What a grind

A truck this nice can’t have just any old suspension. The rear axle is treated to a nice coat of paint to freshen it up before being installed along with the new air suspension. The stock front suspension will be replaced with a modern coil over shock setup that will dramatically improve the ride and drive-ability of the truck.

The bottom two photos show the new mounting points for the front suspension and how the welds have been ground smooth and filled with body filler. After the frame is painted these attachment points will appear to be part of the frame, not pieces welded on.

My metal fabricator, who welded up the frame and suspension mounting points for me, is one of the best guys around … and it shows in the quality of his work.

It’s all about preparation

We at JMC AutoworX take our surface preparation very seriously. Just like a house needs a solid foundation, for paint to be durable and to look its best it too requires a good foundation.

Take these fenders, hood and trunk lid as an example. The metal is first etched with an acid etching primer to bind to the metal so following layers have something to stick too. This is the gold colored coating in the first pictures.

Over the etching primer we spray an epoxy primer to seal the car to protect the metal from rust. This is the black coating you see on the hood and fender.

The epoxy primer is followed by a high build primer, the gray primer in the last set of pictures, which fills any tiny imperfection and ripples in the metal to provide that perfectly flat and smooth surface for the paint.

All this preparation is expensive, time consuming, and down right hard work, but it is the only way to produce a finish that goes beyond merely good to become great, and is durable to boot.

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.

Every petrolhead’s dream

This 1968 Camaro SS is something special. With less than 30,000 original miles and perfect original sheet metal, you don’t find a car like this just every day. Prepping this car for paint will involve a media-blast and prime … and not much else.

Here the car is back from having its paint removed by media-blasting. Media-blasting uses tiny plastic beads propelled by high pressure air as a gentle abrasive to remove paint and rust. The concept is the same as sandblasting, but the plastic beads are far less damaging to the metal surface than sand would be.