4 more ready

We have been working hard on the C-10, and it shows. We now have 4 more parts ready for paint. Cole and Jordan finished blocking these panels out today and Paul had just enough time to spray a few coats of urethane primer on them before quitting time. These panels will be blocked one final time to be certain they are nice and straight before painting.

Tubs are painted

Last week the work continued with the C-10. Paul sprayed the engine compartment sides of the wheel houses and did a spray in bedliner on the wheel house side of them They really look nice. Paul also was able to get the epoxy high build primer on the doors and fenders last week. Jordan got to work blocking them today. He did have a couple of places appear on the right fender so he went ahead and fixed that while he was at it. These will continue to be blocked out tomorrow and hopefully these parts will soon be in their final urethane primer in a couple of days

Wires everywhere!

Still plugging along on the VW. The wiring is coming along nicely. All of the major wires are run and most things are hooked up. We are waiting on some parts that is keeping us from finishing that up so we are installing what we can to keep things moving.  Once we get the speedometer and the steering column installed that mess of wires will be cleaned up a little. We secured the wiring back at the firewall and started installing the insulation back there. VW made little flexible hooks for the wiring to run through when these were new but the aftermarket parts don’t put them on the ones made today. This firewall was replaced at some point a while back so we had to add the clips to hold the wiring. We are making good progress each day. This little VW will be back on the road before you know it.

Fender bender

Jordan has been devoting the past few days to the C10 project. He has the body work on the doors pretty well wrapped up and today started on the fenders. Here again these are new parts but not without issues. The owner wanted to do fill in the turn signal holes that were in the fenders to match the way the quarters were done. This cleans up the look of the truck. It makes the sides look smoother. When that was done, they left the inner lip where the light use to mount and it didn’t look good. Although it will be hard to see and most people would never notice it, we would. So the first part of the day was spent grinding away all the metal that wasn’t needed on the back side of the fenders. He then started blocking out the front side to bring the high and low spots out. Once those were found he started straightening.  A hammer and dolly were uses to minimize the amount of filler. It looks like a little too much heat got to the panel when the patches over the signal holes were filled because the fenders were a little warped around the area where the lights use to be. Its hard not to get any warping when welding sheet metal because today’s metal is so thin. This is why there is just a large patch at the fronts of the fenders.  He should have these finished up tomorrow and the goal will be to get these and the doors in their first coats of primer by Thursday.

C10 in progress

Over the past couple of weeks we have been plugging along on the C10 project. Repairs on the cab are moving along. The firewall is pretty smooth, work on the cab continues and work on the doors has begun. Although these are new doors they still came with a few dents that needed attention. We blocked them out to find the low spots and high spots then straightened them out. We will be applying our high build primer over these doors in the next day or so and they will receive another blocking followed by a final prime with regular urethane primer. Once that happens we will have 2 more panels ready for paint.

Painting the trim

Painting continues for the ’57. Today Paul sprayed the batch of interior parts he worked on yesterday. These parts are interior trim parts that were pretty much stripped and repainted. We started out by applying a coat of PPG’s DPLV epoxy primer. Once that was dry we were able to go straight to the Tropical Turquoise color. Once that was dry Paul sprayed 2 coats of PPG’s DC 3000 clear. These parts should look nice for years and years to come.

The other door

Another busy day working on the Bug. Today we started building the left door. We now have both doors hung and operational. The window tracks are all in as well as the outer window scrapers and the clips that hold the felt channel. We have both vent windows built as far as we can go. We are waiting on one seal that goes in the vent window but it wont arrive for a couple of weeks. Once we hit that road block we started putting the decklid and hood back together. We decided it would be easier to wire the car and install the gas tank with the hood off so we didnt install that just yet. We then dug out the old fuse block, cleaned it up and installed it as well as started running some wires. Tomorrow the installation of the spaghetti system marches on.

Trim time

While Jordan and I worked on the VW, Paul was busy sanding and prepping about a dozen or so interior trim parts for the ’57. Most of these parts were stripped because the factory only applied a couple of coats of paint and did so directly over the bare metal. This isnt going to cut it for todays quality. When trying to sand these parts the paint just flakes right off so stripping them wasnt really hard, just a bit time consuming because of the number of parts. Looks like he has them pretty close. We hope tomorrow evening they will look as good as the car does.

The doors

A week or so ago we ordered a whole slew of parts for the Bug, They came in Monday and after going through and making sure we had everything we started putting the car back together. We started by disassembling the vent windows. These have to come completely apart to replace 2 of the gaskets that keep the wind and rain out. We are missing one of those rubbers and dont really have answer yet on when they will arrive but we went ahead and disassembled them. Once apart they were cleaned and polished up and the black frame was repainted. Now, when all this goes back together it will look really nice. We then installed the outer window scraper and the clips that hold the felt channel in place. Yesterday, before we left we set both of the door latch mechanisms in some degreaser to minimize scrubbing today. It worked beautifully. We rinsed off the latches, let them dry then lubed them up before installing them. We also installed the door handle as well as the door rubber and check rod. Before we installed the window regulator we applied a little sound deadening material to help with noise inside the car and to help make the doors sound really solid when closing them. This is about as far as we can go with this door until the back ordered rubber parts come in. Tomorrow we will do the same for the other door.

Standing tall now

After quite some time the ’57 is back in all of its glory. Months of body work and sanding has brought this bit of American iron back from the dead. We spent all day yesterday spraying out the sealer, the roof color then the bottom color then clear. Now that all that is complete we have a beautiful 1957 Chevy in one of the most popular color combinations. This one really turned out nice. We will get a whole slew of interior parts painted next as well as some wet sanding and buffing on the body to really make this car stand out in a crowd. Stay tuned.