Nice bottom

This morning, bright and early, I arrived at the Murphy Rod & Custom shop to determine what needed to be done to get the bottom of the El Camino finished up. On Thursday we sanded the heck out of it, and today I wanted to try to get it undercoated.

The first photo shows the El Camino in the background. Kelly had pushed the car to the loading door for better light and ventilation while we finished preparing the bottom of the car. But mostly, I just used this shot as an excuse to take a picture of my truck.

The second photo caught Kelly and I discussing the best way to accomplish all the things that needed to be done today. I’m the one standing on the right in the gray t-shirt.

The next three photos, numbers 3, 4 & 5, show me cleaning and preparing the bottom of the car for the application of the epoxy primer. In picture number three I am blowing all the sanding dust off the car with compressed air. This is the best way I know to get all the loose dust and debris off the car.

The fourth photo has me digging in the corners with a screwdriver, digging out old sealer and gunk that wouldn’t sand off. It is important to get the car as clean as possible prior to priming so the primer will stick.

The fifth photo has me wiping everything down with a strong cleaning agent to make sure all the dust and oils have been removed. The metal might look clean, but I turned several wiping cloths black before I was satisfied that the surface was truly clean.

The sixth photo shows the bottom of the car after the application of the epoxy primer. The epoxy primer is, more or less, a sprayable glue that dries to a super-hard surface that seals and protects the metal from the elements. It is the epoxy primer that binds to the metal and forms the foundation upon which all the other layers are built.

After the primer had dried, I went over all the welds and seams with a seam sealer that prevents water from working its way into the seams and starting rust. Rust never sleeps and anything that we can do on these types of builds to prevent the rust from getting a toe-hold, we do. You can see some of the seams protected thus in the eighth photograph.

The last two photos, numbers 9 & 10, show the car after the Raptor Liner has been applied. The Raptor Liner is a light duty bed liner that works great as an undercoating, provideing another layer of protection to the bottom of the car. It works as yet another sealer against the elements and provides a super tough barrier to rock chips and other damage. And it looks fantastic at the same time.

Now that the bottom of the car has been protected as much as possible, Murphy Rod & Custom will put the chassis and body back together and begin to fit the rest of the sheet metal on the car.

Then I can start work on making the top as nice as the bottom.

That baby looks good

Yesterday we got the Scion prepped for paint. Today, we painted it.

The first photo shows the car as we left it yesterday so the primer covering the repair could dry. Having dried overnight, the car was ready to go into the booth for paint today.

The second picture is the replacement bumper, freshly delivered and being cleaned prior to painting. In the second picture I am wiping the bumper down with a tack cloth to remove any dust from the light sanding it received so the paint would stick.

A tack cloth is nothing more than a lint free cloth treated with a chemical to make it just slightly sticky. Wiping the cloth over the panel to be painted removes all the loose contaminates that would affect the paint when it is applied. The two most important steps in painting … sanding and cleaning. You get those right, you are 80% of the way there.

The third photo has me prepping the bumper for paint by coating the bumper in a primer like product that helps the paint stick to plastic.

Finally, after all the prep work, in the fourth photo I am painting, spraying on the base coat. The base coat is the part of the automobiles finish that is the actual color, white in this case. You can see the bumper and back of the car after the base coat has been applied in pictures five and six.

The base coat dries to a near flat finish … it is the clear coat that provide the sizzle to the finish. The base coat and clear coat work together as a unit to produce the luxuriant finish that automotive finishes are known for.

The final three photos, 7, 8 & 9, show the car after the application of the clear coat. Notice how much deeper the paint looks and the luster that now reflects the lights of the paint booth.

The Scion was the last car I painted today, finishing just before leaving for home. Allowing it to dry overnight means we can put the car back together first thing in the morning. And that means this baby can go home to its owners tomorrow evening.

Whoda thunk it?

“It’s déjà vu all over again”  - Lawrence “Yogi” Berra

No sooner than I get one deep red 1950 Chevrolet pickup out of the shop, then parts of another arrive. The two truck are the same make, model and year, and so close in color that unless you see them side-by-side, you would think they were the same color. It’s strange how coincidences work sometimes

The owner of the truck, the second truck that is, dropped off a few parts, the hood, tailgate and a couple of other small parts, to be painted. Apparently the shop that painted the rest of his truck was unwilling or unable to finish the job. I’m not sure what is going on, or even who the other shop is, but in any case I only have these few parts to paint.

The first picture shows the hood, upside down and ready to paint. That picture was taken almost two weeks ago just before I painted the underside of the hood. Yesterday I was finally able to get the hood, along with the rest of the parts, back in the booth to finish painting them.

The second picture is of Mike cleaning the inner fenders. Mike is wiping everything down with a tack cloth to remove any contaminants from the surface. The tack cloth is just a piece of lint free cloth treated with a chemical that leaves the cloth slightly sticky … much like a PostIt! note. The cloth is wiped over the surface that is to be painted and any loose dirt, hair … whatever … is picked up by the cloth and removed from the surface.

The third photo shows the tailgate hanging in the booth, ready to paint. The black part of the tailgate is some primer that has been sprayed on the tailgate to prepare it for paint.

The fourth and fifth pictures are of yours truly sitting on a hard concrete floor with my head stuck inside what amounts to a big steel bucket while I taped up the already painted areas to protect them from overspray. Yes … you too can enjoy a glamorous career in automotive repair …

The sixth picture shows all the parts, prepared and ready to paint.

The last three photos, numbers 7, 8 and 9, show the various parts after they have been painted. After the parts dry overnight they can be sent home with the owner.

I’m just glad I didn’t have both these trucks in the shop at the same time. It would have gotten real old real fast having to constantly walk up and hold parts against the trucks to compare the color to make sure you were getting the right parts on the right truck.

Somebody get the door

The owner of these Jeep doors wanted to revel the entire Jeep experience. The whole wind in the hair, bugs in your teeth, rain in your face that is Jeeping. You don’t own a Jeep … you live it.

Not happy with the full doors his Jeep arrived with, equipped with roll up windows to keep out the weather, sticks and stinging insects, the owner scouted around until he found half doors. But the red really clashed with the silver of the Jeep so something had to be done.

The first picture shows the door after sanding to rough up the paint so the new silver paint would stick. There are of course a matching set of doors, and what I did to one I did to the other so there is no reason to show both.

The second picture was taken just before I applied the sealer. In the photograph I am wiping the door down with a tack cloth to remove any dust or other foreign matter than may have landed on the door. The tack cloth is nothing but a lint free cloth coated with a chemical to make it just slightly tacky … like a post-it note. Wiping the cloth over the surface to be painted causes any particles to stick to the cloth leaving the surface perfectly clean.

Picture three has me spraying on the urethane sealer. The sealer seals all the stuff below it and provides a neutral color for the base coat that follows. The sealer comes in one of seven shades of gray, from almost white to nearly black. Each color specifies a corresponding shade of gray. Darker colors generally get the darker sealers, the lighter colors the lighter ones.  Because the doors are being painted silver, the sealer is in the lighter colors.

The sealer also provides a quick cover when changing colors. If I were to try to paint silver directly over this red it would take 50 coat to cover. Okay, that is an exaggeration, but it would take a heck of a lot more than the normal two, three or four I usually do.

Photograph four shows the door after the application of the base coat, the color layer of the paint. Not much color change is there between the sealer and the base coat? A darker sealer would darken this silver up, a lighter sealer would lighten it. But a near match means the color comes out true.

Another quick wipe down with the tacky cloth in picture five to make sure everything is clean, then the clear goes on in picture six.

Where the base coat dries to a flat and lifeless finish, the clear not only provides a layer of protection to the base coat below, it also gives the finish it shine.

Compare the last photo, taken after the clear has been applied to the picture above (#4) with just the base coat. The difference is clear … no pun intended.

Just because you drive a Jeep, a rough and tumble vehicle that is ready for anything if there ever was one, doesn’t mean you can’t look good at the same time.

Painting the Old Timer

Friday we painted the cab of the 1932 Ford truck a beautiful, vibrant, blue. Next week we will paint the front fenders and the bed, then the truck will be ready to go back to the owner for assembly.

The first three photos show Jordan and I masking the truck to prevent the paint from getting on things that we don’t want the paint on. It’s a tedious job, but time spent here saves a lot of time cleaning up later.

In the third photo I am wetting down the plastic that I use to cover large areas so it will stick to, and seal around, the truck so the paint can’t worm its way through a tiny little gap.

The fourth and fifth photos show us cleaning the truck to remove all dust and oil so the paint will have good adhesion. The first step is to remove as much dust as possible with compressed air. Then the entire truck is wiped down with a strong degreaser that removes any oil that has been left on the truck from touching it.

We spray the degreaser on a section of the truck then wipe it down with a lint free rag, as shown in the fifth photo. I normally will wipe the entire truck two or three times to make absolutely sure that I didn’t miss any places. When the truck is thoroughly cleaned we close up the paint booth then move to the fun part … mixing the paint.

Paint is mixed by weight. I have a computer that tells me the proportion for each of the pigments that go into making a color. In the sixth photo you can see me measuring pigment out of a can into a larger can sitting on a scale. The can on the scale will, after all the ingredients are added, contain the paint that is sprayed on the truck. Today this truck will require two of those silver cans, or two quarts, for coverage.

The next two photos show me spraying the paint I just mixed on the truck. It will take several coats of color for uniform coverage. The color layer will shine only while the paint is wet, then will try to a dull flat finish. It is the clear coat that is applied next that provides the protection and shine.

The last three photos show the result after the clear has been applied. This truck is not receiving our High Performance Finish so this part of the truck, once dry, is complete. Even without the wet sand and buff, this old truck looks a lot better now than it did with it arrived in the shop.

In case you are wondering … the buckets in the last two photos are my low-tech solution for reaching the top of the truck. It’s not fancy, but sometimes it is difficult to improve on the tried and true methods.