Blog Archives
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.
Buggin right along
Yes, we are still here. We have been extremely busy these past few weeks. I have been taking a few pictures of whats been going on but just havent been able to post anything. A lot has been completed on the beetle since the last post. New pans are in, front beam support is in, new narrowed adjustable beam is in, new shocks master cylinder, all new brake lines, the body has been stripped and primed, pedal assembly has been stripped, painted and rebuilt and as you can see we have sprayed some Diamond Blue on the doors, trunk and deck lid. The body is currently at the metal fabricator getting its new heater channels in, new firewall and various other patch work done. We should be getting it back shortly and when we do we will jump on the body work to get it in final primer. As you can see things are moving. These old bugs are super cool and this one will turn out great.
Deconstruction continues
Yesterday Jordan spent a good portion of the day breaking down the doors. Today, he has been at it pretty steady all day. The doors are both completely apart and removed, the trunk is off and apart, the hood moldings have been removed as well, as a few more interior molding parts. The time consuming part of all this is bagging and tagging all of the parts and their bolts to make reassembly much easier. And buddy I’ll tell ya, their are a lot little parts. We have tubs that we use to store parts in so that things remain in one spot for safe keeping. Inside the tubs are bags with screws, bolts and clips labeled where they came from as well as the tons of bright work from the same panels. Hopefully tomorrow these newly disassembled parts will be going to the blaster.
Yo Holmes, to Bel-Air
Here we have a beautiful 1957 Chevy Bel-Air in the shop to get a new lease on life. We started by disassembling the front end and sending all of the parts out for stripping. Once back from the blasters, Jordan got to work sanding all of the parts prepping them for primer. Since this is an extremely important step, extra time was taken to be sure the metal was as clean as possible. Today we hung up all the parts and prepped them for PPG’s DP epoxy primer and applied 2 good coats. Next step will be to perform any metal work that needs to be done and start straightening the panels. The inner panels and fresh air vents will be prepped for paint since they wont really need any body work. Stay tuned.
Make over Sally
The Mustang is moving along. Today Paul finished stripping off the bad paint thats on the left quarter and left door. He also fixed a few dents and sanded the body all over. Tomorrow we will have to remove the side scoops and quarter sail panel covers. Once that is all done, we will put it in the booth to get some quality primer on the bare metal parts. We will take the necessary steps to ensure that this does not happen with our repair. A few more days with this kind of progress and Sally will be back on the streets again, but looking a whole lot younger.
Uh oh
This Cobra is in the shop to get a fresh new paint job. Unfortunately, the left quarter, left door and rear bumper  have been repaired before. As you can see the quality of work is bad. For some reason, who ever repaired it, stripped the paint off of the panels. Im not sure why this was done because the paint on the rest of the car is in great shape. Also, this wouldnt have been a problem had they taken the proper steps on priming the bare metal before they painted it. So this means we will have to remove all of the paint on these panels to ensure a quality job. Here you can see that most of the paint was scrapped off with a razor scraper and the paint on the bumper came off with a blower. Most of the car is disassembled now and the paint is off of these panels completely now. We will continue to work on this one as the week goes on and hopefully get it back white next week.
Stripping, no not that kind.
 
This Chevy truck is in the shop to get its roof repaired. The paint is peeling off of the roof and before long, it will start rusting making the repair much more costly. We started by removing the antenna and third brake light. We then used a razor blade to strip off the clear coat. Once all that was off, we used the same method to remove the white base coat. Its a tedious process but it must be done to ensure the paint does not peel more in the future. We then sanded off all of the factory e-coat. We then put it in the booth and masked off the areas we dont want to paint. Then a coat of PPG’s acid etching primer was sprayed on the bare metal. Once that was dry, we sealed the roof with urethane sealer followed by base coat then 2 coats of clear coat. This process is the best way to ensure that the paint does not peel any more in the future.
Crabbie cabbie
Today was very productive. We spent all morning sanding the cab to smooth up the metal so the epoxy would have a nice surface to bite to. After all the panels were sanded, special attention was paid to all the little nooks and crannies, and believe me, there were hundreds of them. After lunch, the cab was moved into the booth and was wiped down many times to ensure a good clean surface. We sprayed epoxy on the bottom of the cab first, then carefully set it down to spray the rest once it had set up some. Paul did a wonderful job getting primer in all the hidden and hard to reach areas. If any are found tomorrow, we will brush them in for coverage. Tomorrow we will also seam seal all of the cracks and crevasses that may hold water. Once that is dry, we will apply 3 good coats of slick sand high build primer and also spray the Raptor liner in the floor and bottom of the cab.
Bare bones
Today we were able to spend some time sanding on the cab to the ’52 Ford. Just like all bare metal projects, we started with 80 grit on a dual action sander. This smooths the metal and preps it for the epoxy primer that comes next. We got the outside pretty good, but sill have the inside to sand. We hope to get that done tomorrow. If it all works out, the bottom of the cab and the inside of the floor will have epoxy and our Raptor liner spray in bed liner sprayed on them by the end of the week.
JMC AutoworX 