All hands on deck

Great progress was made on the C-10 project today. Cole and I worked a good portion of the day blocking out the roof and fixing dents. We worked some on the inside of the cab as well as the left door jamb. The fire wall is pretty close to being finished as well. Tomorrow we plan on attacking it like we did today and hopefully that will put us pretty close to priming it again.

Straightening the curves

The body work on the ’55 is coming right along. We have been blocking the car out to find what needs to be straightened and what we can straighten with blocking and priming. This car has had some nice work done in the past but we will be fine tuning what they started. As you can see it does have several places that need attention and about that many more that we haven’t gotten to yet. Next week we should be able to start spraying some primer on these repairs. Once that happens another good blocking to make sure we didn’t miss anything then start prepping for paint.

Introducing the 1955 Chvey

This little beauty has been brought to us to finish up a long ago started restoration. Its a ’55 Chevy 2 door post car, one of my favorites. Tons of work has already been completed on the car a few goodies include rack and pinion steering, coil over shocks, big V8 and several other things. The owner wanted to dechrome the car so the first thing we did was weld up all of the molding holes. You may notice that we didnt have to weld up the ones in the quarters. Those panels have already been replace years ago and the new panels didnt have molding holes. Once the holes were welded up we started repairing the areas and blocking out the entire car just to see how the body looked. Not too bad. We do have some work to do but it should go along pretty smoothly. The car will be painted the green that you see here when its finished.

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

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.

Back in the saddle

After many weeks of going full tilt on collision cars, we have opened up some breathing room and are back on the oldie goldies. We spent some time off and on block sanding this ’57 but the past couple of days have been pretty prosperous. Block sanding a vehicle with this much surface area was pretty time consuming as well as hard on the shoulders and elbows. The firewall was another area that was pretty tedious. Now, most of that is done and we really just have a few corners and channels to sand and a few places in the trunk before its ready for paint. It should be a real looker when we have all the color on it.

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.

Finally getting primed

We have been steadily plugging along on the FJ over the past couple of weeks and here is where we stand on it. The rain gutters have been stripped and cleaned out. A nice coat of epoxy was applied to the gutters followed by a flowable seam sealer. They really look nice and smooth now. Jordan also worked pretty diligently on sanding the nooks and crannies. It seemed like every time it was ready for primer another spot was found that needed attention. Cole prepped the under side and the top side of the hood today and with a little luck, we may start spraying some parts next week. We do have the body ready for primer now and It will go into the booth first thing Monday morning.