1972 Canadian H-Code 340 Dart Swinger Special Resto - Finally started!

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Worked on the right side this weekend, standing the paint and E-coat off the quarter and door. Found some filler in a crease in the in the door.

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Decided to remove it all and replace with some modern material as well as pull some of it out to minimize the amount of filler needed,

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Used some of my weld thru primer as a guide coat to help see the crease better,

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Weld some studs in the right spots and and a few shrinks with the shrinking tip in the deeper damage at the front of the door then work it out now that its tightened up and will stay in place.

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Not trying to completely remove this in the steel, beyond my skills, just trying to significantly reduce the depth of the filler. The front was pretty deep and I managed to take the oil can effect out with the shrinks and reduced the depth by a good 80 percent or more. Used Evercoat Rage Extreme for the first time and am really impressed with the way it goes on, virtually no pin holes that I have seen yet, and it sands beautifully with little paper plugging. I'm going to put a light skim over most of the car to try and get it dead straight and this stuff will work nicely and is worth the slightly higher cost.

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As usual I liked to have gotten more done but I'm done for today.

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Nice work! I recently used my stud welder for the first time and was very happy with the results that I got. I was originally going to cut out and weld in a patch in the rocker and got it looking pretty good with the slide hammer. Will need a touch more massaging, but it worked well. L8r
 
FJRdoc said:
Looking great Dan. Always a treat to look at your build.
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The feeling is mutual Kevin, your build thread is one of my favourites and my go to place for detail and sources, hope the shop is making some more progress on your car.


gerahead said:
Nice work! I recently used my stud welder for the first time and was very happy with the results that I got. I was originally going to cut out and weld in a patch in the rocker and got it looking pretty good with the slide hammer. Will need a touch more massaging, but it worked well. L8r
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They are a great tool Jim and if you pick up an inexpensive shrinking tip they also work great at removing the stretch in the steel that many dents produce.
 
Swinger340Canuc said:
The feeling is mutual Kevin, your build thread is one of my favourites and my go to place for detail and sources, hope the shop is making some more progress on your car.




They are a great tool Jim and if you pick up an inexpensive shrinking tip they also work great at removing the stretch in the steel that many dents produce.
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I had the opportunity to borrow one from a friend of mine earlier in the project. It was a Harbor Fright version. Didn't work for squat. Slide hammer stud mechanism didn't hold the studs and the weld was crap. I stepped up and bought a Magna Spot model and what a difference! Much higher quality. The new one came with a shrinking tip, I just haven't had the need to try it yet. But, . . . I still have plenty of body work to go. L8r
 
Swinger340Canuc said:
Appreciate the comment Paul, hows that VF Valiant coming I was hoping you would start a thread on here so we could check out your quality work.
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Hi Dan

The hardtop has been at the painter for nearly 4 months now, going very slowly as it the outside is in epoxy but thats about it, typical painter taking his sweat *** time. I need to get off my *** and do a build thread on here to share back with you all, Ill try and get one started asap.

Cheers
 
VF69HARDTOP said:
Hi Dan

The hardtop has been at the painter for nearly 4 months now, going very slowly as it the outside is in epoxy but thats about it, typical painter taking his sweat *** time. I need to get off my *** and do a build thread on here to share back with you all, Ill try and get one started asap.

Cheers
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Boy it's a common problem getting hung up at the body shop, the Aussie cars are always cool from our perspective so I think lots of us would love to see your build and hear about some of the challenges of doing a build down under. Later Paul.
 
Appreciate the sentiment Anders, hope it helps anyone that wants to tackle some of this work on their own cars.

Decided to abandon going with lead on my sail panels, I haven't touched any lead for 30+ years and figured I'd likely end up with a mess so I went with All Metal. Since I welded the seam solid and I don't intend on doing any body twisting launches, maybe a tire chirp "lol", I'm pretty sure it will hold up fine.

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Now what might seem a bit shocking for some after seeing all this pristine sheet metal the reality of getting a dead straight body takes either gobs of very expensive hight build primer or skim coating all the sheet metal with a high quality "don't skimp here" body filler and long boarding it off. As you can see by the filler that's left behind on the AMD panel although pretty nice aren't dead straight and for that matter either are my original panels. The centre of the door had the crease in it so that was going to have filler in that area but you can see that the top third of the door as well as the bottom third, that never had damage, although pretty thin also have low and high areas that are reflected in the filler left behind. If you notice the amount of filler on the quarter panel pretty much matches the amount on the original areas on the door. The transition from the door to quarter needed a bit more filler since the fit of the AMD panel particularly this side left a bit to be desired, the body lines were good but the levels between the two weren't as good as I'd hoped for. The left side was somewhat better so it should need less filler. Going this route should reduce the amount of high build primer by a lot.

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For those curious on how to prep the steel for the skim coat the method I used was running my long board with some 80Grit paper up and down the panel so I provide a good scratch for the filler to grab onto then wiped it clean with some gun wash thinner or a degreaser. You want to lay down a thin smooth coat of filler and I'd suggest going easy on the hardener so you don't have to rush.

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I broke out my wide drywall plastering knife which worked pretty at laying down a thin smooth coat which makes sanding a bit easier.

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The weapons of choice needed to get a dead straight job, a tip for novices when sanding your filler off is once you start to see the steel approaching its time to start changing to to your finer grits and once the steel starts to break thru you'll want to stop sanding there any more since you've achieved level and flat and anymore sanding will just reverse what you accomplished and will begin lowering the areas around the high spots.

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Dan, thanks for taking the time to document all the work that you've done to the Swinger. The great thing about this hobby is that I am always learning something new. I expect that I will be using some of your techniques on my future projects.
 
Dan, can I ask why you don't epoxy coat the bare metal and then apply filler over the epoxy?

Cheers
 
VF69HARDTOP said:
Dan, can I ask why you don't epoxy coat the bare metal and then apply filler over the epoxy?

Cheers
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Good question Paul, lots of people worry about flash rusting so they rush to get the steel sealed which is a reasonable concern. I've had exposed bare steel in my environment for many weeks with no rusting so I haven't felt the need to rush to epoxy it, the other reason was since I'm doing this in my newly renovated garage and my driveway I didn't want to be spraying that much epoxy and get it all over everything if I could avoid it. Either method works just fine if the epoxy one uses is compatible with using body filler over, I'm probably a little old school on this point and prefer direct to metal with my fillers. Since I'm going to work on the car all this week I'm hoping to have it ready by next weekend to take to the shop and epoxy and paint the bottom and inside and engine compartment and prime the outside so I'm close enough that rusting of the bare steel isn't a concern.
 
Finished sanding off the rest of the paint, found a couple of dents in the roof that I can vaguely remember fixing way back, they were shallow so I removed the old filler and replaced it with new stuff.

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Then back outside to blast the aprons, engine compartment and rear panel as well as touch up some areas on the bottom. Carefully at a sharp angle cleaned the paint off the cowl slits which unexpectedly removed the loose black paint flaking off the bottom of the cowl that had me concerned since I had no access to get at.
Originally I wasn't going to blast the whole engine compartment since the existing paint was solid but decided I'm this deep might as well take it all off.

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Then blow turn blow turn blow turn, media never seems to end but I got most of it out.

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This is not a very big sand blaster so it's not so bad but I chose to do it on weekdays when almost all my neighbors all at work, most of the sound is trapped between my house and next door. No complaints anyway.
 
Finally found the time and had her ready enough to get some priming and some painting done,

Into the trailer she goes yesterday and off to the shop,

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Into the booth with the car and doors and some other parts in the other booth

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the entire shell was sanded and washed and ready so the first step was to mask up for the epoxy and high build primer and all the outside panels and door jams,

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Hemi orange in the Sikkens paint system calls for a yellow sealer to help with transparency so I put on 3 coats or yellow high build but ran low on the yellow so I needed a fourth coat so put a coat of light grey incase your confused by the two colours. The grey will work well as a guide coat and will be completely gone after blocking and sanding.

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Then unmask all of that and mask the engine compartment since I want to use the same base clear on that area that will be on the outside.

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Then a coat of dark grey epoxy inside the passenger compartment, two coats of black epoxy on the underside and grey epoxy on the fender aprons and rear wheel tubs, all at the same time. Then a medium light coat of red sealer on the inside and trunk and aprons and tubs to help with hiding of the single stage top coat.

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Next step is spray the bottom with the single stage black, seams I forgot to take a pic of the black bottom, then mix up the Hemi orange single stage for the inside and aprons and tubs as well as recreating the factory overspray on the bottom that the factory had. I think Randy(Hemiorangeswinger) and I came close to what the factory did, just blast away!

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That was it for saturday, I was beat!

Today my good buddy scatpacker came in to give me a hand with the only painting left was the engine compartment which I'm doing separately with the same base clear as the outside,

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Nice to get all that bare metal painted up, a lot of work and I'm not even half way there but onward and upward.
 
Making great progress Dan. I bet your excited to see some color on the interior and jamb area. I'm going to be doing some rear quarter panel repair on my mom's 1972 Chrysler New Yorker. I bought some weld through primer to use in the repair process. I will be putting some of your info to good use on her car.
 
j061093409 said:
Your all caught up with me!!!
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Sorry pal, your in or just got out of the body shop jail, I've got to light a fire under your gass, LOL!


FJRdoc said:
Making great progress Dan. I bet your excited to see some color on the interior and jamb area. I'm going to be doing some rear quarter panel repair on my mom's 1972 Chrysler New Yorker. I bought some weld through primer to use in the repair process. I will be putting some of your info to good use on her car.
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Yes Kevin, helps with motivation, great to know you can take something away from the posts. If I can help with any questions feel free to ask, seen your New Yorker on your thread, great shape nice cruiser.
 
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Bloody nice work there again mate. I absolutely love seeing your progress updates. It is looking so nice now and you should be very happy with her. I just wish you lived in Australia and had a shop doing this.

I just got shafted with my car to the tune of 6k and had to take it back from the **** painter that was working on it, he was doing such a **** job and cutting corners outside of our agreement and price. It now sits partly in epoxy, in pieces, while I save the cash back up to send it to another painter.
Luckily your build gives me hope for mine.
 
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