just seems they ran out of them sporadically at the very beginning but went back to the bullet style asap.

Thank you LAD.
Availability of reproduction parts has been good since 2009ish.
It all had to fall in line with the rest of life circumstances. I consider myself lucky to be able to chase this.

TY! Someday I might ask you or one of the other authorities to move this to another area.

For now I do appreciate you guys letting me get away with posting it in the Race area, though I will be a street/strip guy for the forseeable future and this
is not exactly racing bodywork

Appreciate it.

The 451 is still a sweetheart, but it's going to be bittersweet to run it one more time and smoke out the shop with fogging oil before it comes out.

Lots of history with this silly thing. Alot of things in life may have turned out very differently had I not bought it.

Had you not started off as a famous parts manufacturer and author before doing youtube, maybe things on Youtube would be slightly different?

Not trying to be patronizing or blow smoke by saying that, just making the point that people are online looking for you and whatever you've put out there because of previous activities.

I do have a separate automotive channel that I have not kicked off, other than putting a name to it.
Did that because I have just about as many views for music and guitar stuff as I do for automotive stuff, and I don't feel my name has much going for it in terms
of marketability, so probably better to separate things.

For a basic nobody like me, I think the trick would be to not have any expectations and just try to help people out and talk about topics they're interested in.
One of them should be the legend of the 451CI Chrysler B engine, and I'll have to drop your name if/when I do that.

Thx Joel.

"One thing led to another, now I'm waiting on parts" =Story of my life

A little archeology/study and talking to OE/restoration experts has helped me understand a couple things about the car better than ever before.

Got the windshield out and found evidence of the original paint (color: A4 silver), and also very blatant evidence of the V21 performance hood stripes.

I was surprised to find those, as the car didn't come with air grabber (no hole in the firewall for the cable) and as far as I know came with
almost nothing otherwise. 440 4 speed, 3.54 dana, AM radio/1 speaker, manual drums, oddly power steering, vinyl top.
No console, no air grabber, but someone paid extra for hood stripes...well OK.....

I don't plan to ever rebuild it to exact stock specs as long as I own it, but since I finally figured out what most of the stock specs are, might as well document them somehow.

Zippy, another big congrats on your project! Huge undertaking, which VERY FEW can accomplish.. 👍👍

Looks great. I personally likw the work building them. Then when someone asks "Who did this ir that it looks good" . You cab answer I did. That will make it all wirth it.
Doug

Thank you sir.

Thank you sir.

I did it before too in the early '90s, but nobody said it looked good, because it definitely didn't... so I never had to answer for it

It's not all reproduction parts, though.

Some pieces, they don't make, and you have to go after them the old fashioned way.

The trunk lid bolts on, so the thought is "I'll just find a better one, and change it".
I found only three. They were all $500 and way worse than what I had. All the better ones had 10k cars attached to them.

So, I didn't have to plan and decide for long, the decision what to do was made for me.

Severe surface rust from my early-90s lacquer job total failure, years of outdoor storage, and just general neglect.

People took pictures of this rusted area at the track....patina is really "in".....but not my thing. Never was. It just happened.
The bottom 2" of skin was holed through in several places, and the lip was gone on the backside but not as bad as the pieces sellers wanted $500 for.

You can sort of see the hem flange is cut off, and the bottom 2" has been replaced.

I didn't want to blast it, for warpage concerns.

I didn't want to dip it, because I wanted the original color on the backside preserved, just in case I decide to shoot it original color,
because if I went through that much effort I'm enough of a geek that I would want the color to more or less match what it originally had.

There is also some graffiti on the trunk lid that, after lots of guesswork, I finally heard from an expert who laid it to rest.
There is a thread about that here: https://board.moparts.org/ubbthread...h-rd-trunk-lid-grafitti.html#Post3003875

On a more race oriented note, I did accumulate a fiberglass decklid many years ago, and mocked it up, but decided against it in the end.
Clearly I am not a very serious racer, I'm not building an all out race car, and it will be street/strip capable as long as I own it.

The rebuilt hem flange and backside came out excellent, the repair does not show at all.

The trunk lid was/is more work than it should have been,

WHEN your done, tape up all the "holes" on the underside of the lid., pour in about a quart of por 15. Rotate the lid every 5 minutes or so , get the por 15 in every crevice. then drain the excess out. This will prevent the edges from rusting out ever again , and protect the work you just did.

Nice to see all the work you putting into it

I suppose 451boy could stop by to help you kick off your channel

TY...I wouldn't mention you without your permission

You have one more now. That big YouTube money is just around the corner. Lol

Kevin

Have you got your new Vanity Plate ordered yet? MYTAZWEL or MITASWEL

Kevin

This is work that I've wanted to do for well over a decade, and is not really a case of "might as well", "mission creep" or anything like that.

I apologize if I gave that impression, it was not intentional.

I drowned the lip with epoxy from the inside once, but will probably do it one more time and slosh it around a little bit more.

Had some rotten luck with por15 in the past so I'm anti-por, but had amazing results/longevity with epoxy so I'm pro-epoxy.

That's probably too political

I wanted enough safe clearance for a 31" tire but have enough of a restoration mindset
to want a fairly "stock appearing" lip, so I incorporated that change into the quarter replacement.

The first side took about 4x as long to do as the second side. It's true what they say about practice.

By now I'd already cut up several of my new reproduction parts just to make them fit/interface properly with
other parts on the vehicle, so it was no problem to cut them up more for other reasons.

I'm skipping the low down stuff but also Leaded all the seams, have done maybe more than my share of metal finishing and so on.

I let it go too long.

I've left out alot of details that should probably be posted somewhere else, but anyway now the thread is mostly up to date so here is the current situation.

Stripped the trunk floor and wheel houses of the EDP, applied a few coats of epoxy/good for now.
Roof/quarters/dutchman/trunklid epoxy, filled, blocked to 40/80, surfacer and blocked to150/220....ready for 320 overall* next.

*overall because I haven't blocked below the character line at all and don't intend to, until it's up in the air....when it is, then I'll do the whole car below the character line.

Wow Rich, way to keep after it! it's coming around

Though it never had the side trim as long as I've owned it, and I have no intention of ever putting it back on,
the side emblems are mandatory. "You have to have these".

I measured and noted their location before cutting off the quarter panels, after doing some research I found my '69 emblems were in the same location as a '68,
I then found others built at the same plant that were the same/other plants had the emblem in a slightly different location. There doesn't seem to be a ton of interest in this, probably because historically the GTX has always been an underappreciated model, and that's ok. https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/3052718/1.html

OF all the bodywork i do, blocking primer has to be my favorite activity for sure.... this is what "makes" the job

Keep up the great work

Rich,

It’s coming along nice man! Keep up the great work!

Wes

Coming along great. You have talent for rust repair for sure. That can be very tedious as I've found out. I second the idea of using POR 15 on the inside. We use a hand pump sprayer. Load it up and let drip. Seals everything from the back. Then throw the sprayer in the trash. Also if there is left over POR 15. set plastic wrap on the liquid before reattaching the lid. It'll keep it from hardening in the can.
Doug

Great work. I've always been a fan of this car and the antics.

Just dont make it too nice that you're scared to abuse it!

Thanks all.

Alot of folks hate hand blocking, but I have to admit I am a little like n20mstr.
Knowing how important it is, I want to take my time and really look/feel what is going on....
the repetition and focus needed give it great potential to become a zenlike activity, I've been
a guitarist for 43 years and gravitate towards that kind of stuff.

I usually get some tunes going, to help me down that path. Loud is good.

But for filler work, I like to rough it in with power tools/whatever combination of air file or DA seems to be working,
before going anywhere near it with a hand block.

I haven't even evolved beyond spray-bomb jobs and you're replacing panels, etc.

Before long it will look like this!

And yet I send intake manifolds to you for flow testing, because I can't do that.

I couldn't do any of that either, prior to 2006.

In 2006 some bad things happened to another car, and sent me down the path. I have a good friend to thank for getting me started.

If moparts wasn't quite so painful to load multiple pics and if I had a little more time, I could tell a more complete story and probably bore people to death.

There is a huge quarter panel, green metallic paint, and a C body involved, as well as the help of two moparts
members in 2 different states.

Correction, it was 2005.

My daily was wrecked by a drunk/scary high speed incident, I paid Dwain C. in Wyoming for a quarter panel, a great guy whos username was JackB near Belvedere Il picked up and held it for me strictly out of love of the hobby and wanting to help, drove there and picked it up in my then-GFs/now wife's borrowed minivan, my buddy Todd helped me install it, we did other metal work besides....I painted that giant 23 foot long green car complete...just for the experience and because I liked the car....my second overall paint job......and the die was kinda cast.

That was the point I progressed from pop rivets and bondo with spray bomb primer/lacquer topcoat
to proper welded body repairs/panel replacement and epoxy/urethane/base-clear metallic paint, and nothing but 2k refinish products.
Sure, I made a bunch of mistakes, it is inevitable, but the green car sat outdoors for about 15 of the past 17 years, and most of the paint is still on it....it fared much better than the GTX.

Big green car repair was on the General board back then, but old posts from General have been blown away.

I should be so lucky.

I like how the color is more calm in this picture:

The GTX won't be blue as long as I own it, though. I already have a blue B body, it's waiting to be redone sometime later.

you and me too !
my body work "skills" consist of a BFH, a crowbar, and lots of "words" that are, shall we say, somewhat "impolite" in most circles.

i learned a long time ago that my strongest skill on paint and body works is know who to hire to do the work I want done to my cars
AKA, I envy those that have good skills on both metal repair and painting them

Great to see this thread, and all the progress you are making. Thanks for sharing the link Rich!

I hadn’t totally repaired the right door jamb and installed the quarter panel anyway, it resulted
In unhappiness/inadequate gap. It was totally my fault, I fixed it. The lead partially melted too so a little more work
Is needed there.

Pulled the door, sliced off the skin and am repairing the structure.
Hopefully I’ve metal finished it well enough to not need much else.

Test fit of The repro door skins went well, they seem to just fall into place with hand pressure and look like they will fit nicely.
Things are looking good.

There’s a lot more, but to be honest this platform bogs me down something fierce.

Jeremiah, are you JD on FB? I just saw a friend RQ from JDL but now it is gone

Would have liked to stop by and see how you were doing this. I just barely dabbled with this on the Charger years ago, and it did not go well.

No worries Dave, the other (left) door may actually be worse than this one, and I have not done anything to it yet. I'll give you a shout when the time comes.

The gaps seem to make sense and the skin wants to go on where it should. Going to need to acid wash or blast, or maybe do both to the inner structure. Might call around for quotes to see if it's better to farm that out. I bought a small pressure blaster and did the fenders, I can do these too, but it wasn't my idea of a good time.
I have to do it outdoors and there's been too much rain recently.

Send the structures over to International Paint Stripping for a dip in the tank. Close to Metro Airport.
Doug

Address: 15300 Oakwood Dr, Romulus, MI 48174
Hours:
Open ⋅ Closes 4PM
Phone: (734) 942-0500

Forgot about them, Thx. I might have to go that route.

On FB I found a mobile wet blaster in Davisburg, and the powder coater I've been using in Lapeer also does
blasting. Options.......

The mobile wet blasters warp body panels!

The neighbor had a '66 Nova done that was pristine and just wanted the paint stripped. it did not go well!

Nice Progress, BTW!

Doesn't sound too appealing. I didn't hurt my fenders blasting them myself but that was with a pretty low volume of media and air.

You've been watching from the get-go. Thanks for hitting the "like" button on the Book of Faces all this time.

Outstanding work !! Looks great Rich

Thank Rich. That would be great!

It's been great following this journey Rich. I have to do some similar work on my own car myself in the future. I am trying to go fast on pennies, so I try and do as much as I can myself.

[quote

The mobile wet blasters warp body panels!

The neighbor had a '66 Nova done that was pristine and just wanted the paint stripped. it did not go well! [/quote]
I was told years ago when blasting car body panels, sheet metal, to always blast it on an angle, not straight onto it to avoid warping or hurting the metal

I agree with Cab about the wet blasting. But for an additional reason: the wet blasting leave a slurry in every crack and place inside the body panels and frame rails. I saw a real vid of a restoration shop cutting panels off of a vehicle (68 charger) and the bladting media was caked on and stuck to almost every surface that got wet. It was bad! And really opened my eyes to wet blasting. So please beware!

Link to that vid:
https://youtu.be/HKBpU20cR-M

X2

Looking good so far. It will be awesome when finished. I replaced the entire floor in my Roached Runner for safety reasons. Yeah, it was that bad from 8" of wet leaves inside for many years. However, the rest of the car is staying just the way it looks for that sleeper look.

After two weeks of looking at show cars, between the nats, the dream cruise, to a somewhat lesser extent
Back to the bricks, I was tired of thinking about bodywork and needed a little break. I had this big block Chevy generic engine
Cradle laying around for awhile and had procrastinated converting it to work with a Hemi.

The rear plates might show some Andy F influence.

I was not thinking about dipstick tube retention at the time, that part was a happy accident.

So much easier to move and less wobbly than a service stand.

Back to the car soon.

Ok....explain how you did this, I need to know....

Pretty much make patterns, templates, cut the patches-often slightly oversize,
Lay them in place, hold down with screws or clecos, cut through both layers (the patch and the repair area)
At the same time but only partially, tack weld while pushing down/holding the patch flush with a screwdriver or similar.
Slowly cut and tack until you're all the way around each patch, stitch weld, then grind using anything from
An angle grinder to sandpaper rolls/cartridges, to mini (13” belt) sander.
Welding and grinding takes some time, fitting the patches has to be right and you
must cut into good metal.

Fitzees fabrication on youtube is a good resource for doing this without much in the way of special tools.

I use mig because I have appropriate equipment for sheetmetal and experience with it, but for the highest possible quality I feel that
oxy-acetylene with jewler's torch and/or tig (possibly a combination)
is most likely the final frontier for larger jobs because the weld is a much softer composition, less stiff, and easier to work with...however the
tedious nature of the job will be amplified with other methods.

Things slowed down undesirably but that's how it goes when your employer fires 3000 people in one week.
Two days after the last post, after over 8 years service, I had to start over. A little turmoil resulted.
I picked away at the project but tried not to spend any money, and partially failed.

About a month later I got an all-around way better job somewhere else....so time to get cracking again.

One door is race ready, if there is any such thing.

Ended up doing more repairs to the inner, then using a crazy combination of
acid wash and blasting to clean it, then a few coats of epoxy. The skin was more straightforward to install than I thought it would be.
I can say that AMD door skin really did fit perfectly, the prep issues that I did have were my own fault and inexperience showing.

I expect the second/left door skin to go on smoother, or at least it won't seem like a brand new thing anymore.

door stuff

Also prepped most of the right jamb.

I say "most of" because the dash is still in the car which prevents me from completing the backside of the A pillar.
I'm waiting until I get the left door off to pull the dash, so there will be less stuff in the way.

You can see what seems to be a rookie error, as I did epoxy a hard line into the surfacer because of the quick tape job, but
I actually don't care and it is OK, its only sanded to 220 anyway.
The hard line will disappear with another short pass of 220 blocking + the 320 and others coming after will refine it that much more.

Also decided on exterior color and did a couple sprayouts on the cut off door skin to make sure the color really is what it's supposed to be.
First basecoat I tried missed the color pretty badly, second attempt just about nailed it.

Off the subject, you were working at Chrysler/DaimlerChrysler/FCA/Stellantis?

3000 people let go?

Looking good. You are really developing some good skills at rust repair. That is a crazy amount of work.

Ummmm... what ^^^ said

Looking good Rich! Light at the end of the tunnel now.

Keep at it, Rich! Nice work. It'll be done before you know it.

Good to see you back at it Rich! And congrats again on the new job.

Hey,

I'll PM you rather than dumping my life story out here.

Thanks all, going to stay after it in the off season as much as possible.




TY.

In younger days, '80s, I remember thinking people who did that kind of work were like
old wizards or something. I never thought I would become one of those people.

It is amazing how much you are doing. That takes a lot of perseverance. Long live the GTX!

Awesome work!

Looking better and better

Looks great Zippy and glad your job situation worked out!

Stripped the left door.
Thankfully The left door structure is much cleaner than the right.
Only the rear lower corner needs to be cut out and repaired, other than that it is pretty solid.

Here's the current situation on the right side.

Looks good Rich. Are you using any guide coat for blocking?

Oh yeah, Jeff. Current favorite is this Mirka dry guide coat.

https://www.amazon.com/Mirka-9193500111-P-Dry-Guide-Coat/dp/B01GA7DVVQ

OK. I've always used the SEM stuff.

My guide coat of choice.....when im done priming i just put some reduced basecoat in the gun. Turn the PSI way down, like to 5-10 and then just dust it on

i'm always in awe when someone posts pics of great body work.
my talent in that department is just which BFH to use, or which crowbar size is appropriate, maybe a combination of each.

I always have mondo respect for the dude hammering away in his garage late at night and having a go at doing almost everything he can on his ride himself.

Kudos Zippy, keep the pix coming man, great work !

Wow Rich! You're persevering all the bad stuff well and it'll be nice when you're done. Good work

Our guide coats usually come from a spray can unless we have some dark color available for the gun done the same way as Tony

More of the same kind of thing.
My wife eats lucky charms, and I only get the box.
But, if they provide any good luck then I'll take all I can get!

Yes, I could have flipped the cardboard over, but needed the plain side to face down because
that's where I made my pencil marks. So: It's "fun, distracting and unprofessional side up".

You'll notice the cut metal isn't anywhere near the size of the templates, this is by design.
The templates are supposed to be slightly oversize. Rough cut new metal to the template, hold securely in place, partially cut through both
new and repair layers at the same time, peel back the bad stuff, hold the new stuff in place and tack it.

Here it is flipped over, showing the side that will be visible when the door is opened, after the skin is installed.

Still needs rectangular bumper hole cut out.

Now finish rust and paint removal, 2-3 coats of epoxy in and out, prep the new skin with epoxy and a little sound deadener
on the inside, then the skin will be ready to install.

I could have bought complete door shells for $1800 instead of two skins for $600 and done all this work
(normally skins are $800 but I found both skins discounted, one locally at Roseville on sale and the other from Jegs
with slight shipping damage/edge dents that came out with a few minutes of hammer and dolly work).

Why not use complete reproduction door shells? For labor savings, complete door shells would be the way to go, but
I fit the quarter panels using these original doors,
would rather not mess up the gaps in a new way and then have to fix that, fix any other issues they may have, and plus these originals were plenty savable. No reason to scrap them for a couple rust spots, they don't grow on trees...its not 1982 anymore.

I use frozen pizza boxes the same way Rich!

Looks good!

Wray Schelin's YouTube channel is also great for metal fab info. He hates bondo so he shows people how to take metal work as far as needed to make it right. He also makes the shrinking discs used for metal finish work.

You'll probably live longer...

I agree with the original stuff. Any body that thinks Goodmark or AMD just bolts on and needs a prime coat is living in La La land. Many times it's quicker to fix the old stuff than fit the new stuff. Great progress.
Doug

Hopefully this is not so exciting that it breaks the internet

Left door is coming along quicker than the right door, which I guess figures since it's the second one and
I had a better idea of what to expect.

Super complex and highly professional blasting rig came through again. $20 second hand pressure blaster with a few parts replaced.
As for the media, "Black Blast" (coal slag) from Menards is expensive but rips through the rust and coatings much quicker than silica sand.
PPE/Respirator required. 2 coats of SPI black epoxy. I would probably dip the entire car in epoxy if I could.

Interior of new skin, scuffed e-coat and applied a few coats of epoxy.
Next day, masked off and shot a thinner (lightweight racing?) layer of sound deadener just like OE, but less sloppy.

Added the rectangular bumper hole to the repaired area of the structure, hammered and dolly the skin partially into place, (not shown) test fit on the car to confirm gaps were correct, pulled back off, hammer and dolly work to finish the skin install, spot welded the skin to the structure every 6 inches or so, prepped/smoothed the welds. Flipped it over, removed ecoat, 3 coats of epoxy, minor filler work, sealed bodywork with epoxy, (shown) 3 coats of 2k surfacer.

Tonight, guide coat and blocking. I think I got this one straighter, earlier/up front than the other side.

Goal with every panel is to repair everything, block each individual part out to 220, then when all panels are to that point, block the whole
vehicle in 320 + whatever finer grit I'll probably decide to go with. Basecoat TDS says 400 dry, 500 wet. My sprayout over 600-sanded 2K looks nice. Will probably get some extra materials, and shoot a whole old door skin or the remnants of a quarter panel for practice and to decide which one really suits me better.

When this door is finished to 220 that will complete the first stage of my master plan for the exterior+ trunk.

Engine compartment, cowl, bulkhead and A pillars will come next.
The engine is still in the car, so that's going to require a little bit of work to pull the 451.
Being a sentimental idiot, I will need to hear it run again before it comes out
and plan to run plenty of fogging oil through it.

Bodywork is tough to do right.

Good job, Rich! That car's going to be amazing!

I love your plan, pretty much how i do it, but i like to use spray polyester. I like blocking the panels into each other (doors qtrs, fenders) then carfefully take it apart for paint . It gives you really nice body lines and super flat flow from panel to panel

Haven't any experience with poly primer yet, but after the multiple rounds on the quarter panels with regular poly filler on the fenders and quarters to get them straight, I can see now that maybe poly primer would have got me where I wanted to be, sooner/faster.

I'm probably an odd duck in that I'm totally comfortable with old stuff hardly anyone is interested in like lead/body solder and single stage paint, but have not tried poly primer.

There's always the next project

Thanks!

Thank you Mark! No rust, and straight are really my only priorities right now.

after that, the topcoat will make it or break it.
If nobody highly skilled offers to shoot it for me (which I assume will happen, given the lame response received so far)
then I'll have to buy extra materials, practice, develop something on my own and set up the shop a little
differently to do a makeshift booth. Tentative plans have been made and so on.

Looks great Rich! Can't wait to see the finished product...I'm sure you can't either. That's gonna be one nice GTX!

Left door finally straight @220 and ready to move on to the next thing.

A couple wet coats of surfacer gives the future 320-up something to work with, and shows every mistake when it's wet.
That's how it will sit until the rest is ready.

I can't complain about the fit of the amd door skins, but I believe they required a little more work to straighten than they should.
Above the body character line they were beautiful out of the box and required very little....below the character line, on both sides, wavy and needing alot of effort.
But you know, the original panels were not perfect either.

Currently working on the left door jamb up to the front bulkhead seam, then will bolt the doors and fenders back on temporarily to get to work on the next step.

Looks like the A post/bulkhead will be the last thing to address, I'm going to put it off because the hinges have to come off to treat/prep the metal which
will mean time spent to correct the gaps/panel alignment, so it makes sense to leave the panel alignment and gaps for the very last step of the exterior.

As I remember those door skins actually bow inward from front to back slightly. Like if you put a straightedge all the way from the front edge to the back edge.
Doug

I don't recall noticing that, but on mine a couple inches of each lower corner does curve inward very slightly, then goes pretty flat for the remainder of the exterior surface.

The inward curve is enough to require a flex block in that area.

The originals were somewhat like that too, but admittedly I may have changed it slightly when I did the rust repair to the structures.

Both door jambs are now stripped/epoxy/surfacer @220 following same process as the rest of the body, behind the A pillar bulkhead seam.
To complete the jambs and bulkhead in front of the A pillar seam the car will need to be disassembled more/dash will need to come out, which will come later.

Left rocker panel and pinchweld strip/prep/epoxy was last night. The quarter to rocker transition fill has been roughed in lead for some time, I will finish it in polyester tonight or maybe tomorrow.

I use tall jackstands when I need extra room to work, to get the hoist arms out of the way and allow me to work fairly comfortably standing up.

Coming along nicely Rich!

ain't that the truth!

When you hammer and dolly those door skins onto the door frame, does that cause any distortion on the outside edge of the door skin? I've always wondered that.
You're doing a great job, thanks for taking us along!

Not if you do them correctly.

No, it doesn't seem to cause any distortion in the worked areas, but as Jeff referred to... doing it right takes a pretty light touch/high volume of light hits in a small area.

If a person wailed on it too hard, or misused (overtightened, even by a tiny amount) one of the special roller-type tools out there for this purpose, that would cause some damage.

These particular ones were wavy in weird places. One had sort of a vertical low spot/wave issue about 3/4 of the way back, and both of them were
wavy a couple inches above the bottom seam, between the bottom and the character line. That might be why they were discounted/on sale?
While I'm pretty confident that my installation didn't cause any of the issues I had to correct (because the issues were too far away from the worked area), I can't actually guarantee it.
I'm not trained and these are the first I've done, so they are what they are. They're as good as I can make them.

Thanks Ted/mods for letting this stay in the race area for now.

I agree , your doing a great job . My brother did body work all his life . Wish I would have watched more . I always helped , but never worked a job start to finish . Gary

Prep on the car continues, still have some light work to do really but not a ton. Mostly it involves taking things off for access.

I've had it in the air (with the opposite side supported on stands from the last post) for a few weeks and am almost done blocking the lower body (from the character line down) to 220, re-priming and repairing things I missed earlier.
Nice to work standing up.

While that is going on I'm planning the next steps to prep the rest of it, and am starting to get my topcoat game together.
I am not going anywhere near the car with base/clear without 100% confidence, and will not learn a tool or a material on the car.
(Learning/trial and error happens somewhere else, on things that don't matter)

Alot has happened but most of it is captured in pictures, and are just details slowly coming together as they should.

I bought my basecoat in sufficient quantity (PPG 2016, the original color which is A4 silver), Boxed the two gallons (mixed to avoid variance between one gallon and the next),
bought myself a new clear gun for X mas because I was concerned my existing tools couldn't shoot the high solids clear I wanted, bought a small amount of the clear,
started to practice on scrap.

Two attempts got the setup for base where I wanted it, four attempts got the clear about as good as I will ever get it.
Notebook with all the details has been started + pics of the notebook saved as well.
However....just like a race vehicle, it's all in the combination. this is all in my comfy 70 degree heated shop...and in spite of this self-schooling I'm positive future temp and humidity conditions could cause me big problems, so I will do another test closer to the big day when base gets applied to the car to stay dialed in, and will try to have more than one activator on hand.

Wish I had a local hookup for mis-mixed colors and whatnot, it'd be nice to get my hands on some extra gray and silver metallics, even stuff that is the wrong shade for my car....just to practice with metallics and spend more time on them. They can be tricky to shoot but when you hit it just right, pride of workmanship gets kicked way up and it feels good. The A4 silver has a TON of metallic (I believe aluminum) in it and is easy to mess up and end up with it looking bad if there is a setup or technique error. Solid colors are much less stressful.

The tools laying on the floor by the practice panel show the reflection, and it's a good enough starting point for me.

My goal is nothing rougher than late model OEM levels of orange peel, that only needs nib and polish to be presentable, and no more.
If it ever gets completely cut and buffed, I'd rather do that years down the road, but I may chase it sooner. Still developing an opinion on that.

Wish you were closer as we have LOADS of left over metallics and even candies in the cabinet. Small amounts that once in a blue moon we might use but be happy to give them away as we always buy more.

Appreciate the thought anyway! Small amounts of different stuff would be perfect to practice with.

I have extra of this particular silver color, but knowing how unforgiving candies are supposed to be, maybe they would be even better test material.

OH.......now that I think about it more, I do have some leftover F8-ish (dark green metallic) from my C body.
That color seemed alot easier than this silver, though and I don't think it'd challenge me much...no need to bust that out.

Starting to feel like this will go on forever, and wondered if having a little color
On the car might help my bad attitude so I shot the underside
Of the trunk lid.

Having it there to look at is a good motivator and attitude adjuster.

It’s helpful to remember how it started/most of the exterior Was about the same.

Rich! That's nice man!

X2

Thanks for letting the thread hang here for awhile.

Just prep stuff, stripped after repairs, epoxy, surfacer, prepped to p600 and seam sealed,
Then base/clear.

3m has training videos for seam sealer on youtube. Helped me a bunch.

When this thing is all done, people will ask. Who did the body? Who did the paint? Who did the motor? You'll be able to answer "I did"
Doug

Looks excellent. I love that silver with the slight green tinit.

Nice work Rich!

And that is a very satisfying accomplishment.

Car is looking great Rich!

Thanks guys + everyone.

It's not easy to just keep plugging away but having one fairly nice panel to look at has really helped my mental health LOL.

Admit I did look at the painted panel a few times starting yesterday after being crammed under the roll bar,
finishing up the mini tub install in the rear seat area. It's no a big deal until both feet go numb and my neck gets locked bent way over
to the left. It's like automotive yoga, not my cup of tea at this stage in life LOL

That trunk lid looks great! How'd you clean up the rust in between the two panels?

Thank you. Although I know it's possible, I decided it was too much for me to split the hem flanges on that panel and peel off the skin, deal with the rust, then later
rebuild the whole hem flange all the way around, so I took n2omstr advice and dumped nearly a quart of Rust Bullet into it,
sloshed it around to get into the corners, and let it drain. The exterior rear/bottom also had about 2.5 to 3" cut off/ replaced/metal finished and prepped
so I wanted to protect that effort.





.

That looks awesome Rich!

Awesome work, Rich! You're a man on mission

really nice work on the door bottoms !

Just read entire post.
Your doing a great job by saving repairable OEM parts.
I Never heard of Rustbullet...I may give it a try!
I too am in slow progress...the small completed task keep the drive going.

Thanks again all. I have a ton more detail in other pics but it's tough to post them all here with the limits set,
but have the most history here so I am trying to just hit highlights. I'll have to get into detail somewhere where it's easier to post multiple pics.

Also have some short, super amateurish videos that probably not many would want to see but I may throw them out there anyway.




Appreciate that. I like the rust bullet a little better than POR15.

The process I have had the absolute best luck with is blast and 3 coats of a quality epoxy, Everything always seems to hold up after that,
but blasting is not always practical and I feel like I need to do it myself on sheetmetal to make sure nothing is damaged.
I actually hate doing that work, it's pretty awful as I am not set up for it, but I love the results LOL.

Very impressive looking results Rich! That work is something I didn't have the talent of patience for in my teens, and I don't have the hands for it now.

I used to not care at all about such things, but the more progress I've made the more I realize certain things
I wanted restored rather than modified, so I blew the sound deadener on.

The factory applied it to bare metal before the quarters were welded on.
But...I'm not the factory, I apply epoxy and do everything else later.

Pretty happy with the result, nice heavy texture. About 3 quarts used for both quarters + I added a little to the doors.

Don't know if the restoration people would be interested in this product, I might consider selling it if I thought someone was interested.

thanks again for letting an obviously more street than race car live in here.

Getting ready to shoot the trunk for real. Could have saved alot of labor by deciding the color sooner and shooting base over epoxy
in the trunk but needed to get to work on it and decide later. As a result I have to sand it all down, epoxy again, seam seal and base over that.
I haven't enjoyed sanding the inside of the trunk down much but IIWII.

Also the stats say 16,000+ views...Thanks for checking this out, folks...that is pretty cool....maybe folks are more interested in this stuff than it seems.
Now the pressure is really on, to not mess it up!

After I finished all the rust repair and stretching the wheel wells on the 64 it went across the street to my friends for paint. I asked if he wanted help blocking it. He said NO!. I asked what could I do to help? He said do the engine compartment, trunk, door jambs, and underneath. Sand, bondo, and seam seal to my hearts content. It's a lot of work that's tedious. Seam sealed every seam in the car and the underside of the floor pan. I did block the outer tail panel between the tail lights. When it's all done you'll forgot how much time and effort it took. But you'll never forget the quality of your work.
Doug

YOU guys are crazy, seal sealer is heavy.....just scrape it all off LMAO

You know, you have a point!

Fighting alot of rust, and liking the looks (but not necessarily the performance) of restored cars leads a person down a weird path.

The iron Hemi was probably the point I mostly gave up on ever being lightweight, by any stretch of the imagination

Keep up the good work Rich.

I wish the other build threads in the "Member Projects & Survivor Pictures" were not buried at the bottom of the forum. The other forums I'm on, build threads draw very high volumes of views.

Thx Buddy. Might tell more of the story on fbbo sometime.

Forgot an update, wrapped up the front of the mini tub install, prepped/primed/seam sealed/
Base/clear on the rear footwell, quarter window and rear bulkhead areas.

The floor was previously painted with some kind of White House paint, in spots….presumably by the same maniac
Before me who painted the exterior brown. thats how it looked when I first got it….either
It was all they had to slow down rust, or they were going for a budget race car appearance?
I’ll never guess…
Though it’s hidden by carpet, it felt good to get rid of it and the couple layers of black
Rattle can paint I had added, and I think it
Will last a little while.

Also fit the window reveal moldings and drilled all the trim clip holes.
The clips everyone sells for the rear window don’t work.
Either have to order 3 sets of windshield clips, or the set of 25 the manufacturer
Stocks for the car yet does not say what the function is on the car.
Didn’t have much fun with that, doubt the vendors would care and didn’t post except on fb.
The clips work now and trim fits, anyway.

A4

Yep, the original color.

looks great !
as to weight, i kind of regret hosing the Texaco brand "ziebart" undercoating i applied all over my charger.
it makes a mess of the engine compartment, and is hard to clean off.
i also did my buddy's 71 charger super bee. boy, did he cuss me out when he went to restore the engine compartment !
he did admit, however, it wasn't a bit of rust there !
anyone care to guess how much weight was added when we applied that stuff back then ?

I can remember scraping around 30 Lbs. of under coating off of several early A and B bodies to make the minimum NHRA weight for classes a long time ago
that was SO CA cars that hadn't been driven anywhere else except there, some slight mud on some of them maybe

A little more color+ clear applied.

Sanded, probably year old black epoxy on metal, then…, fresh coat of epoxy/gray and closer to the
End color. Seam sealer, base within 24 hours of the last epoxy, clear on the same day
Hours later.

Knowing it would be covered with a trunk mat I altered my process slightly
From the inside of the trunk lid…which helped me develop a preference
That I’ll stick to for the exterior/class a surfaces.

Only thing that really went wrong is my sound deadener sagged in the middle.
I’ll mess with that later, or maybe not.

A4 is such a calm/classy color compared to a lot of others, and has a ton of metallic which I think is aluminum(?)
Wasn’t long ago I doubted my ability to spray it without stripes and mottling errors but over time I
Have learned a lot about reducer quality/speed, gun setup and technique to make it feel
Pretty user friendly. Modern urethane basecoat is amazing stuff.
Get it all right, and the metallic seems to lay out almost like magic.

Color looks a little different due to the higher k factor led light on it.
I’ve found the lower the k factor and the further away, the more the color flops to green.
The flop is essential to the look in certain lightning conditions, vs. plain old silver.

Nice work Zippy I am enjoying following along.

Cool 👍

The lighting was just right to flop the color to green about as strongly
As I ever gets, and
This work really is a pretty big leap forward, so I had to take another pic.

Looks really outstanding! Nice work.
Forgive me if it was stated…..I looked back but maybe missed it: what A4 did you go with? PPG, RM? Etc. a few years ago, the paint shop had a difficult time with the orig AA1 (for 1968) and we ended up with RM brand.

I went with PPG, color code #2016.

thanks for the compliment, it's been a long journey to say the least.

Looking good Rich, keep going!

Very nice ! I hope thats not getting covered up with a trunk mat.

You must have some LONG arms, nice job

Thank you guys again. It'll probably get a stock type trunk mat to avoid scratches.

I usually haul around a bunch of stuff back there so I have to do somethin'......

It's really a big car, I've got comments from folks on arm length before, so it must be true.
Arm+torso combined and sufficient core strength to lean way in there seems to be what it's about.

I've picked and sanded a few colored fibers out of the paint here and there, and just got a couple moon suits from Amazon
to help with that problem.

Considered calling around to see if I can rent a booth, but not sure I want to deal with the pressure of getting in and out quick....so will probably
start hanging plastic and tarps pretty soon. Need sufficient time to repair inevitable mistakes and so on.

Looking good Rich.

It’s all coming along nicely, Rich!

Just a little update with more color.

Coming along slowly but surely.

Fly masked and back taped everywhere for soft edges, but am also expecting to have to lightly sand the edges here and there.

Will probably prep the ridiculously heavy steel hood just to have the car complete and to be able to paint all the parts, but to be honest I probably won't even use it.

Shop is a gigantic mess and I need to regroup before taking too many more steps.

Won't be long now Rich!

I would paint that car apart, that avoids the "tape lines in the jambs etc. I know its silver, but just position the doors, fenders etc as they would sit on the car. Then just be accurate in your gun and air pressure settings. Same number of coats etc. I have done this countless times and the cars have all matched, and look great. HOWEVER.... i have recommended this procedure to some people and for some reason they have had color match issues... MAYBE im just lucky?? it hasnt bit me yet. I love doing the main shell first, then hanging the parts on it as i paint them... WhaTEVER YOU ARE MOST comfortable with is what you should do. Looks great so far

I love to panel paint, I did consider it and might try it if it was a solid, but I don't feel I am consistent enough with this color to do it.
I’ll need the ability to walk the car and do orientation coat on the whole thing to get it right.

Love this build but seeing pros who I know HAVE TO be way better than me
Fight with this color, guided me to take the Path of least resistance.

If materials were free I might attempt it, but even then probably not.

Looking great, Rich! I've enjoyed watching the progress. Beautiful color that WILL pop day or night!

Thanks Wes!

I'm really Giving it my best shot but trying to keep the whole effort in balance from a time and "type of build/what are we really doing here" perspective.

Here are a few screen clips from a video after I pulled the tape.

Been studying and practicing soft edge masking on primer for a little while now, this is my first foray into doing it on a topcoat.
Corners of the trunk jambs came out better than expected and should prep well for blending when I final sand the exterior.

I'll get more practice doing masking again in the other direction later, when I reverse mask those same areas to do the exterior.

Absolutely amazing Rich!! I enjoyed the ride and can see some light at the end of the tunnel. You'll be so proud at the car show when they ask who did the the paint and say..................ME!!!

When i worked in a body shop, there were 3 colors everyone hated to paint. White, gold, and silver. One speck color off, and it wouldn't match. Once saw a simple fender replacement that ended up almost a complete respray, because the blend was so messed up.

They do. I finally noticed it.

I don’t notice that on the vehicle but it’s there.

Hit the shop at 6am today to hose on some clear coat before work.
I’m really loving the original color combo, and it sure makes me happy to
do good quality work.

Had a few issues with the basecoat but like everything else they were
100% my fault, repaired them last night and moved on, can’t tell anymore and will probably
Forget it happened.

Rich...I would say that you are doing a heckuva job! Keep up the nice work!!

I second that!

Rich, i can't remember, but are you putting the side trim, and lower black back on the car? That color combo would look good with the red reflective stripe.

Side trim delete. A not so Rare option

For years I always said I’d put the trim on if I had it, but the car
Never had it during my ownership, and I never acquired it.

after replacing all the metal I’m not sure I’d have the
Heart to drill 40 holes for that trim.

Did some more stuff.

Was totally clueless how to install the trunk torsion bars/seemed counterintuitive. Once I understood how, it took about 5 minutes.
The service manual confirmed my improvised approach was more or less backwards. I've never messed with those before, ever and hopefully
never will again.

On disassembly, you could see the factory assembled the metal, greased the trunk hinges, and then painted right over the grease.
As awesome as a factory original car might be, I didn't do that....

Now that everything has new slippery paint on it, it all needs to be adjusted and seems to be fighting me.
I used to be able to just wiggle the pieces around a little, and they'd find their old home in the very few places there wasn't any rust. Not anymore.

Alot of prep I did 2 years ago on tedious little things (rebuild/clean/epoxy most of the hinges and things like that), paid off....as I could clean/prep/paint them real quick now.
I did mess up by waiting to rebuild the upper door hinges until now, so that slowed me down a couple hours or whatever but nothing too bad.

Nice progress!

Floor jacks and muscle power, turned the car sideways for final prep.

Washed the floor for the first time since last fall. It's still not actually clean, but it's better.

The biggest problem is not only my bodywork project, but one of the rams in my hoist sprung a dang leak. The hoist works fine but you go through alot of oil-dri.
So that is first on my list to repair once this has color on it and is curing. If anyone local knows someone good I can just drop the cylinder off to... to be rebuilt,
pls let me know about them as I'd gladly go that route.

The hoist + high lift garage door tracks will make good attachment points, and I shouldn't need to add a ton of structure to section the car off
with plastic or whatnot to control the airflow/protect everything that I don't want painted.

The view when I open the door:

WOW....looks like its almost that time ! ! !

GO ! GO ! GO !

your car will look AMAZING when done !
keep after it. won't be long now !

Change of plans I probably communicated on another platform but not here....Enough grinding and welding needs to happen in the engine bay
that I think I'll not do that until later.

So I will leave the Wedge in it to get the exterior done.

then after engine comes out repairs/changes happen in the engine compartment, the color will match.

Getting ready to bolt the fenders on pretty soon and had to get my topcoat in all the back areas.

These are still curing and I think I achieved the target of "Pretty close to factory appearing, but cleaner" look that I was after with the seam sealer application.

High K factor camera flash as shown here=Medium, very normal looking Silver.....Low K factor=flop to green or gold.
The color is like a "mood ring" (remember?) I love it.

Rich,

Damn! Looking good brother! Nice work!!!

Needed to go one step backward on the trunk lid to get it the same level as the rest of the body.
That one part has been quite alot more work than it should have been.
If I could go back in time, I'd have used polyester primer on it which would have helped me get it right, faster.
Lesson learned.

It's almost all blocked out to P320 except below the character line on the right side, which I should get done over the next couple days.

Above the character line all the cut throughs to metal and underlying layers of epoxy have been addressed with fresh epoxy and more 2k urethane surfacer, to give the final P600 something to work with.
That can all sit there, outgas and shrink for awhile.

Will need to do the same to the lower body areas as well.

Still need to address lower grille support, have not done anything yet and will probably prep my original part.

I already look at it, even like this, and can't hardly believe it's mine.
It's looked like hot garbage for over a decade now and I both hated it and was adjusted to it at the same time.

It's probably going to feel a little strange to not be able to throw wrenches at it anymore like I used to, and to have to cover the fenders with blankets and stuff when working on it.
I'm looking forward to the change, though.

It's going to look amazing when you are done.

I'd love to see it. There is something to be said about not being careful with wrenches. I loved working on Dizusters car for that fact. The 64 has been raced for 10 years. Lots of valve lash checks, engine work, and tuning. It still looks pretty damn good. Very few rashes to the paint.
Doug

Hope to invite a few known cool local folks over once I have something a little more worthy of inspection, and a slightly more presentation-ready shop.

Might be a minute!! I'm going to keep messing it up and only cleaning the localized important areas for awhile yet.

About an hour with paint stripper and a half hour with the sandblaster proved I can save the OE lower grille support.
You never know what you have until all the coatings and fillers are removed.

I'd bought a reproduction and it's pretty nice but I liked the OE one a little better.

It might be the original part it was built with but I don't know...It came on the car back in '88 when I acquired it, and doesn't look to have been changed, but it may have been
swapped decades ago with the original right front fender was mashed and replaced. I can't tell, I'm not that good.

A couple finish sanding pics
+ wet check of the trunk lid, (by far the worst panel on the vehicle, now maybe not so anymore)
+ a reminder of something already produced, that I just need to duplicate on the exterior (Knowing for sure
You can already do what you’re trying to do, and having proof, helps alot ).

I’ll be chasing and refining scratches for quite awhile yet.

Wet check shows the car is pretty straight for an amateur, and I just have to refine the surface
properly, keep it clean so I can see what I’m doing, and end up with a uniform p600 prepped surface.
From test panels, I know what happens when you miss a scratch (metallic lays in it, looks bad) and can’t allow that to happen.

i see a small dent !!!

just yankin' yer chain !
everything is looking great ! keep up the good work !

LOL!

I'm busted! You've got a great eye!

I knowingly did let two dents go, that one you can see on the inside of the decklid, and there is also one other that is also hidden when the decklid is closed.

I've gotta draw the line somewhere, the goal is still the same.... "really nice looking"...not perfection or even close.

It's fun to be called out on that, thanks

if anyone looked at my charger, they would fall on the floor laughing so hard at all the bad spots !
having worked in a body shop and played the auction game, i really appreciate GOOD body work, and you sir, are doing a GREAT job !
i have a friend that has been a body man for over 50 years, and your work rates right up there with his !

Got about 6 hours of sanding, cleaning, scratch refinement in yesterday.

It’s very close to where I want it now.

when in doubt....block it out.....

Looks great ! the effort will show in the final results

Built a temporary booth/sectioned off the shop to control air flow a little better.

The back wall structure is two vertical pieces of lumber ratchet strapped to the hoist verticals, and only
one horizontal piece (just enough to hang plastic).

I got pretty creative with the roof structure, it seems to hold really well.
All I know is I kept imagining I heard my Dad's voice while building it, saying both it was a dumb idea/why would you waste your time, and then
as it looked like it was going to work, what an imaginative and smart idea it was.
I got done with it, and thought....only a guitar player who watched too many Spider Man shows would do something like that LOL.

Masked the car (not quite done with that yet but am close).

Cleaning is ongoing.

I guess I got a little too aggressive cleaning up and put a nice scratch in the right fender with the mop handle, so I wasn't too happy with myself for a minute there.
It sanded right out with 600 and isn't visible now, so it is a mistake easily forgotten.

This is how it sits as of last night....getting really really close.

The previous post would have made more sense if we could post 5 pics instead of 4.........

But this shows the ceiling structure or lack therof.

Added lighting, another clean-out and other work with the goal of laying down a coat of reduced epoxy today.

I did double coat the cut throughs.

Made the mistake of killing most of the lights when I took these pics, but will take more later.

I'm definitely feeling it today.

Pretty pleased with today's outcome, and it won't take much effort to be ready for the next steps.

Tomorrow, seam sealer and basecoat.

Basecoat today (if anyone's still with me).

(If you are, congrats on your attention span!) .

I'm pretty pleased with it.....

Tomorrow, the magic happens.

#teamiwata
#teamspi
#ZIPPYSWEDGE

Won't be long.
Doug

Rich...I have been watching and I think you are doing a heckuva job!

What he said!

Cant wait to see the finished product . You have come a long way . Be ready to enjoy your hard work . Gary

I really tend to ramble too much, but am not going to do that....this time I will let the old GTX do the talking.

(It's always had something to say, even though I couldn't always understand it)

Sometime later....THEN I will post a bunch of text and will ramble on endlessly about it

-

Outstanding!

Wow! Stunning!

LOOKING GREAT !

Very nice, Rich!

I love that color!

Looks great!

magnificent !!
ya can't get THAT outta' a spray bomb !

Glad you guys like it!

A whole lot went into it.
No doubt I'm a much smarter gearhead for having done the work again, 31 years later.

Check out my intake filter door insert + same filter taped over the window.

Some more shots/what the heck.

That looks great!!!

The story:

Overall I am pleased with it and an excited about the result.

As with every other paint job I have done: "Expect the unexpected, be prepared" is probably the best rule to follow.

Monday...other than very few dirt nibs and insects, the reduced epoxy/sealer went down great, and was easy to
nib out.

Independence Day Tuesday was another story. I was a little concerned as the temps were supposed to hit 88F, a little higher than I had ever sprayed the product in before, and humidity was super high, 90%, and I was not sure what to expect with that. Overall I was confident the basecoat would not be all that super difficult and I had it figured out well enough as I'd sprayed the trunk and trunklid. Wrong on all counts. Got an early start in the shop at 5:30a to attempt to beat the heat and thought I had a chance of being done with base by noon, wrong again. Tacked off, masked for seam sealer. Started working on seam sealer. What I didn't know was the high humidity sped the seam sealer up so much, that I could hardly pull the tape fast enough as it set up too quick around the edges, and that caused alot of problems and clean up.

So, after all those slight messes were cleaned up (a couple hours at least) I cleaned up stringers and small amounts of stray seam sealer and started mixing base. Thankfully I'd seen it one time before and was prepared for the sight of opening the can and seeing what appeared to be Orange/Brown basecoat (something lighter floats to the top...binder maybe?). I was also prepared for the big sticky clumps of what seems to be aluminum at the bottom of the can. This A4 color has to be mixed until you can't stand it anymore which I did.

A half hour later I was ready to spray. The car looked like it would never be any more ready than it was. Fluid, fan, air pressure adjusted, check the fan pattern, hit it. Laid down the first wet coat, and it looked absolutely horrific in the areas I had just spent a ton of time on seam sealer. Great big streaks in the base, everywhere I had wiped the car down to clean up seam sealer. After I fixed it I figured out the solvents that I had wiped the car down with, even a half hour later, were still coming out...in spite of the car looking perfectly clean and dry.
Did not know what to make of that but got past it, waited 15 minutes or so and decided I would try to fix that before continuing. It was a little early for an orientation coat but I laid one down to preserve my sanity....it looked much better and could then see the end of that issue, and got my mind straight/felt better that I could fix anything that came along.

Why didn't the wipe down solvents fully evaporate in a half hour?
Because the humidity was about 93%. It didn't matter that my improvised booth fans were running full blast the whole time.
At that point I knew in my gut that this is also why the seam sealer sped up...it is actually designed to, it is a moisture cure product. I had just not experienced it first hand until that point. High humidity: Seam sealer speeds up, basecoat slows down.

By now I had been in the shop about an hour longer than I wanted to be, it was getting hotter, and was in the mid '80s.
It is no big deal but working in a non-breathable spray suit made it much more uncomfortable, adding to the difficulty.
Wasn't feeling good at all and just had to get past it. I know most guys working at home would probably not bother with the moon suit, but I found a couple cat hairs and clothing fibers in the very first item I sprayed, and after that went to the spray suit, $14 on amazon, and problem solved.

Waited 20 minutes (10 minute flash was adequate in low humidity, I took a guess at doubling it based on appearance).
Laid one more wet coat of base. Still looked good except a couple minor inconsistencies in pattern. Had coverage by that point.
If I was skimping on material I could have done orientation coat at that point and been done (as I had done 2 wet/1 dry in the trunk and it worked perfect.) Decided with wear and tear + UV exposure, a few more mils would be smart.
Laid down another wet coat, was getting physically tired at this point and it showed in the spray pattern...there were lots of inconsistencies and I wasn't too happy with it, it looked pretty bad. I then decided the first orientation coat
I had laid on earlier, though It repaired my bruised ego, wasn't exactly the effect I wanted. I then just followed intuition and started to experiment, raised the air pressure 5psi higher, started an orientation coat and it did exactly what I wanted it to do: Loved it.
laid down two orientation coats that way for insurance and it looked fantastic. I have read most pros lower the air pressure for orientation, but I didn't like it, that was not working for me at the time.

I understood my products and worked with them previously, but did not understand exactly how the products would perform in high humidity and that's really what caused the biggest struggle. What got me through it was staying flexible mentally, and also there is a confidence that comes with purchasing plenty of extra material, knowing you have way more than enough to repair any problem that comes if you just figure it out and learn, right there on the spot.
I learned, now I know, and I still prefer to work in lower temps and lower humidity!

Walked out of the shop 10 hours later at 3:30.
Near total exhaustion, could have went to sleep right then but
didn't want to mess up schedule too badly, but was in bed at 9p with the intention of laying clear the next morning.

In hindsight:
I am SO glad I did not use activated basecoat, which would have potentially risked trapping solvents.
Those same wipe down solvents that showed streaks, and the solvents in the base, could have been trapped underneath activated basecoat, caused huge problems later on
and could have wrecked the whole job. Instead I walked away, left the fans on all night and being air dry basecoat, I let as much of the solvents out as possible for 14 hours.

July 5th.....Woke on my own at 2:30am, thought "ridiculous, and that's what I get for going to bed too early.
Whoa there....It's clear coat day. Hit it."
I took my time getting ready with a small meal etc, I definitely took a few minutes to get psyched up for the job, and was out in the home shop at 4:00am. It was already ridiculously humid.
Again.
Insert F bomb.

After the base, clearcoat was much more fun with only a few exceptions.

Though I'd painted the GTX 31 years ago, my last paint job was my C body Polara, 17 years ago. My #1 biggest error on the Polara was being in a rush and taking instructions too literally. Not only did I wait the minimum time between base and clear, but
because of the horrible "spray it how you want it to look" instructions given, I laid the first coat of clear down way too wet, ran it, and "pulled" the metallics out of position. This was a major disappointment 17 years ago.
I still have the car, I like it, and it is a reminder of that particular failure.

"Every vehicle is a test vehicle, every day is a school day" are words I live by as a gearhead.

I was determined not to repeat that error on the GTX and the new strategy was successful.
I laid the first coat down a little on the dry side to lock down the metallics. The second coat went on very wet and the car looked fantastic at that point.

I really could have stopped there/production is 2 coats and works fine, but......this isn't production.
All along I had planned on adding plenty of extra material to work with for correction.
Initial plan was 3 coats, then decide whether to either flow coat later, or lay down more material.

After the third coat I decided I did not want to flow coat, and decided I would lay on more material and work with that instead.

Not surprisingly the more coats I added, the more errors and insects stacked up on me.

Insects were picked out with tweezers midstream during and after every coat, but I couldn't get them all, there are a couple that will be embedded there, or be sanded out later. On the fourth coat I created a few runs and sags. I'd previously deliberately ran it on test panels and knew how easy the product was to work with, so it was really not a worry and I didn't care too much as long as the metallics were still locked down, which they were.. I went over those areas with a little extra material to sand off later/ "repair coat" so to speak, and gave a short flash time. Near the end of the 5th coat I found one group of ugly drips low on the body that was still moving, I sat there and added a little material at a time until it ran completely off the panel on to the floor masking.....now it looks like glass, except for a small, easier to work with sag.

I neither demanded nor achieved perfection, but I did exceed the target of "really good".

I make it sound terrible don't I?
This is why I didn't want to say anything at first. Because the critic in me is dead wrong.
NGL: The car is stunning!
If it was someone else's project, I would be super impressed.
The color alone has more class than I do LOL.

The more chrome, stainless, and black is added to it, the more amazing it's gonna look.
It's going to take some effort to get there but we will make it. I'm stoked!

A4 silver is not an easy color to spray, especially in high humidity.......It really takes a ton of skill to make it look right....but when you do, it looks incredible.

The best is yet to come

If you took the time to read any of this, thanks for sticking with me.

Excellent work Rich, kudos to you !

The satisfaction that comes from an endeavour like this is priceless.

Well done

It's nice to slow down and just pick away at the little repairs now. NGL, there are many needed but all pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Have knocked out several minor sags and dirt nibs.

at the previous paintjob/Polara, the whole job kicked my butt and I was fearful of making the problems worse, the result is I did not correct everything that needed it. The upside is, I can view all those errors today as a reminder of how the GTX would be different.

So I'm fixing everything that needs it, best as I can but am not going for a totally smooth show car appearance, as I want to keep as much material on the car as possible for future wear and tear.
I don't mind a little bit of texture here and there as it does not show badly on a silver, and I want to be able to polish it out multiple times without worry of running out of material.
Certain specs and insect marks I am choosing to leave alone/just don't care about them, and many of them won't be noticed by most people anyway.

I'm going to have to dismantle the homemade booth today.
The whole experience of conceptualizing, building, and working it it was pretty amazing. The plastic is going to be re-used for another spray structure at a buddy's place.

The job is overall quite clean for a garage job and I attribute it to the low budget homemade booth + the spray suit I wore + I actually ran in the house and took a shower right before basecoat, because I was concerned I'd sweat on the car, and that helped alot. The location of the dirt that did get into it seems directly related to the homemade booth setup. I've studied that topic for awhile now and there is a ton of good info online. Most of the dirt is on the tops of the fenders/maybe not too mysterious since that's where my air intakes from the outside are. The two side air intakes that go to the back of the shop (which is highly unclean at the moment), did not seem to pass hardly any dirt at all through the filters. I know the side intakes were functioning because I started out with only one 30x30 air intake, and found the plastic was getting pulled inward about 1 foot.......so I added a second air intake until it was very close to neutral, only slightly negative, plastic still pulled in but only a couple inches. 5 box fans below the door + one wall exhaust fan up high. There were multiple leaks in the booth, too time consuming to try to seal up the corners and so on, but the leakage areas did not seem to pass any dirt. Overall, for what I have in it, I was pretty impressed with the performance of the booth, after I added the second air intake it could evacuate clear coat fog in a little over a minute.

On a fun note:
This bad boy seemed to be having a great time, but then I came along with a pair of tweezers and ended the party.
But not before I got a funeral portrait. He was part of the job too, whether I like it or not LOL......

Learning how to make your paintung look good by painting it yourself has to be a hard row to hoe
I tried painting two large under the bed tool boxes on one of my car hauler trucks years ago, I bought all the good stuff at that time including a Binks #7 stray gun, I didn't know that each coat should be sprayed on heavy enough to shine but not thick enough to cause runs They look like they had been painted with low gloss or flat paint along with a couple of runs
No more painting large surfaces on cars or trucks, I'll take it to the better auto body shops locally to get good result for my projects
I do envy those that develop the talent and skills needed to be a good vehicle painter
I do paint all of my engines I build with spray cans with decent results

It's looking great, incredible to see your progress with it! You'll definitely always remember the moth that dive bombed the paint job, lol

Great job and post. It's great to see them come together and turning out like you plan

Link to super short video

Correction is going pretty well.
Most of the dirt is on the tops of fenders and tops of doors, because that's the side facing the outside air intake.
Pretty substantial dirt on the fenders especially. You can fly swat every insect you can find, there can be not a single one in sight, and the minute you start painting.......Here they come! They love it, I think it's an intoxicant for them and like party time.

Process is hand blocking 1500-2000-2500 with Durablock and Mirka powdered guide coat as a visual aid (messy but it works very well), Meguairs M110 on a wool pad at low speed very quicky gets this.

I'm OK with it having a little bit of texture, it does not really show very much on this color and keeps as much material on the car
as possible which is a good goal for a long haul vehicle. It's well past driver quality already and after I get the whole car
pretty close to this, I'm going to stop.

I'll give that a chance to age, and then if/when I (sorry) "take it to the next level" (so cliche) later on, I'll use a rigid block
and get it flatter. For now this will definitely work!

I'm a little bit stunned I was able to achieve this.

Looks great Rich. Will be cool to see it unmasked, and out in the sun. Pat yourself on the back, for a job well done. Not many can say they did it all themselves, and it's very rewarding.

Really turned out nice. It's been an incredible amount of woek. But the results justify it.
Doug

I appreciate everyone's comments....thank you.

As expected I'll be working on little corrections for awhile but nothing horrible, I am still very pleased overall.

This is without a doubt the nicest work I have ever done in the world of body and paint, and is
work that I only dreamed of being able to do in the past.

As the car looks better and better, the shop looks worse and worse. Powdered guide coat and water makes a huge mess but is helpful visually.
I want to wrap this up at least 80% so I can put the car back where it would normally be.
Not a full cut and buff, just removing the obvious errors and overspray dust, etc.

Here is another short video.

As I mentioned elsewhere, this is great work Rich!

T/Y.

Fixing errors seems to take forever, but it's all part of the game as a garage painter...either accept it, or don't do it....I accepted it before I even started....

Right now that's all I'm doing, and it'll go on for quite awhile before I think about putting anything back together....

Looking good for sure.

Thanks all.

I'm still picking away at the paint. When I'm not chasing dirt bumps I'm chasing tiny scratches, but often both.
Got it unmasked and probably .001% of the mess cleaned up.

Hats off to the guys who can take something like this, DA color sand and just bang out those kind of jobs.
I tried doing that for less than a minute and hated it, it all happens too fast......a novice like myself needs time to really look and see what's happening in the moment.
The upside is, I ended up liking the 1500 green film/DA paper alot better than the standard paper for hand sanding so that worked out.

So far everywhere I tried to rush the process didn't work at all, so....forget it....I will just take my time.

With the Menards temporary booth lights taken down, the color flop from the different K factor of the shop lights is really apparent.

Looks good Rich. Are you going to put the hood stripes back on? When I painted the Road Runner, I left the car on the rotisserie, and it made the job of wet sanding, and buffing WAY easier. You realize how big of land yachts these cars are after a day of wet sanding...

Thank you Jeff.

I wasn't planning on the hood stripes and was going with a black hood.
The hood is done in my homegrown approximation of Organisol.
https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/2893208/re-an-organisol-adventure.html

I may not use that hood/it's def not the best fitting one I've seen, but for the time being the tentative plan visually is probably best described as
"GTX with heavy 6 pack road runner influence"

If I go to an air grabber style of hood later at some point, then I would be more open to putting the stripes back on.

Also, because now that I have experienced the difficulty of silver metallic paint (and now understand fully why so many painters hate it)
the stripes would somewhat help hide any mismatch of the center of the hood. There would be a visual comparison area in the center of the cowl where mismatch could
easily be seen, but it could be overlooked by most.

Black hood with some kind of a scoop is best plan for now.

Also considering '68 GTX side stripes for later, to further confuse the issue and upset the purists, but that's pretty far in the distance and just something to mess around with.

I like having stuff to just mess around with and experiment. Probably the most fun part of the hobby for me.

99% of the time , only YOU know where the flaws are . Most people look at the whole car . It looks great and pat yourself on the back . This is a huge undertaking that most people don’t have the stamina to make it all the way through . AND people wonder why a paint job like yours usually starts at 10k or more .
Again, props for doing a great job

TY.

I've really been through alot with this thing.

Have to figure paint would be between 10 and 20 thousand, and all the sheetmetal replacement +fixing the sheetmetal /fabrication so it works and
things like the window reveal moldings fit properly + general bodywork would also be between 10 and 20 thousand.

I was prepared to farm most of it out, but it seemed everywhere I turned, that idea was not going to work.
Then Covid + my desire to learn and sell off some hoarded parts to partially fund it sealed the deal.

It has been a great experience overall with several failures turned around/learning opportunities, and also many successes outright that just worked.

Have several ideas for process improvement on the next big project (My '68 Charger), but that will probably be awhile from now.
A couple off the top of my head...
1. I really need to go to a polyester primer on the rougher panels, it will save tons of time. I wish I'd used it on the trunk lid, it probably would have given me a couple days back.
2. I really need to not seal with epoxy anymore and get past that whole idea, in fact I see no reason to seal with anything at all anymore on a bare metal complete.
3. There's more, there is always more....

having been around paint and material since 1968, i know how much HARD WORK it takes to produce a superior finished job that makes people marvel at it's quality.
over time, the materials have changed drastically in composition and cost, especially in the last few years.
this is NOT taking into consideration the MASSIVE amount of time and effort to do CORRECT work on the body itself before the first whiff of paint fumes can even be considered.
it takes a true ARTISTE to achieve a quality job, usually requiring years of experience to pull off.
however, first timers can do this as good as the pros, providing they research, study, and possess the discipline needed to apply what is learned, and be willing to fix mistakes when they happen instead of tiring out and saying "that's good enough".........
you sir, have proven you have all the talent the pros have, and are to be congratulated on a job WELL done !

Thank you Moparx.

I'd rather not make mistakes at all but I'm getting better at fixing them, and am making fewer of them.

I'm way too slow to be in the same league as a production type of professional, but can do some casual/no hurry side restoration kind of piecework since...well, that's what it already is.

In hindsight, given the amount of dirt and insects, several coats of clear was definitely a good idea.
Production style 2-coat clear is great when you can keep everything perfectly clean but because I lack that capability, there's no other way to compensate that I know of.

Even the best booths still get something in the paint somewhere.

I've watched numerous paint video's on Youtube as well as watching a few vehicles being painted in person and have to wonder if the last couple feet of the air hose right behind the gun is not a source for junk in the paint? The hose gets drug across the floor, rolled up with dirty hands after blowing off sanding primer dust etc. all before painting, and yet it seems like nobody pays much attention to it?

I had helped my brother paint my car 2 times now , I know there is a lot of insight needed along this journey . I would not even attempt trying this by myself . Kudos to your great achievement & great looking result . Yes there are small issues here & there but , wow . That turned out great . Gary

Nice work Rich ! Looking good !

Mark

The hose is a huge source of dirt.

I was taught by an old school painter on one of the forums (that I actually don't even belong to, but learned from greatly):

Before you shoot all your horizontals (these are areas you have to lean over the car), grab a rag soaked with thinner and pull the last 6 to 8 feet of hose through the rag, maybe a couple times.
Shoot your horizontals, then shoot your verticals.
Then on the next coat before you do horizontals again, soak the rag with thinner and pull the hose through it.
Do this on every coat, make it the routine, and it will come as near to eliminating the problem as anything.

Life was a little more complex for me, because I insisted on laying on the floor and looking directly at the underside of the rockers when I shot them
to ensure full coverage. So I spent alot of time wiping off the hose and myself as well as I could. A rotisserie fixes that.

Another good rule to create is, buy or make a hook, then don't ever consciously let the last 6-8' of hose touch the floor during the whole job (but it will anyway, which is why you wipe it before every coat).
Every time you disconnect the gun, hang the hose on the hook.
Make that the routine also.

I also once saw a younger guy experimenting, he wrapped the last 6' of hose in masking plastic and taped it up.

To try to prevent issues, I started the job with a brand new hose, a nice sublime green knockoff of the flexzilla. By the time it was painted, the hose looked like it had been through a war lol.

Also used the classic motoguard filters (aka garage painters best friend) in the air line. Both the orange bulb at the end and the so-called toilet paper filter.
I drained the tank often, and didn't feel I needed to get too fancy with filtration.

Thank you very much. Sometimes I can't believe it's mine. This will take some getting used to!

Thanks Mark!

I really wanted the body lines to pop and spent a lot of time sanding to achieve it.
It’s finally paying off.

I’ve found a lot of half truths out there about color sanding, but found my own way.
A lighter touch is definitely called for, if you dig in you can see it.

Dirt and bugs only: 800/1000 on hard block, feather out w/1000 flex block,
Then flex block whole panel 1500/2000/2500, M100 on wool pad, M110 on foam da polisher.
Areas with only some texture start at 1500 and continue on from there.
It leaves a barely perceptible texture that I like+extra material on the vehicle for wear and tear.

I bought a polish and fine foam disc but don’t feel like I need it, these cutting compounds finish so well
On the lighter color, the polish can wait until later.

I circle every mistake or oversight with black grease pencil, then go back and fix them.

3 pictures of the same panel, and looks like 3 different colors:
The color flop is the game with A4, it’s all part of the fun

Glad you went with the factory color now Rich?

Yes sir.
Not just yes, but hell yes!

The "feeling of accomplishment" brain chemicals have kicked in for sure.
That and imagining how it will look all together and functioning keeps me going.

But I def haven't forgotten how miserable the basecoat was.
I worked really hard to get it right on my test panel long before going anywhere near the car.
Come time to put it in the car, the horizontals lay down perfect.....but the verticals had a mind of their own.
Alot of unhappiness.

All was forgiven after the first coat of clear.

It's extra effort but worth it if someone wants that appearance.

Great job Rich!

Harvesting the fruits of your labor can be very enjoyable, some times
Your doing a really good job on this

True...sometimes when it doesn't work out, time to step off, walk away and re think.

Here's a link to a short progress video.

This stuff is supposed to be a hobby, and fun. When it's not fun, why do it?

Keep plugging away Rich, nice work so far!!!

Thanks!

Enjoying the trip, taking my time/not rushing and really just trying to do a good job.

A short video, Fakebook

Another short video, Fakebook.

Usually I'll get a panel buffed almost all the way out, then stop and take the black grease pencil,and mark all the mistakes and oversights,
then go back over those. Twice over is usually enough but sometimes other errors are found/marked/gone over again.

Sand scratches are really not easy to see on this lighter color so that has been a small struggle.
I am sure I will find more of them once I get it outdoors, and am looking forward to that later on.

Though I have done this kind of work before, it was over 30 years ago on this car and the materials were totally different
back then, so it's been a learning process. I also didn't have the right tools for the job in the past but that has changed.

Still have only used cutting compounds and no polishes. Definitely Don't want to go near it with any kind of glaze/want to avoid fillers and refine the surface
to the point it doesn't need anything added.

Way back when I detailed cars for the local GM dealer the florescent shop lights tended to magnify super fine scratches like those you find around door handles on used vehicles, for example. Once it was outside in the sunlight a lot of the little things that I was sweating over inside became much harder to find, or all but went away. Silver should be pretty forgiving in the sun compared to the darker colors anyways.

It's true...Looking very close at body/paint on vehicles at the mopar nationals this past weekend, I had to
just about put my face 1" from panels to be able to see texture and scratches.

This is a good thing!

Silver does hide alot of sins. if only it wasn't so horrible to spray........

Though I haven't had it out in the sun yet I'm sure looking forward to it.

To see what would happen, stepped up to a polish on the trunklid and rearmost tops of quarters (nothing fancy, the newer Meguairs M210 on a fine yellow foam pad/DA polisher). The shine is coming up pretty nicely, will probably do the whole car with it once the dirt and insects are all corrected, but want to experiment with a medium pad as I think I might like that better.

Currently refining the dirt and insects out of the roof.

One of the better social media origin pics,

Looks amazing! I'm ready to see it rolled outside and you starting to put it all back together!

Thanks Chip, me too buddy.

Right now the car sits sideways or a little diagonal relative to the service door, I've opened the service door all the way and have been pretty happy with how it looks on that one side,
but it hasn't been completely outdoors in 3 years now. Just to take a good look at it outdoors would be helpful.

Seems like I'll be picking away at the little things for awhile to come, but want to make it roller again after the larger bumps and chunks are removed from the roof,
and temporarily re-install the dash and wiring to get it operable again, so I can pull it outside when needed. I had to roll the dash most of the way out to paint the A pillars.

The dash needs a little work and I'm sure I'll end up pulling it and re-doing everything behind it, after I reposition the car in a better spot to roll the car in and out.

It'll be nice to make that happen and have one open bay back, to use for other things or just the additional open space.

as good as it looks inside now, i'll bet it will be STUPENDOUS out in the daylight !

Correction complete.......Time to put a few things back on, get it rolling again, move everything in the shop back where it belongs and clean up a bit.

Another short Fakebook video. Volume up!

Not much of an update, but maybe better than nothing.

Got the wheels and tires back on, temporarily bolted the dash and steering column back on, intend to get it moving under it's own power again just for movement in and out of the shop. Sorted out wiring and got it to crank/have ignition and oil pressure. Just need to rig a temporary fuel system since the tank is on the shelf.

All the while, started struggling with the humid weather and especially with a couple errors that are 100% my fault.

As is normal in auto body, there is more than one way to repair the problems....one carries more risk of failure and is less work than the other, creating a bunch of overthinking nonsense that I can't stand. It got bad enough that I reached out to a FB group for support
and I got some great responses (only like two horrible ones/easily rebuffed and ignored). The situation is very common for a rookie
to have to redo things a little.

The bad spots actually don't bother me at all right now b/c I'm so pleased with the overall look and outcome of the job.

However I'm pretty sure 5 years from now they will totally piss me off, and might lead to not maintaining the exterior at all again/my previous horrible attitude (it's a failing). When I say "to hell with it", I'm usually serious.

If that happens I'll end up right back here, right back where I started and that is not the goal, those days are over, so I need to do a few repairs and set myself up for the future.

I've got to admit the mental game of this stuff is no joke, I never thought this would be a problem but when the car came out better than
expected I started considering future standards rather than today's standards, and really got stuck for a minute.

How it currently sits, with the questionable areas edited out.

Hate to get back into it, but have to….No way will I want to tear it down later to repair
Something I could have taken care of now.

Edit: I don't quite understand see how this qualifies as "big tire"??? But whatever.

I like the look of something taller/larger on a bigger car like this, and am not a serious racer anyway so the tire size based stuff can just be whatever it is I guess.

Have you decided on a side stripe color for it yet, or is that still a ways off?

'68 type stripe is still debatable, need to see the car complete to really know.....

but the samples arrived from PCG and black reflective is the clear winner. If I decide to do it, that's the one.

From my perspective it is still awesome , top to bottom . I understand you know where these deficiencies are & only you . Back when we did my car there were a few of those , but none have rose up that should have been fixed at the time . Only ones I have added through the years that really bother me . Just thinking what you have gone through to this point you have come a long way . I say if it really bothers you fix it . otherwise give it a few days to really think about diving in again . Man that is an awesome color & shine on that car . Gary

Thank you.

It really did turn out better than anticipated, which is leading me down the questionable path of raising my standards....

Most folks I've showed the problem spots to agreed at the thought of repairing them now, rather than waiting....
A mistake here and there is acceptable for an amateur, but these seemed to really jump out visually and seemed to step over some sort of a line.

I'm perfectly OK with beating it up while enjoying it and feel That is bound to happen.

I may not race very often but the car is meant to look it's best with plenty of melted rubber on the quarters

Remediation is in process.......It's good to feel like I can take my time again, ain't no way it's going to be really driven this year anyway.

in my fabrication and machinist world, it seems every time i start a new project, i feel i need to improve the finished product from the last time.
you are doing this in your paint world as well.
keep up the desire to improve.
as great as it is now, i can't wait to see the improvements !

So....what was the problem?

I'd seen a few show vehicles that had the quarter extensions seam sealed, I liked the look and had some aspirations, but when I attempted it on a humid day
I very quickly learned the meaning of "moisture cure product". The seam sealer set up in about 15 seconds, before I could even pull the tape it'd started going off, and I couldn't tool it smooth.
It came out lumpy and ugly looking. I botched that pretty bad.

Lack of experience said it would probably be okay, maybe.
The most idiotic Negative self-talk ever said "don't worry, something else on the job will be far worse than that, and it won't really matter in the grand scheme of things"
So I did base and clear.

Later I got close to being finished with correction and realized....The Negative Idiot is totally wrong, and I never should have let it go.

As great as it might feel to conquer an obvious personality/judgement flaw through hard work, the next question was.....what's the best repair for this one area and how do I talk myself into it?

High quality seam sealer ain't coming off without a fight.
I had to go back down to bare metal in those areas and repair it.

Blending silver metallic base is no joke for an amateur, even when you use the exact same batch of paint it's a bit of a guessing game.
Fortunately I'd bought a mini gun years ago which helped keep the blend small, I'd studied extensively on YouTube and the forums where I lurk, but some trial and error was needed
to get the air pressure where it needed to be. Eventually I stopped looking at the gauge and had to do it by sight and sound.

The blend came out well, the repair as a whole isn't perfect in microscopic detail but is plenty good enough for me, and a huge improvement over the mess I started with/created.

Needless to say I'll not make that mistake again (along with many other undocumented errors, already fixed, and so stupid they were not even worth talking about).

Every day is a school day.

Snuck a break line under the windshield trim.

Reproduction quarters absolutely do not match factory quarter extensions.....I did not get this anywhere near perfect
but had to put some effort in to even get them to this point.

Alot of folks will chop an original quarter ahead of where the extension bolts on, and splice a new one on, ahead of it, to
retain the excellent fit of OEM quarter extensions..

Mine was a little rusty there and I didn't want to deal with any bad metal at all, I wanted all traces of it cut off and replaced.
No regrets and no rust.

I'm not competing in the concours d'elegance so this should work. I'm way happier with it than previously.

(Almost) like it never happened.

Has as about the same amount of dust as before, but since I shot it mid-day it has alot fewer insects to deal with than previously.

Correction in progress (again).

Back to slow, methodical, trance-like, "put on some music and go with it" kind of work that I enjoy a little more.

I've learned a few tricks and can get through it much faster than previously.
Most of the tricks are old hat, but fairly new to me.

I do love to paint, but it stresses me out something fierce.
I should probably keep doing it and conquer that.

Thanks for reading my drivel......All for now...

Nice save , I know the internal demons were working double time on this . I agree it is far better now . Man I bet you can really paint well . Imagine painting something that did not require this extensive of a job . You the man . Gary

Thank you Gary.

I'm OK, this is only my third ever complete job, so I'm far from an authority on the topic.

Looking very nice so far !!
polishing takes some patience for sure, cant rush any of the steps. the more time you put in the better it looks. In the end this is your car so its always worth the time you put in.

Thanks Tony.

As long as I can refine the clear to the point it was before I started the repair, I'll be good with that.

It's kind of crazy how much clear there is on it now, but it's what I needed to do to make sure I had enough material to work with.

Happy Birthday, Rich!

Thanks Jeff!

Decent cut and buff progress on the left side.

This is the result from sanding + wool pad and heavy cutting compound
And gets me about 90% of what I’m currently capable of doing.

The remaining 10% refinement I can do is from foam and different compounds on the DA polisher.
The fender and door has that and the difference is pretty subtle/doesn’t show up easily in a picture.

For an everyday car it’d be ok to stop right here but I’m aiming a little higher.

Left side of the roof is wet sanded and I’ll buff it out tonight.

It’s coming along.

After cut and buff I’m going to rig a temporary fuel system to get it fired up and moved around.
I’d like to get it outside in the sun and it needs to reclaim it’s hoist potato status to work the lower body and underbody.
I’d started working on getting it running again, got it to crank and got the msd working (multiple things disconnected betweeen
Replacing one inner fender and taking the entire dash out)…..but stopped when I decided to repair the quarter extension seams.
Mechanical and electrical work is something I want to get back to, but can’t rush this process.

Plugging away...

I always finish the buffing process with a waffle pad on the buffer. Never have been able to make the DA buffers work like I want. Everyone has their own methods. Keep the posts coming Rich.

What i have found is that when you are done with one step, you really need to wash the area with soap and water to remove all traces of compound. IF it looks good then proceed to the next step. This helps with swirls because it keeps the cutting compound off the surface and off your polishing pads.

Also what i have found to work well is, after wool and compound. Make one pass with an older foam polishing pad , with your cutting compound, Also the compound you use makes a big difference. 3m 36060 or 36061 is really good and works great for me.

This is silver so honestly you shouldnt need much polishing to make it look good.

I like using a DA with a 6.5" foam pad to final polish and even apply wax. Works nice and smoooth

You've really got something to be proud of their Zippy! Looking back to the beginning of the thread, it's amazing what you've accomplished.

i agree wholeheartedly with Joel.
you have learned a skill you have taught to yourself, and have achieved excellent results anyone would be proud of !

It looks great!

At the dealership years ago we did the cutting with a wool pad, and the polishing part with a black foam pad at a lower speed. The foam polishing pads don't need crazy rpm to do the job.

When buffing I like to put the low stick blue painters tape over the edges and jambs to help prevent burn thru and keep the compound from going back inside and making a mess. Paint on the edges is naturally going to be thinner so it's best to not work those too much. Even if you leave a little mild orange peel near the jamb edges or the tops of the fender edges etc your eye will never catch it outside in the sun.

Hey thanks for chiming in guys, sincerely.

I have to apologize the last few pictures were pretty rough....they are screenshots of a video clip I'll post the link to.

Just like paint and bodywork, it seems no two people do cut and buff exactly the same.

The brand of clear coat I used has a forum just like this one and though I did not register,
I read everything I could, and I am partially/mostly following the process someone had good luck with that posted about it.

A clean surface and tools really is faster, and more efficient....no doubt about it.

The build-up of used up compound and clear is the downfall of the old twisted wool pad....that build up and being too heavy-handed with the rotary seems to be the source of most swirls and holograms.
I've self trained to use the spur on it but it makes a huge mess and doesn't seem to get all the crud out like washing it does. To get around that I just wash it every so often
and I try to use some finesse and a light touch with it/try not to get impatient. 2500 scratches polish up pretty quickly.

Right quarter is sanded 800/1000 (nibs and error correction), and all over with 1500 to just below the "eyebrows".
Right above and right below those "eybrows" take some extra effort to really clean up.

Here's a link to a short video clip... up the volume if you like Eric Johnson.

Roof is about half done.

Nice progress!

Looking good..Most folks have no idea the work involved in taking on a project like this.

how true that statement is !
all the more reason i'm so impressed with the results from a "first timer".

Thanks for following along and reading my gibberish.
Pretty sure I lost quite a few folks from early on, attention spans vary greatly.

This is actually my third paint job ever.

1. painted this car black (lacquer)
2. painted the polara green (2k base/clear)
3. now this one again

I did correction/buffing on the black paint job but it was lacquer/easy to work with and I was able to do it all by hand.
I didn't have any power polishing/buffing tools at all back then.

the second job badly needed the same work but I never did it as I was too disappointed about other errors made.
Now after 17 years mostly spent outdoors that green job is finally starting to fail.

I know just enough to get in trouble but the overall process I'm committed to assumes mistakes will be made, and accepts
the learning opportunities of repairing them.

I don't have enough experience or resources to be 100% outcome based/chasing perfection, and am much better off being process-based/chasing excellence.

Dutchman is about halfway roughed in.

Far/Polished side still has some texture but looks pretty good, I may go over it again.

Near/working side is Sanded to 1500 and remaining visible nibs circled.
Nibs previously sanded 800-1000 but there are always some left that need more.

Why not remove the trunklid?? It would be very easy to buff the trunklid on a stand, and very east to buff the Dutchman panel sitting in the trunk ??

The thought entered my mind, but the trunk lid was the bane of my existence a few different times during my ownership of the car + happened later in the build as well.

Besides the extensive repairs done on it recently, it also fit poorly ever since I owned the car. This last time around,
I had to bend the hinges to adjust it, was a pretty ridiculous procedure...Total gorilla kind of stuff....and at this point I don't want to mess with it any more than I have to.

The trunk lid wasn't part of the last repair, so it still has the first base/clear I put on it from back in July, along with a rough correction that could be refined a little more.

I'm not having a bunch of trouble reaching the center of the dutchman, I have pretty long arms and torso for a guy my height so it isn't too bad.

At this point I think I'd rather put it on a rotisserie than take the trunk lid off LOL. Or go fiberglass trunk lid (I have one kicking around but decided against it).

Sorry , I stand by my earlier comments . I know you had a few painting skills before this one . All aside , with what you have done to this car YOU are doing a very good job !! You are working at your own speed and skill . You still should be very satisfied with those results you have . Really . Gary

I sure appreciate the positivity and kind comments, thanks.

This thread is not for short attention spans....

sometimes my attention span is shorter than my, er, ah, never mind.............

Little bit of progress, Finally got it rotated and back on the hoist.

Need to do a little more re-org and then I can start to prep the new underbody metal + correct a few errors below the character line.

The underbody work shouldn't be super time consuming as I'm doing epoxy, black single stage urethane and some undercoat.

Also got a little daylight on it, enough to get a good preview and mentally string me along so I'll keep working on it.

Trying to plan a few steps ahead, I brought the gas tank down from the loft where it's been for about a year and a half.

Cleaning the shop and figuring out where to put all this stuff I didn't have before this project is going to take up alot of time.
Never thought I'd have a collection of cut/buff/detailing tools and supplies but here we are, now what do we do?
Not feeling super creative at the moment so I'm Pretty sure plastic totes will be involved......
Think I'm also going to offload a few things to make some more space.

That is looking very nice Rich!! I like it!

Thx Ted

Since I do other stuff (in addition to car stuff) in what spare time I have, it's been really good to get back to other somewhat neglected aspects of
life and work on the car when I want to for a few hours here and there. Actually makes me appreciate the car more.

Sometimes I still walk into the shop, flip the lights on, and there is a part of me that can't hardly believe it's mine.
Maybe a few of you know what I'm talking about and understand how that feels. Hard to describe. I've probably said that before on this thread
but it's still a thing.

With it up on the hoist now and it being much easier to put the lower body at eye level, alot of defects down there that were
well hidden by the color are easier to see and repair.

Baby steps have been the norm for awhile now, but I think I should be moving on from exterior, and prepping and coating the new metal on the underbody
in a couple weeks, I'm thinking sometime early December. I'm just doing black epoxy, black single stage and undercoat/nothing fancy, so that shouldn't be horribly time consuming.

I've been known to sit in my garage, and stare at the Road Runner, and remember that is was once a real POS, and left for dead at my Grandparents farm for many, many years. I still have zero regrets about taking that project on.

Sems Hot Rod black is great for underneath. Holds up very well. Regular trim black spray bomb matches if you ever need a small touch up.
Doug
https://www.nationaltoolwarehouse.c...7mcnIggMVZ0t_AB0mnQzVEAQYAiABEgJetPD_BwE

Thanks Doug, I really like that SEM product and used it on the hood awhile back.
Managed a textured, faked organasol type of a look by messing with the air pressure.

I don't have very much of the SEM left, but do have a bunch of spi epoxy and Summit house brand single stage black, so eventually that's what it will get.
Need to seam seal and undercoat as well.

Prep is ongoing, but small bits of time, an hour here and an hour there.

I took alot of time off over the holiday but am back to it and It's almost ready to start coatings/sealers.

Had a productive couple days.

Final prep and spi epoxy Saturday, went back Sunday, seam sealed everything I could, then Summit Hot Rod black.

Nice to not be stressed about little errors here and there. Hosed on few coats of summit hot rod black.

It's shiny in the pics b/c it's wet, and will dry flat (to match the front inner fenders) done a few years ago).

I'll let this cure for awhile then will undercoat it sort of factory-style/plan to shoot for alot cleaner-than-original look with a little less build thickness.

High performance racing undercoat. It's ugly but serves it's purpose and should look near OE once it ages a little.

What a mess to spray, but so much better and faster once I figured out a reducer.

I don't intend to pamper the underside of this thing, I still don't own a trailer and it will be driven on all kinds of roads, so this is what I need.

The trailer part should probably change at some point.

Suffered a pretty hard personal loss that will keep me busy for probably well over a year, progress on the car is slower but still happening.

I previously painted the fuel tank in the 90s, I used a spray can material which held up surprisingly well (rust o leum professional).
I stripped it and used the same thing this time for refinish but as a basecoat, then the next day laid a couple coats of budget clear on top (finish one FC720),
and we will see how that works out.

Got the tank and custom fuel sender installed. DMT pad and grommet. I still had most of the asbestos stock pad intact and had preserved it all this time...time for an upgrade.
Former Moparts member dbdartman did the fabrication work on the fuel sender for me, decades ago. He's still out there on social media.

I'm polishing the trim as I go.

Not trying to create a national show winner, otherwise I'd send it all out somewhere, the felt cone on the die grinder with jewlers rouge and mother's mag wheel polish is fine with me.

The door handles are some NOS Mopar dodge truck pieces with the passenger car mechanisms swapped on.
I picked up another pair for the next project....now they're quality repops and only about $30 for the truck versions.

Lesson: never throw away working A or B body door handles because they aren't pretty anymore.
Swap the mechanisms on to a shiny new pair of cheap Dodge Truck door handles for half the price of repop A/B body parts.
Even A/B body handles with wrecked chrome are worth a couple bucks to someone who knows this, as long as the mechanisms are still good.

Found a MUCH nicer trunk finish panel from a Sport Satellite, for a fair price and grabbed that as well. Pounded a dent out, and refinished it.
The two GTX panels I already had were both roached as they all eventually do when exposed to any weather, they'll probably become wall art or something.

Painted the side marker housings, interior upper quarter panels, and upper grille support.

First time I have had a trunk seal on this car since the late 90s.

I know it's not necessary to have a million clothespins on the trunk seal if you follow the directions,
but I didn't want to follow the directions! I wanted a second and third chance to position it instead of only one chance.
They aren't used as clamps, they hold it in position and allow you to cut it to length and apply the adhesive a little at a time
instead of all at once.

The belt molding ("arm burner" trim at the top of the door) clips aren't really fun to work with, stuff doesn't line up perfectly and has to be forced into place but not so much that anything is damaged.
There's this fear you're gonna drop one inside the quarter panel, and there it will forever live until the next poor sap cuts the quarter off
to restore the car for the third time 50 years from now. Luckily that didn't happen.

Detail on the trunk finish panel refinish.

started off with a "new" (much less pitted than what I had) replacement from a sport satellite, stripped it, "liquid masked" the shiny areas and applied epoxy,
then the black, then masked the black off with 2" tape, applied the textured silver, pulled the tape, solvent wiped the shiny areas, then applied the
red with a brush.

This is probably the third or fourth time I've refinished these things in decades of ownership so I had a plan together, but the first time starting with a pretty nice part,
first time using epoxy and lucking into a very close to correct textured silver. Also probably the best overall outcome.

I tried to buy more of the textured silver, it really had the "close to original" look I wanted, but it had been obsoleted.
That's when I mail ordered a spare can and paid a little extra to just have it. I might try to dig up some more of it.
I'm most likely going to do the grille in the same textured silver. It really looks the part but I'm pretty sure it is a slightly lighter shade than stock which is fine with me.

De-rusted the bumper brackets in the dip tank, welded on a couple MIA weld nuts, painted epoxy/summit single stage black/my go-to underbody coating.

The long pins work with a ratchet strap to help me install the part solo. Doesn't work 100% on the bumper because a pinch weld interferes, but helps get it
about 80% in place.

The OE bumper fit the car really poorly, it fought me 30 years ago, and this reproduction rear bumper fought me quite a bit harder, and it took several tries to find the magic shim combination
to fit acceptably well. That and some of the trim did not want to do what I needed it to do. Have to admit a few parts on this thing did kick my butt for a minute.
I'll probably still try to round up another solid OE bumper just to have in the corner in case of future need.

It all looks great , it takes time to do it right ..

Current situation. I saved the original tail light lenses with sanding/polishing.

The reproduction bezels have the problems that everyone says/they don't fit exactly right.
But they do look like they belong there, and I found them at a discount so I can't complain much.

The GTX emblem is the one that's been on the car as long as I've owned it, and might be original... it's not perfect but fine for now. The plymouth emblem is from a swap meet.
I spent some time cleaning and refinishing those. Pretty easy project to paint and solvent wipe the face.

That looks great Rich!!!

Just showing the improvement made. I'd lived with the pitted mess since the '80s.

Little parts are in the dip tank for de-rusting.

I can move on to other stuff and come back to these later when hopefully most of the rust will be gone.

thanks Chip!

Thank you. It sure does. I am enjoying the process and taking breaks to avoid burnout.

Really looking good with trim on it Rich. Be proud of the work you have accomplished. Looks amazing.

Good work Rich! I'm still here for ya!

Come on Zip, it only took the factory a few hours to build that car!

Ha!

If I could build 700 1969 plymouths per day, you bet I would.....

https://youtu.be/MgNOQbK2Yaw

I asked my buddy who built his wide body Jaguar XKE how much labor he had invested. He said if he paid himself $50/hr it would be $750,000. So don't feel bad. Just keep at it.
Doug

Said it before , you are doing an amazing job with this . Keep at it . Gary

Fun video

Appreciate the encouragement all, thanks.



He's a fantastic resource for the production side of things and seems to know every little detail.

Rich, presuming two things I have a favor to ask. The top pic shows what I presume to be the rear shackle upper mounting tube in the frame, and presuming it is the same diameter inside and outside as an A-body would it be possible for you to get me those two dimensions of that tube. I need to get some more tube for my car to redo a mistake we made a couple decades ago before we do drag week in my Demon.

Thank you.

Clarahan's Jag is an awesome build.

Sorry CD, the suspension has been back together for weeks, now.
The cluster of posts was just a catch up since I'd taken a hiatus from posting about the project on the boards.

I've never owned an A body....but Supposedly slant 6 and v/8 A bodies were different sizes but the bushing sellers don't list them that way.
The B bodies are supposed to be only one size, A bodies could actually be the smaller or the larger.
Here are a couple links to help you and illustrate. Good luck.
https://www.manciniracing.com/rearsprinsha.html
https://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/threads/help-with-leaf-shackle-bushings.367570/