Body moving, body moving

Not sure why I had the Beastie Boys on my mind when writing this post, but it does fit. We have been doing lots of body work on the Ghia. We came in and worked last weekend on it and several hours this week as well. We did cut out a previously repaired patch that I just wasnt happy with. We replaced it with a single larger one and the job is much nicer for it. We also have the lower right rear sheet metal in place. The silver filler material is a product called All Metal. Its great to use over welded patches because of its water proofing abilities. We use this over welds for starters then finish up with filler to do the fine tuning. The body work is coming along and the only welding left on the car now is a few places on the lower front. We hope to get moving on those tomorrow.

Gotta split

The owner of this Mercedes dropped her car off to get this terrible looking split in the bumper fixed. She just picked this one up a few weeks ago and just couldnt bare to ride around with the split in the bumper. We removed the bumper and ground down all the area around the split. We then used products from SEM corporation to repair the bumper. Technology has come a long long way as far as glues and epoxy’s go for fixing plastic parts. Once the repair area was fixed, a few coats of primer was sprayed on the damaged area. We then sanded and prepped the bumper for paint. Thats where Paul took over and laid down a nice red base followed by a few good coats of PPG clear. The owner also dropped off her new front plate so we installed that for her as well. Its all back together now and ready for the last few weeks of summer.

Hold my keys

We have a Camaro that has been vandalized in the shop this week. Here you can see we have already sanded out the scratches and repaired the areas that needed it. We have it masked off and read for primer that will go in the morning. Sometimes there just isnt enough hours in the day.  Once we get primer on here and its dry enough to sand, we will block all these areas out and get it ready for paint on Friday.

Hot Rod ’52

Here we are prepping what think will be the last batch of truck parts to be painted. There are about 8 or 10 items left to be sprayed. We hope to get them all done tomorrow so we can spend several days next week putting the final buff on the larger items. Once that is complete, the frame comes here for the assembly of the body panels. This thing will then start looking like a truck again. I know the owner will be very excited to see that happen. Here we are sanding the running boards and the custom lower dash extension that will hold the A/C vents. Lots of progress on the old hot rod truck this week.

Oh deer

A deer wanted to get an up close and personal look at this Ford Edge. Unfortunately for him and the owner, he got a little too close. This repair consists of  a new rear door and a repair on the front door and quarter panel. Yesterday we trimmed out the rear door and did all the repair work on the front door and quarter. This morning we installed the door and sanded the panels in preparation for paint. Chris even took a selfie us sanding it. The next set of pictures show the Edge in the booth with the base coat color applied and two with clear. Tomorrow the plan is to put it all back together and get it all ready for delivery.

Alright STOP, liner time

The ’52 Ford fenders spent a little more time in the booth today to get the bedliner sprayed today. We masked off the areas that we did not want to spray then Jordan went to work. After the bedliner was sprayed and dried, we sanded back over the fenders one more time to prep them up for epoxy and slick sand. This will happen Monday. We just ran out of time today.

Prepping for color

  Today we spent the afternoon prepping these parts for color. The owner has picked her color and we plan on shooting a few of them tomorrow. Since we have about 6 pieces ready we will have to paint them in batches because there just isnt enough room to hang them all up at one time. If you remember we have prepped these by applying a coat of epoxy primer to the bare metal. Once that was dry we sprayed a couple of coats of urethane primer. Since these panels were new, there wasn’t much work to be done to them. We sanded all the flat areas first, then used a dual action sander to go over the big areas. All the little nooks and crannies were sanded by hand. This all ensures proper adhesion of the top coats. Stay tuned tomorrow to see what color these will be. Its a big day!

Scratch and dent sale

This Miata was the victim of some vandalism a few weeks ago. We started by sanding all the scratches out and removing the parts to ensure a quality job. We will be removing door handles and mirrors as well, we just ran out of time today. There are also a few dents in this car that will also get repaired. Once those are fixed we will prime everything at the same time. Block out the primer then prep for paint would be next on the list.

Camaro time

After weeks of working on late model Mustangs, it was nice to work on a little GM iron. This LS6 powered Camaro belongs to the son of one of the Mustangs we have worked on in the past few months. We joke and tell him he is obviously the one who got all the brains in the family. Its all in good fun, but it works up the dad a bit. Anyway, he wanted to get the scoop on the hood painted black and a few other custom touches on here while we had it in the shop.  We started by removing the hood and prepped it for paint like always. Once it was ready, we put it in the booth and sprayed a few coats of red over the front to fill in a few battle scars. Once that dried we masked off the scoop area to paint it black. We then pulled off the paper and sprayed 2 good coats of urethane clear coat. Tomorrow we will reinstall the hood and get the finished pictures.

Ready for the booth

Here is an update on the Mustang. We have all the body panels back on and the body is sanded and ready for paint. We also washed it to be sure we get a nice clean job. We hope to get this one painted early next week.