rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Thanks Rob. I give myself a B-.
The Great Pumpkin - '71 Duster
- Thread starter rmchrgr
- Start date
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who follows directions?.....IMO, whoever wrote the ones for this chit, never personally used it.
I applied like a thin continues bead (about 4-6 feet at a time) directly to the paint, none on the weather strip. Gave the adhesive about 1 minute to tac up and added the weather strip directly to it.
stroked340
Well-Known Member
Looks good kid!!
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Last evening's work. The sanded through areas are where filler was applied, the lighter areas are only high build primer though a few of those areas should have had filler instead. Still have a ways to go before the color goes on, the driver's-side inner fender panels were a mess.
More to come.
Last evening's work. The sanded through areas are where filler was applied, the lighter areas are only high build primer though a few of those areas should have had filler instead. Still have a ways to go before the color goes on, the driver's-side inner fender panels were a mess.
More to come.
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
After several years of trying to get this done, I finally got my fiberglass hood and pins installed today. Frankly, this kind of stuff gives me fits. No matter how hard I try, I can never drill holes accurately. Don't know what it is but it never fails, I'm always off from where I make my mark. Thankfully the hood pin scuff plates will cover the wallowed-out holes but it will always bother me knowing I can't do it right. Basically I just suck.
Anyway, despite my lack of accurate hole-drilling ability, the hood came out decent enough. It will need some final tweaking to get the heights adjusted better but overall the gaps are pretty consistent. I definitely need new hood bumpers which should help with that. The AAR/Stinger hood at least to me seems like it's well made and fits well.
I am contemplating adding another two pins in the middle. Can't hurt and should help keep the hood from trying to fly off at speed. Lot of pins to remember to install before a run.
Supposedly ditching the factory steel hood and hinges for a fiberglass hood shaves over 60lbs. I'll take what I can get.
More to come.
Anyway, despite my lack of accurate hole-drilling ability, the hood came out decent enough. It will need some final tweaking to get the heights adjusted better but overall the gaps are pretty consistent. I definitely need new hood bumpers which should help with that. The AAR/Stinger hood at least to me seems like it's well made and fits well.
I am contemplating adding another two pins in the middle. Can't hurt and should help keep the hood from trying to fly off at speed. Lot of pins to remember to install before a run.
Supposedly ditching the factory steel hood and hinges for a fiberglass hood shaves over 60lbs. I'll take what I can get.
More to come.
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
More engine bay and hood paint prep work completed today. Hoping to get the paint project wrapped up before July which would be 6 months from when I started in January. Hurts to think about how long it's taken but it had to be done and it will be worth it in the end.
Anyway, as mentioned in the previous post, I decided to add two hood pins in the middle for more holding power. I had some generic hood pin brackets on hand but they were too big by themselves so they were cut down to fit. In the front it would have been easiest to drill a hole in the radiator support but there is a flexible harness clamp in the center that I wanted to keep so I welded a tab just behind it. Had to mock up the radiator to make sure I could get the rad. cap off, all good.
The tab for the rear was welded to the flange where the firewall meets the cowl. Almost looks like it was meant to be there. Welds were not too pretty so used some filler to smooth it out some. Glad to have these tabs done now so they can be painted with everything else.
Put another coat of epoxy primer over the entire engine bay to make it all uniform. Still may need to smooth a few spots but the prior effort to fill the obvious low spots paid off.
For the epoxy, I used a little reducer this time. In my limited experience, it sprays out better with the reducer and gives the appearance of a more uniform finish. And whether its useful or not, I like the sheen too. If I shoot the color there's no to sand it unless it's over 7 days after it was put on. Would be nice to get color down tomorrow but that may not happen.
If I decide to do another round of filler and/or high-build it will be light, surfaces are fairly smooth now. Have to prime the front wheel wells and then it's time for the orange.
More to come.
Anyway, as mentioned in the previous post, I decided to add two hood pins in the middle for more holding power. I had some generic hood pin brackets on hand but they were too big by themselves so they were cut down to fit. In the front it would have been easiest to drill a hole in the radiator support but there is a flexible harness clamp in the center that I wanted to keep so I welded a tab just behind it. Had to mock up the radiator to make sure I could get the rad. cap off, all good.
The tab for the rear was welded to the flange where the firewall meets the cowl. Almost looks like it was meant to be there. Welds were not too pretty so used some filler to smooth it out some. Glad to have these tabs done now so they can be painted with everything else.
Put another coat of epoxy primer over the entire engine bay to make it all uniform. Still may need to smooth a few spots but the prior effort to fill the obvious low spots paid off.
For the epoxy, I used a little reducer this time. In my limited experience, it sprays out better with the reducer and gives the appearance of a more uniform finish. And whether its useful or not, I like the sheen too. If I shoot the color there's no to sand it unless it's over 7 days after it was put on. Would be nice to get color down tomorrow but that may not happen.
If I decide to do another round of filler and/or high-build it will be light, surfaces are fairly smooth now. Have to prime the front wheel wells and then it's time for the orange.
More to come.
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Thanks, much appreciated.
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Been working on the Duster on and off for the past few months. Have had some family stuff to tend to and was also away for a couple stretches towards the end of summer so garage time has been somewhat limited. Happily though, there is some progress to report.
First off, I got the rear interior firewall roughed in although I still need to make a package tray. The material is .040" 3003 aluminum which cuts and bends easily. For the firewall I used the factory backing board as a template. So far I'm happy with how it turned out and it seems to fit OK. Not sure exactly how it will end up aesthetically but I do want it to be more finished looking, kinda like the factory Super Stock hemi cars.
Once I get it all set exactly where I want it, I'll mark the brace location from the back and then rivet the sheet to the structure. Note the four black nuts sticking through the floor - they're for the EFI fuel filter/regulator bracket that is installed underneath.
In the process of fitting the sheet over the rear opening, I ended up removing both sets of rear seat hooks. Admittedly, this probably wasn't the brightest idea on my part. The top ones came out easily enough just prying on them and getting a chisel behind the bend but the ones on the floor were in pretty good and tore up the sheet metal upon removal. Thankfully, they were located over a bend in the floor pan and covered by the frame connectors so the holes can't be seen from underneath. Suppose I can fix it but I might just leave it since it will be covered by carpet.
The main impetus for getting rid of these brackets was in fact the carpet. I had a run-in with them before where I ended up making the access holes in the carpet larger than necessary - that drove me nuts. Remembering that, I just blindly went at them with a hammer and chisel to see how easy it would be to remove them. Not very! Unfortunately, once I started, there was no turning back. I should have just cut them off cleanly because if I ever wanted to put them back in I could re-weld them to the base. Oh well, nothing like being impulsive!
In other news, I began dealing with the brake lines. I'm using a Wilwood distribution block/prop valve combo thingy. What it does is allow the OE distribution block to come off the frame rail. This creates more room to run transmission cooler lines up to the front and gets the block away from header heat. It's also nice to have the prop valve "right there" for ease of adjustment.
The main caveat when using this part is that you need to make your brake lines work with it. There is no ready-made line 'kit' so you're on yer own. This is a fairly major undertaking so if you want to use one of these consider how much extra effort will go into making it work.
Honestly, it took f o r e v e r to get the lines how I wanted. Looks simple but it's not.
Reject pile.
Still need to work on the individual front circuits and then the front-to-rear line which will include a Hurst Roll Control. Installing the Line Lock in the rear circuit is accomplished by installing the lines to the solenoid in reverse. Instead of locking the front brakes, this method keeps the rears from applying. During your burnout, you activate the solenoid and use the brake pedal to hold the front brakes while the rears spin free. Not sure why this method isn't more widely used, it makes sense to do it this way.
Behind the master cylinder and brake pedal is this mounting bracket. While it was all out, I took the parts over to the drill press and got busy shedding a little weight. Not sure how much the effort added up to but it certainly felt like something. The brake pedal seemed especially heavy and the holes made a noticeable difference. The mounting bracket was cleaned up with Evaporust and will get coated in silver Hammer tone paint.
Here's the Swiss cheese'd brake pedal.
Also been working on getting the driver seat mounted. Putting a Kirkey seat in an A body is not an easy task because of the way the floor is. After an exhausting search for seat brackets, I finally found these. They are designed for GM G-body applications but they looked like they might work with a little tweaking and they pretty much do. Sorry, no pics at the moment but will post them next update.
Looking at the bigger picture, it appears that another season is down the tubes without this car being ready. I'm bummed about that but it is what it is. The reality is that I can't dedicate every waking moment of life to working on the car. Besides, I like things to be "just so" which clearly makes everything take longer than it would if I didn't care so deeply about every last detail.
Deciding to paint the undercarriage, trunk and engine bay has essentially set me back six months. I'm OK with the decision though, it needed to be done as the car had gotten kinda crusty from sitting. It will be great when it's done and I won't have to be concerned about it again for a long time.
The next major hurdle is to sort out the wiring. Before I commenced the paint project I had made some strides on that so presumably it won't take much to get it squared away. Once the wiring is in, it's basically reassembling the rest of systems. There's a few parts to order yet for peripheral things but there's a moratorium on spending for now until the wiring is done.
More to come.
First off, I got the rear interior firewall roughed in although I still need to make a package tray. The material is .040" 3003 aluminum which cuts and bends easily. For the firewall I used the factory backing board as a template. So far I'm happy with how it turned out and it seems to fit OK. Not sure exactly how it will end up aesthetically but I do want it to be more finished looking, kinda like the factory Super Stock hemi cars.
Once I get it all set exactly where I want it, I'll mark the brace location from the back and then rivet the sheet to the structure. Note the four black nuts sticking through the floor - they're for the EFI fuel filter/regulator bracket that is installed underneath.
In the process of fitting the sheet over the rear opening, I ended up removing both sets of rear seat hooks. Admittedly, this probably wasn't the brightest idea on my part. The top ones came out easily enough just prying on them and getting a chisel behind the bend but the ones on the floor were in pretty good and tore up the sheet metal upon removal. Thankfully, they were located over a bend in the floor pan and covered by the frame connectors so the holes can't be seen from underneath. Suppose I can fix it but I might just leave it since it will be covered by carpet.
The main impetus for getting rid of these brackets was in fact the carpet. I had a run-in with them before where I ended up making the access holes in the carpet larger than necessary - that drove me nuts. Remembering that, I just blindly went at them with a hammer and chisel to see how easy it would be to remove them. Not very! Unfortunately, once I started, there was no turning back. I should have just cut them off cleanly because if I ever wanted to put them back in I could re-weld them to the base. Oh well, nothing like being impulsive!
In other news, I began dealing with the brake lines. I'm using a Wilwood distribution block/prop valve combo thingy. What it does is allow the OE distribution block to come off the frame rail. This creates more room to run transmission cooler lines up to the front and gets the block away from header heat. It's also nice to have the prop valve "right there" for ease of adjustment.
The main caveat when using this part is that you need to make your brake lines work with it. There is no ready-made line 'kit' so you're on yer own. This is a fairly major undertaking so if you want to use one of these consider how much extra effort will go into making it work.
Honestly, it took f o r e v e r to get the lines how I wanted. Looks simple but it's not.
Reject pile.
Still need to work on the individual front circuits and then the front-to-rear line which will include a Hurst Roll Control. Installing the Line Lock in the rear circuit is accomplished by installing the lines to the solenoid in reverse. Instead of locking the front brakes, this method keeps the rears from applying. During your burnout, you activate the solenoid and use the brake pedal to hold the front brakes while the rears spin free. Not sure why this method isn't more widely used, it makes sense to do it this way.
Behind the master cylinder and brake pedal is this mounting bracket. While it was all out, I took the parts over to the drill press and got busy shedding a little weight. Not sure how much the effort added up to but it certainly felt like something. The brake pedal seemed especially heavy and the holes made a noticeable difference. The mounting bracket was cleaned up with Evaporust and will get coated in silver Hammer tone paint.
Here's the Swiss cheese'd brake pedal.
Also been working on getting the driver seat mounted. Putting a Kirkey seat in an A body is not an easy task because of the way the floor is. After an exhausting search for seat brackets, I finally found these. They are designed for GM G-body applications but they looked like they might work with a little tweaking and they pretty much do. Sorry, no pics at the moment but will post them next update.
Looking at the bigger picture, it appears that another season is down the tubes without this car being ready. I'm bummed about that but it is what it is. The reality is that I can't dedicate every waking moment of life to working on the car. Besides, I like things to be "just so" which clearly makes everything take longer than it would if I didn't care so deeply about every last detail.
Deciding to paint the undercarriage, trunk and engine bay has essentially set me back six months. I'm OK with the decision though, it needed to be done as the car had gotten kinda crusty from sitting. It will be great when it's done and I won't have to be concerned about it again for a long time.
The next major hurdle is to sort out the wiring. Before I commenced the paint project I had made some strides on that so presumably it won't take much to get it squared away. Once the wiring is in, it's basically reassembling the rest of systems. There's a few parts to order yet for peripheral things but there's a moratorium on spending for now until the wiring is done.
More to come.
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
thanks for the progress report. Always nice to see how it goes on the glory trail.
Sorry Denny, I failed to take another goofy selfie today with my entire face covered in orange paint. What was funny though was at around 2:45pm I had the paint gun in my hand, I'm wearing safety goggles and a respirator and obviously "in the middle of something" but true to form, my wife pokes her head in the garage and reminds me that this morning I agreed to go get one of my kids from school and take him to an activity at 3:00. Doh! I washed up real quick but it barely made a dent. The people at the school and where I dropped him off must have thought I was insane. Or maybe that I was a victim of a spray-tan experiment that went horribly wrong. I got paint on the steering wheel in my truck too. And unlike regular grimy dirt, paint does not seem to want to come off your skin with mere kerosene. But I digress.
Regardless of the aforementioned drama, I managed to finally lay down the first coat of color in the engine bay. Yes, it's splotchy. It will get at least one more coat and maybe two but I ran out of both paint hardener and reducer. When I painted the trunk, the first coat was similarly uneven and only after subsequent coats did it look right.
Trying to decide whether to color sand in between coats. I think it needs it, the orange peel is pretty obvious and there are a couple runs that are going to bother me if I don't take care of them now. I'll start with 1,500 grit wet and go to 2,000 if I have the energy.
This shot almost makes the paint look halfway decent. It's not! At least not yet.
The factory paint in the areas above and below the firewall seam was really thin, almost non-existent. I went further back with the color just 'cause I wanted it that way. Hard to see in this pic but in the rear I tried to mimic the factory over spray patterns. It's OK but it looks weird to me because the paint is new.
I debated spraying color on the entire underside but I'm going to leave the DP50 primer. There's two coats, it should last forever especially since it won't be exposed to UV rays from the sun and likely won't ever get real wet or dirty.
Mercifully though, I am nearing the end of my paint project here. I'll be honest, paint kinda sucks - it's labor intensive and messy and, if you screw something up you gotta do it over again. I'm really looking forward to moving on to the next thing.
More to come.
From another Rob, we're all our own worst critics. I think it's comin along great.
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Thanks man! Guess I'm doing OK for a rookie.
Couple things have become very clear to me while doing this job -
- There is a reason(s) paint and body work is so expensive - it's really difficult to do right!
- I need to learn to slow down when I have a paint gun in my hand.
- While it is a nice luxury to have a lift in general, painting a Chrysler unibody car on one is far from ideal - a rotisserie is the way to go.
- If I'm going to paint stuff in my garage, I need to build a temporary spray booth with an exhaust fan.
Stay tuned for more hack work.
Thats the truth. When “WE” are working on our cars and trying to produce a nice end result, we are tough on ourselves. It’s the inner drive. To drive ourselves as hard and far into that area that may never be happy with the end result. But that is also what makes and brakes a car never mind the slap stick guys (like myself from project to project) that just assemble stuff and call it good enough. That has a time and place per-project. That’s fine for a certain someone or project. Obviously not for Greg.
Personally I think everything is looking good. For sure.
My garbage on the other hand is likely to stay that way until I get a car worthy and not over my (very low) talent level. While I enjoyed experimenting with painting the Duster and Magnums engine bay, thats as far as I got and I’m not really worried about the rest. Perhaps later on.
That’s funny! I say the same thing. I normally get a chuckle out of that since I don’t do hack work but I also don’t do resto quality work. It’s just a bit much for me.
And heck yea, paint and body is pricey for a good reason on top of the shop needing to pay rent, electric, water, etc…. Crap adds up quick never mind a quality job at the end.
Looks great , nice job
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Success! Improvement! Relief! Per the advice of counterman extraordinaire Tony (AKA n20mstr on Moparts) at the local Albert Kemperle store I made some adjustments to the needle and fan settings on the gun which seemed to make all the difference in the world. Besides adjusting the gun, he also suggested that I increase the air pressure so I went from 30psi to 40. Not sure exactly what did it but the paint lays down 100 times better now.
Armed with this new knowledge, I sprayed the radiator support today and it came out damn near perfect. There's no noticable orange peel and really good coverage with two coats. The full coverage and gloss really makes the paint pop.
Now we're talking!
THIS is what Hemi Orange is SUPPOSED to look like.
Single stage glossy!
I do have to temper my excitement though since I still need to redo the engine bay. Now that the gun seems to be set right the hope is that the paint will cover the existing orange peel. Based on how the rad support looks I'm confident it will be OK. I did buy another quart of paint though in case I need to redo any major areas. Depending on how the engine bay turns out perhaps the trunk will be next. That's a lot of re-masking though, not sure I want to do it over again.
Spent a good amount of time fixing runs this afternoon. I used a Meguiar's Sanding block to knock the globs down then wet sanded with 2,000 grit to feather the edges and surrounding areas. Some of the drips were really thick and took a lot of sanding to blend them into the surrounding area.
Here is a major drip on the firewall after a little work with the stone. You need to have a light touch and make sure you don't dig into the surrounding paint. It can be tricky in some instances and sometimes there's no way around it. However, you can file down the sanding stone into whatever contour you need. I didn't do that but I can certainly see how it could help.
This one was pretty bad, it was like a waterfall that pooled at the bottom. The stone and wet sanding took care of it though.
The runs most likely happened because of "positioning", meaning I sprayed too long in one spot, overlapped the spray too much or was too close/too far from the panel. The orange peel could have been the pressure or possibly the mixture not being right. So many things seem factor into a paint job, just have to keep doing it I guess.
I'm also realizing that the underside, wheel wells and engine bay are probably the hardest areas to paint because there are so many uneven surfaces. Additionally, the protrusions and varying depths create imperfect lighting situations so it can be hard to see exactly whats happening. Happy that I managed to see improvement on the radiator support though.
Planning to re-do the engine bay tomorrow. More to come.
Armed with this new knowledge, I sprayed the radiator support today and it came out damn near perfect. There's no noticable orange peel and really good coverage with two coats. The full coverage and gloss really makes the paint pop.
Now we're talking!
THIS is what Hemi Orange is SUPPOSED to look like.
Single stage glossy!
I do have to temper my excitement though since I still need to redo the engine bay. Now that the gun seems to be set right the hope is that the paint will cover the existing orange peel. Based on how the rad support looks I'm confident it will be OK. I did buy another quart of paint though in case I need to redo any major areas. Depending on how the engine bay turns out perhaps the trunk will be next. That's a lot of re-masking though, not sure I want to do it over again.
Spent a good amount of time fixing runs this afternoon. I used a Meguiar's Sanding block to knock the globs down then wet sanded with 2,000 grit to feather the edges and surrounding areas. Some of the drips were really thick and took a lot of sanding to blend them into the surrounding area.
Here is a major drip on the firewall after a little work with the stone. You need to have a light touch and make sure you don't dig into the surrounding paint. It can be tricky in some instances and sometimes there's no way around it. However, you can file down the sanding stone into whatever contour you need. I didn't do that but I can certainly see how it could help.
This one was pretty bad, it was like a waterfall that pooled at the bottom. The stone and wet sanding took care of it though.
The runs most likely happened because of "positioning", meaning I sprayed too long in one spot, overlapped the spray too much or was too close/too far from the panel. The orange peel could have been the pressure or possibly the mixture not being right. So many things seem factor into a paint job, just have to keep doing it I guess.
I'm also realizing that the underside, wheel wells and engine bay are probably the hardest areas to paint because there are so many uneven surfaces. Additionally, the protrusions and varying depths create imperfect lighting situations so it can be hard to see exactly whats happening. Happy that I managed to see improvement on the radiator support though.
Planning to re-do the engine bay tomorrow. More to come.
Alllllright GREG!
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Well, it all turned out OK.
Started the final stretch of coats warming the panels with a halogen work light. Not sure if it did anything but it was easy enough to try.
Between Thursday and today it took about 8 coats to get it the way it is now. Probably too much but obviously things were not right with the first couple coats. On the other hand, its possible that much paint was needed to get it to this point. The surfaces were pretty rough before I started and in fact did require several rounds of primer including some high-build on the rougher areas.
There is still orange peel in some spots but overall it's nowhere near as visible as it was before these last coats. The gloss is wild. The exterior paint is glaringly dull by comparison, it will take a lot of elbow grease to get it anywhere close to the the new paint.
The last coats were mixed 1:1 with clear. The idea being that if needed, it would be easier to buff and polish.
At this point, I'm going to let it sit for a few days. Frankly, I've had enough painting and related activities for now. Plus, everything I own is now orange including my hair, skin, glasses, floor, shoes and basically anything within a 10 foot radius of the garage.
More to come.
Started the final stretch of coats warming the panels with a halogen work light. Not sure if it did anything but it was easy enough to try.
Between Thursday and today it took about 8 coats to get it the way it is now. Probably too much but obviously things were not right with the first couple coats. On the other hand, its possible that much paint was needed to get it to this point. The surfaces were pretty rough before I started and in fact did require several rounds of primer including some high-build on the rougher areas.
There is still orange peel in some spots but overall it's nowhere near as visible as it was before these last coats. The gloss is wild. The exterior paint is glaringly dull by comparison, it will take a lot of elbow grease to get it anywhere close to the the new paint.
The last coats were mixed 1:1 with clear. The idea being that if needed, it would be easier to buff and polish.
At this point, I'm going to let it sit for a few days. Frankly, I've had enough painting and related activities for now. Plus, everything I own is now orange including my hair, skin, glasses, floor, shoes and basically anything within a 10 foot radius of the garage.
More to come.
mopowers
Well-Known Member
Kick *** man! That looks great. Don't sell yourself short - not every build needs to be show quality.
Something to keep in mind. Factory paint jobs very often had orange peel. In fat, it was so prevalent, I've even seen some car show judges knock points OFF for paint that's too smooth. Some say a little orange peel is desirable.
SixPaksRule
Well-Known Member
I will suggest that the OP use ventilation, a one-piece paint suit, Long sleeve t-shirt under the suit, a head sock and a full face respirator, rather than absorbing all the chemicals in the paint via skin and eyes with a 1/2 respirator and bare skin and kerosene for clean-up. A cool shower after painting is also a good idea as even with all the gear there is still some exposure. When sanding catalyzed paint/primer; ventilation, a welding respirator, long sleeves and gloves should be used - those sanding particles are toxic - the chemicals attack the central nerve system. Take a cool shower when finished.
From some one who has been painting cars a long time
From some one who has been painting cars a long time
rmchrgr
Skate And Destroy
Obviously the way I did this was not ideal. If there is a next time, there will be a temporary spray booth with an exhaust fan. And yes, a full suit and respirator. Having done it now, at least I know what not to do.
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