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.

Primed for action

Friday was a long day … a very long day. We nearly 10 hours in the booth getting this ’65 Chevelle prepared, primed and ready for the next step, so it was worth it.

The first five pictures show the Chevelle after the application of the epoxy sealer. The epoxy sealer seals and protects the metal from moisture and rust. It also provides a good bonding surface for the products that follow, such as the Slick Sand primer.

The epoxy primer has a strange property … all five pictures show the car covered the same stuff, the epoxy primer, but depending the light and angle, the camera sees the primer as either dark gray or blue. Dark gray is the color your eye sees, so I don’t know where the blue is coming from, but it really is all the same stuff.

The car was completely coated in the primer, top to bottom, inside and out. The third picture is a shot taken from underneath the car looking toward the back. That hole in the floor is where the shift lever comes through the floor from the transmission.

Here at JMC AutoworX spare no effort in our battle against rust, especially on these high end restorations, so not only do we spray the entire car in this very tough primer, we go the extra mile and coat the underside and interior floor of the car with our Raptor Liner bed liner material.

The Raptor Liner is a light duty truck bed liner. While we do use it for that, we use it more often as a protectant on restored and custom cars. The Raptor Liner provides a super tough, water proof layer that provide extra protection against damage and rust. So while it might not stand up to contractor throwing concrete block in the back of a truck, it is a supremely tough protective coating on a car.

Another benefit of the Raptor Liner is that it provides some sound deadening properties as well. Later we will cover the floor, roof and doors with another sound deadener, but the Raptor Liner provides just that much more deadening.

Photos 7-12 show Jordan spraying the Raptor Liner onto the car. As you can see in pictures 7-9, the spraying of the Raptor Liner under the car is no picnic. This car is a frame off restoration, and we received the body and the frame as two separate units. The body is sitting on jack stands so it is high enough off the floor to get under … but just barely.

Because Jordan is the youngest, most resilient of us, he was elected to crawl under the car and spray the liner. Having done this job many times myself, I can tell you it is not a fun job. While the Raptor Liner dries to an extremely hard surface, it starts out as a wet, gooey, sticky gunk. When spraying it under a car like this most of it goes on the underside of the car, maybe 99.9% of it does, but that tiny little bit that doesn’t ends up on the floor and on your protective coveralls. Then it begins to dry and sticks you to the floor, making moving difficult. Remember, this stuff is designed to be a truck bed liner, sprayed from the standing position down onto a surface. So spraying it up onto a surface … well, let’s just say Jordan, despite being a healthy and strong young man was pretty tired, by the time he was done.

As you can see, the Raptor Liner makes a very attractive coating under the car. It leaves a nice rich black textured surface that not only looks good, but also can stand up to being driven. With the Raptor Liner underneath you can drive the car and enjoy it, knowing that the car is as well protected as possible from damage and rust. Some may disagree, but I think having a car I can drive and enjoy is much more desirable than a trailer queen.

Photos 10-12 show the Raptor Liner going onto the trunk and floor pans of the car. It looks just as good on the inside as it does underneath. While this will be covered with carpet and won’t be seen, it will still provide the sound deadening properties, and more importantly, rust protection into the future. The floor and trunk pans always rust out on these old cars. Well, they did, but that won’t be an issue on this Chevelle thanks to the Raptor Liner coating.

The last seven photos, numbers 13-20, show the final layer of primer for today, Slick Sand. Slick Sand is a high-solids primer that we use to smooth body panels for our High Performance Finish. One of the hallmarks of the High Performance Finish are the razor sharp reflections in the paint. Those reflections can only be obtained if the body panels are dead straight and true.

Only the super-expensive cars like Bentleys and Roll Royces have perfect bodywork from the factory. It is just a fact that all cars have some slight rippling in the bodywork, even fresh from the factory. And the panels of a near forty year old car? Oh yeah. Be sure to wave as you go by because it will be waving back.

Most people don’t even notice the ripples because they are very slight, all cars have them, and the factory paint finish just isn’t good enough to make the ripples really pop out. Next time your new car is out in the sun, sight along the side of your car and you will see what I mean. While this is understandable and normal for a mass produced car, it is not acceptable on a restoration such as this.

Have you ever wondered why it is that show car paint always looks so beautiful, so deep, rich and glossy? It is because who ever was painting it took the time to make sure the body panels were ripple free before the paint was applied. There is more too it than that of course, but this is where that gorgeous paint starts. The average person might not know why the paint on a show car looks so much better than the average car, but people certain notice when the extra care is taken.

Anyway, because the gloss of the High Performance Finish far exceeds the finish on the average family car, any ripples in the body work are much more noticeable. They show up as distortions in the reflections, causing straight lines to warp and twist slightly. Slick Sand allows us to remove these small imperfections so the reflected images are not distorted.

The Slick Sand primer contains a high solids content, solids that when dry form a hard surface that can be sanded away, filling low spots and smoothing down high spots. Slick Sand won’t fill in dents, but it will cover the slight rippling that will spoil a high end paint finish. I will talk more about sanding, or long blocking, a car when we begin the blocking process on this car.

Finally, about seven o’clock Friday evening, the last coat of Slick Sand went on the car. It will dry over the weekend so that on Monday it will be ready to sand off.

Such is the life of a paint and body man. Spray it on today, sand it off tomorrow.

Now the bed is Ford tough too

This 1966 Ford pickup was dropped off at the shop yesterday to have its bed coated with a Raptor Liner coating.

The Raptor Liner is my bed-liner of choice because it much thinner than the traditional spray-in bed-liners and better fits the types of vehicles my customers bring me. You see, I tend to get nicely restored or family vehicles, like the Ford you see here, not the heavy-duty work trucks like contractors use. Heavy-duty protection is not required … but style, that’s a must.

This Ford already had some kind of protective coating in the bed, which you can see in the first two pictures. I’m not sure what it was, but it is obvious from the over spray that it was there before the truck was repainted. Even if the bed wasn’t covered in over spray, the Raptor Liner will look a lot better than the stuff that was in there already.

First we removed the chrome trim from the outside of the bed so the bolts holding it on wouldn’t be coated in the Raptor Liner material. If I were to have covered those bolts with the Raptor Liner material it would almost guarantee me a cussing from someone in the future because that trim would be very, very difficult to get off.

After the trim was removed, like almost every job we do at JMC AutoworX, putting in the Raptor Liner starts with sanding. Lots of sanding. You can see the results of all that sanding in the third picture. And let me go on record right here and say that sanding the inside of the bed on  a long wheel base pickup … that’s a lot of sanding, and none of it is much fun. My knees were black from crawling around in the bed as I sanded away.

After sanding the truck was taped off to protect the paint and the Raptor Liner material was sprayed over the bed. You can see me applying the Raptor Liner coating in the next four shots. The tricky part is getting the liner into all the corners and crevasses, for full protection, but not get all over everything else. Everything else like the paintwork of the truck … or myself.

The final shot shows the completed Raptor Liner in the truck. It needed a couple of hours to completely dry before I would be able to reinstall the chrome trim pieces I had removed earlier. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the customer to stop by and pick up his pick-up.

Not only does the new liner look great, it makes the bed as Ford tough as the rest of the truck. After all, what good is a truck that you are afraid to haul anything in?

More than a bed-liner

Here’s the Healey with the Raptor bed-liner sprayed in the cockpit and boot. More and more people are having their classic cars and rods coated with this to help protect their investment.

In this case, the owner was trying to prevent the pans from rusting out if the carpet happens to get wet. Certainly a possiblity in a car with no top, or as the British would say, no hood.

Bedtime … again

Even though the bed is going to be covered in carpet and leather, we didn’t skimp on the protection … or the details.

Once again the Raptor Liner is used, this time in the truck bed proper, for protection and noise abatement.

Meanwhile …

Meanwhile, in the paint booth, the cab is treated to a little TLC itself. Here we sprayed the Raptor Liner in the floor of the truck. Not only does this provide protection against rust, it also helps reduce noise in the cab for a quieter ride.

We also painted the engine bay and the inside of the cab with a satin black paint. The engine that is being dropped into this truck is going to be a real show piece and we, the customer and I, didn’t want the paint to compete with the engine.

Bedtime

In the first photo you can see that we have cleaned away years of dirt, road grime and rust from the bottom of the truck bed. Now I need to do something to protect it into the future.

Enter Raptor Liner.  Raptor Liner is a light duty bed-liner material we use here at JMC AutoworX for all kinds of things. Not only do we spray it into truck beds for their protection, but we also spray it on restoration projects and custom-rods as well to protect the customer’s investment.

In the second picture you can see that with Raptor Liner coating the bottom, the truck bed is protected against rust and all the abuse that is heaped upon the underside of vehicles.

And it looks pretty good while doing it too.

Making the bed

Just out of the booth after spraying in the Raptor Liner, the ol’ girl is looking sharp.

We put the  Raptor Liner on the floor and left the walls of the bed in paint.

You can’t have too much protection

If I asked you to tell me the first thing you think of when I say, “British car,” one of the things that probably comes to mind is rust. While a problem in the past, with the materials available today, rust is no longer an issue.

I sprayed Raptor Liner, the bed-liner material we use here at JMC AutoworX, on all the interior surfaces and in the fender wells. Raptor Liner forms a tough, water proof, rust proof barrier to protect the metal from damage.

Tinted red, to match the car, the Raptor Liner coating will blend in and be almost unnoticeable.

An easy care interior

The customer wanted an easy to maintain interior in this CJ so a Raptor Liner coating was just the ticket.

After a hard day off roading, simply hose it and let it dry. No need to worry about rust. If it needs a little more sprucing up, a quick spray with your favorite vinyl protectant and the Raptor Liner will like new again.