Get a little closer

In between painting the CRV and working on the 350Z, we primed the Mustang. With every step we get a little closer to spraying color on here. All the dents are fixed now and we are ready to start blocking out the primer and performing the final sanding.

That left a mark

This 350Z was parked on the side of the road while the owner worked.  Someone trying to park in front of it, cut things a little close. The fender, bumper and wheel was clipped just a smidge. It bent up the fender a bit as well as added a few nice gouges in the bumper. We disassembled the car, and started repairing the damage. Chris repaired the bumper with proper materials made for plastic bumpers. Jordan got to work on the fender. Once both were ready and the repairs straight, they were primed. Because we will be closed tomorrow for  New Years, it will get painted on Thursday.

Silver streak

We did in fact get this CRV painted today. We started off today by blocking out the primer on the doors. Blocking is a process that makes certain that the panel is flat and as smooth as possible.  We then sanded the rest of the doors with a scotch brite. This process makes sure the paint sticks to the rest of the panel. We started the paint process by applying a coat of sealer. This allows the color to cover better and fills the fine scratches from blocking out the primer. We then sprayed 3 coats of base coat. This is also the color coats. We followed that with 2 coats of clear coat. This is where the gloss and protection for the base coat comes from. Since we are closed tomorrow, we will put this one back together on Thursday and get it all cleaned back up for the owner. She will be very pleased to get a clean, un-dented Honda back.

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Working the curves

We got back on the Mustang pretty good today. We spent a good portion of time on the body work. We were able to get the dents fixed in the body and all of the parts sanded. We were also able to get a little bit of priming done. When we primed the CRV, the fender and the hood from this car were also ready. So, we went ahead and primed then too. Tomorrow we plan on priming the rear bumper, the body and the other fender. The rear bumper was in good shape with the exception of the spider webbing cracks in the paint. This comes from minor bump ups. It doesnt damage the bumper, but the paint cant flex as much as the plastic in the bumper can so it cracks. We had to remove every one of those cracks so the cracks would not show in the new paint. 

Fish house bump up

The owner of the brand spanking new CRV went out for dinner one night and while they were waiting for a space to park, WHAM! A truck was backing out of their spot and hit the side of the CRV. Now the damage could have been a lot worse. Luckily they were not going very fast. We started by removing the handles, trim and mirror. We then used a stud puller to pull the dents out to a more manageable size. We followed that with some body filler to fine tune the damage. Then we primed the damaged area with urethane primer. Tomorrow we plan on blocking out the primer then we can prep the rest of the panels for paint. We should be able to get this one painted tomorrow if all goes well.

New lease on life

This Mustang was dropped of late last Thursday for a major transformation. We will be completely disassembling it, painting it inside and out and adding racing stripes. This is getting the full High Performance Finish. The colors the owner chose is a very nice burgundy metallic with silver stripes. We will paint all of the jambs, fix all dents and  wet sand and buff the car all over. This will provide a super high gloss and a mirror like finish. As you can see we got quite a bit of work done on here Friday. Its completely apart and we started fixing the dents on the left side and started removing the thousands of rock chips in the hood. We will have to prime this in and block it out before painting. Stay tuned for this one folks. This one will be fun and look awesome when its finished.

Prime time

We have been back on the Chevelle these past few days. We are trying to get it in the final prime by the end of the week. We spent the bigger part of yesterday working on the alignment of the left quarter panel to the trunk as you see in the first two pictures. The problem we were fixing here is that the left quarter was higher than then trunk. The right side fit great. But so we knew that the problem was with the quarter. After taking some measurements, we decided to cut a slit in the jamb on the quarter, push the top edge of the quarter down to match the trunk. Once we were happy with it, it was welded back up. Seems a little extreme I know, but it fixed it right up. Next is proof that Im not afraid of hard work. Ill lay down beside it any time. I am taping the bottom of the car so when its primed, over spray don’t cover the freshly painted bottom. Once all the areas that we didn’t want primer on were masked off, we wiped it down to be sure that the panels were super clean.  After all that, we were finally able to apply the primer. Once these 3 coats of primer have cured out, we will block this one more time in preparation for paint.

Grilling

We started today by putting the Equinox back together until we ran out of parts. We are waiting on a lower front valence that should arrive on Wednesday. So, when we reached the stopping point on that one, we pulled this old grill out that goes on a ’64 Chevy truck that was painted a few years back. Progress has been rather slow on the old fellow but its moving on now. The grill is one of the last things that needed paint so we used today to get that done. I think it turned out great!

Looking good

Today we succeeded in getting the Equinox back together and even got it painted. Things went really well on it. We started with installing the fender then the hood. We then fit the head light to be sure it all lines up correctly. We then froze our behinds off wet sanding the hood, fender and door.  After it dried we slid it in the booth and prepped it for paint. We started with a coat of sealer. This ensures proper and even coverage of the color. After three coats of color we applied 2 coats of clear. It really turned out very nice. We will get things put back together on Monday and after a good detailing this one will be ready for it owner.