Its P day

Today was paint day for the 442! We started yesterday actually, prepping the car. We taped it up, cleaned out the booth yesterday. Today we finished prepping it and Chase started spraying it. He started by laying down a coat of sealer. After that he sprayed the silver on the bottom portion of the car. Once that dried we tapped off the silver and sprayed the black. Then we untapped the silver and sprayed the clear. It was a full day of spraying but it turned out nicely and we had some fun doing it. See Chase giving a demonstration on how he was going to be laying down the paint.  The last few pictures show it in all its glory. Now we need to install the new stripes, moldings and reassembly.

Fire up the grill

Most of the day was spent working on the Camaro again today. We are so close to doing an electrical check that I thought we would just keep moving this one along until we get that done. The left head light tried our patients a bit today. It didnt want to fit the hole or line up with the grill too well. So after giving it a stern talking to we worked it all out. We even installed the upper header panel and aligned the hod up today. Once the harness for the hide away headlights comes in, we will have the wiring pretty well buttoned up. Glass and a few other little knick  knacks and this one will be ready for a few final mechanical touches.

Uh oh, what was that?

This beautiful G37 came in today. What you see is the result of putting the top down with items in the trunk. Apparently this is a major no, no. The back window also busted into about a million pieces. A few dents in the convertible hard top and  a couple scratches was the damage that we are repairing. We were able to get the dents fixed and primed today so early next week this one is ready to in the booth. Follow that with a new back window and this awesome little car will be back on the road.

Come together..

We put in good time today on the Camaro. The hood is on, lower front valance and turn signals. In putting all this together today we found that the radiator was a just about a 1/4″ too high. The hood was just barely hitting the radiator cap, resulting the hood not fully closing. We got that all straightened out though. We also had to sand blast and paint the turn signal brackets.  Just because they aren’t seen, doesn’t mean we don’t make sure they don’t look good. We have a couple of parts coming in next week so we will be able to button up the front end of this one.

Hide away

Today we put the head light buckets on the Camaro and wired them up. This Camaro has hide away head lights. This means that during the day, or when the lights are off, the bulbs are hidden behind covers that look like the grill. When you turn the lights on, a motor power opens the the doors and the lights come on.  These pictures were taken early in during the install process. We still had to remove the left fender to attach the fender emblems, so they alignment is fine tuned on the left fender in this picture. We did in fact get those emblems on today and the fender back on and the light assembly in and properly aligned. You can see we also installed the bracket that holds all of the relays and the circuit breaker that are used to power the hide away lights. The American Auto wire kit did not come with the extension to power these so I ordered one today. We should have that in next week.

On the Olds

Yesterday I took a little time to work on the Olds. This car had was all decked out with kinds of stripes. These on the front and rear bumpers have been there since 1985. Needless to say, they were a bit tough to get off. It took a plastic scraper and quite a bit of lacquer thinner and elbow grease.  The next set of photos shows an old face from the shop. Jordan came by to give us a hand so we out him doing the best job in the shop, blocking and sanding. The trunk and hood were also installed today. We found a few places that needed a little extra primer. Tomorrow we will handle that, then give it another once over with the sander.  We should be ready to paint this one early next week.

Let their be light

Today we pulled out the hide away headlight brackets. Chris disassembled them and sand blasted them. After they were all stripped and all cleaned up, Chase did the magic in the booth. First of all a coat of epoxy primer was sprayed, followed by a couple of coats of egg shell black. They cleaned up very nice.  While the guys was doing this, I was busy with the wiring of the headlights and of the turn signals. Maybe we will have some pictures of that tomorrow.

Bumped up

This Honda came in yesterday to get a new fender and the front bumper repaired.  Since black normally matches pretty good, we took a chance and are going to try painting the fender off the car with out blending anything. I’ll let you know how it comes out. Here you can see the we already have the bumper and the fender off and the bumper repaired and primed.

Keep on keeping on

We worked on the Camaro some today to keep things moving along. We put the gauges together last week. Today we installed them into the new bezel housing and also installed the new clear lenses. Chris installed the dash pad as well. Late this afternoon, we started putting the inner fender in to check to make sure that the hoses for the A/C system didn’t interfere with it. While we were at it, we also grabbed the right fender and the next thing we knew, the fender was on the car. We have to tidy up a few wires and hoses and we will be ready to install the headlights and grill. 

Prime time

Friday, we primed the 442. Now, with all the parts in primer we just need to block out the body work areas and sand the rest of the car for paint.  Since the roof was stripped we did indeed use etch primer before the urethane primer to ensure that proper adhesion.