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.

Bed time

Over the past few days we have been working on the C10 project, you may have seen the first post a few weeks back. We decided to blow this bed back apart to make sure we get paint and primer in all the nooks and crannies. It hard enough to do apart but together its impossible. We also welded in a patch in an ugly area on the inside lip of the bed rail. Looks like someone in the past put a hook there to strap down some cargo and it messed the lip up. What you see here is 3 good coats of PPG’s Vibrance line high build epoxy. We sanded and cleaned the metal multiple times to ensure the surface was as clean as possible. Paul then applied the primer allowing the product to dry in between coats. The next step for these panels will be a good blocking out with 80 grit. We will then be able to see all of our low and high spots. We will do our body work right over this product. Once they are straight, another coat of epoxy followed by several coats of urethane high build primer. These are the most important steps in the paint process.

One clean ’57

Its been crazy around here the past few weeks. We have been very busy with deer hits and general accidents. We sent the ’57 over to the blasters a few weeks ago and got it back last week and we were very impressed with what we have. This is a very solid car. We immediately began sanding it in preparation for primer. We sanded every single square inch of this car to ensure good adhesion of the primer. We then dug out all of the old seam sealer in the car and slid it in the booth this afternoon. We then meticulously wiped the car down to be sure we had the metal as clean as possible. Before spraying we masked off the frame, floor, and rear inner fender wells. We applied 2 coats of PPG’s high build epoxy from their Vibrance line. Things are looking really good. Tomorrow the wheels go back on and it waits for its turn over at Kelly’s place to get the new right quarter installed.