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.

Crash, bang, boom!

This Elantra was rear ended a couple of weeks ago. The owner dropped it off to get basically the rear end replaced. After sending it over to the frame shop to make sure the frame wasnt damaged and to get the rear body panel pulled out we have it back at JMC to finish up the repairs. We started with priming the area where the seams are with PPG’s epoxy primer. We then reapplied the seam sealer in the locations the factory had placed it. The seam sealer needs to set up for a while so in the morning we plan on painting this rear body panel back to the factory body color. Once that is dry we can then start prepping the rest of the rear end for paint. Hopefully that happens on Thursday.

Heat is on

After being slammed with collision work for the past few months and some unforseen circumstances, we are back on the Ghia today and and we’ve made some progress. We have been working on it a little over the past few weeks but we were fighting the fitment of the heater channel. Well today we muscled that thing into place and were happy with the fit and stated welding it in. The first piece to be welded in was the grey part in the last two images. Once that is tacked into place, we started welding in the heater channel. We did get pretty well done today, but still have a few welds before moving on to the outer rocker. Tomorrow’s plan is to make a few patch panels and have them ready for Thursday. I will be off tomorrow but will be back on this car for the rest of the week.

Rust is done.

    Another productive days worth of work on the ’67 Bug. Today we de-greased the chassis and welded in the final pieces that were rusty on the bug. Yesterday we did the left channel and lower plate, well today we did the right side. As you can see it was about the same amount of rust on both sides. Several of the same parts needed replacing on both sides, The right side was not quite as bad as the left but both sides turned out great. As you can see we also seam sealed up these welded areas as well. This will keep water out and allow these repairs to last for a long while. Nothing is as good original, so all we can do is take every measure possible to ensure a quality job. Next week we will be putting this car back on the pan and prepping it for paint.

Cab is painted

Ahhh, Much better. We spent today in the booth spraying the cab on the ’52 Ford. After thoroughly cleaning the cab and masking off the floor and back wall, Paul sprayed a coat of urethane sealer over the entire cab. Once that had time to dry, 3 coats of red was sprayed allowing proper drying time in between. After the base coat was applied, 3 coats of PPG high solids clear was sprayed. This gives us enough material to wet sand and buff to a super smooth, ultra high gloss. We will plan on buffing it out next week. We want to give the clear plenty of time to dry so the sanding and buffing will be a little easier. We still have a few other parts to paint, and plan on doing them later this week.

Gotta skin it

Here is an update on the Infinity FX45. The door skin came in today so this afternoon we took the latter part of the day to get the old skin off and the new one on. Here you can see what your door looks like with out the outer panel removed. The lower round bar is the high strength steel intrusion beam. This is the part of the door that helps keep another car from entering your car in the case of an accident. The next set of pictures show Chris hammering the new skin on. He is folding the outer lip of the panel around the main structure of the door. Once the skin was on, we applied a coat of seam sealer around the seams just like the factory had done. This should all be set up by Monday so we can flip it over and repair a couple of small dents we created when installing the skin. This project is moving along nicely.

Bits and pieces

These are custom parts for the ’52 Ford. They are designed to fill in the area around the radiator to provide a finished smoothed up look when the hood is opened. Chris started by grinding down all the welds and smoothing up some edges. Then he repaired the top side of the large cover to hide all the welded areas.  Once that was done, they were hung up in the booth and a coat of epoxy was sprayed on both sides of the parts. This coating is water proof and really adheres to bare metal. Once the epoxy had dried we seam sealed all the welded places up on the back side to keep water from getting in the welds. Lastly 3 good coats of urethane primer was sprayed on the bigger parts that will be seen. The other parts are basically brackets and braces. These pieces will be painted a flat black so the extra priming steps are not needed here. The grey primer parts will be body color and will look as good as the outside of the truck. Next week, we keep plugging along on this one. Have a great weekend!!

All sealed up

Back on the the ’52 today, we got messy. We chose to POR the inside of the rear fenders before we applied the spray in bedliner. We chose to brush it on instead of spraying it. This allowed us to get it in all the seams and around the lower lip. Ford put a flexible rod in the lower lip before rolling the end over to keep it from crushing. It also allows water to sit in there along with dirt. This is a great formula for rust. So, in an effort to keep rust at bay we also seam sealed the entire lip. Hopefully, these will never rust again. This is where we stopped today. Tomorrow we hope to get the bedliner sprayed on these. Next week we will spray the epoxy and slick sand  on the outside. Then, the block party starts.

Guess who’s back, back again..

We finally have the Juke back from the frame shop. While it was there they performed a light pull on the rear body panel, then replaced it. You can see Chris prepping the panel for seam sealer and etching primer. We use an etching primer to bite into the metal and provide good adhesion of the seam sealers. Seam sealer is used to fill in the tiny gaps where metal is over lapped to keep water and wind out. Tomorrow we will put this in the booth and paint that panel, then start the reassembly process. If all goes well, we hope to have this Juke back home on Friday. Just in time for a nice weekend.

Prime time

The body of of the Camaro got to visit the paint booth yesterday. We first wiped the body down several times to get it clean. I mean REALLY clean. We must have wiped it down about 4-5 times to ensure that the metal was as clean as possible. Once we were happy with that we tapped it up to keep the epoxy primer and slick sand off of the bed liner we have already sprayed. The first coat of paint is the dark grey epoxy. The epoxy is used to seal up the metal. It is water proof and really likes bare metal. Then we applied the seam sealer to all the seams in the metal to keep water out of where its not supposed to be. After that set up, we applied the slick sand. This product allows us to ensure the body is wave and ripple free. It is a very high build product, so when you block it, it makes the panels very straight.  This will set up and cure over the weekend so Monday we can start that blocking process. This days work was a team effort. Chase sprayed the epoxy, I did the seam sealing and Chris did a great job spraying the slick sand. He just isnt looking forward to Monday.