The garage is heated, but we run it at 40 F and only bump it up to 70 F when we're working in there. But I still find it a significant disincentive to have to go out in the snow an hour before I want to start work to turn up the furnace.

 

Nice setup!

I bet you can get a remote controlled thermostat.

 

Put the beer refrigerator out there and when Hubby goes out for a beer ask him to turn up the heat

 

-10C = ~ 15F That ain't so bad. (Who am I kidding!)

 

I’m sorry guys, but I was out playing in the garage yesterday wearing shorts.
I did have to put on a sweatshirt because it was only in the 60’s.

 

We currently have two thermostats in there, one set at 40, the other set at 70 and a switch flips back and forth between them. I asked hubby if we could put the switch in the house and he said that was illegal.

 

Great idea, but damn, he doesn't drink!

It really isn't so bad, its when it gets to -30 that it really gets tough.

Sweet!

 

Yeah...welll...If Ya'll keep talking like this I'm putting on my coat

 

I am taking modest advantage of the fantastic weather here in Mid Michigan to work on mine.

 

https://store.google.com/us/config/n...aw.ds&hl=en-US

 

I'll talk to the spousal unit about it tonight, thanks!

 

If you have a Wi-Fi signal available in the garage, there are several fairly inexpensive Wi-Fi thermostats on the market that might fit your needs I use a Honeywell in mine but the thermostat has to be compatible with your heating system. Since you already have a switch between your two existing thermostats, there are also Wi-Fi based light switches and such available.

DC

 

I found that -20 C is where it starts to feel bitterly cold to me.

 

Hubby says the internet reception in the garage is poor at best.

 

Let me check my attic.
I may have something that I haven't used in years..............
YEP...found it!

 

Oh, that attic... I though immediately 'cel​estial orb' (l love a good laugh in the morning DG. Thank you!)

 

Hey Tony,
Wow, what a find.
You should wrap that in plastic and store it in a climate controlled room in your house.
An all original antenna should be preserved properly and not left in an attic environment.

 

Priya, we have an "Orbi" internet system and they have three units. One is the base unit and two satellite units. They plug into a wall outlet and you could put one satellite inside the house near the garage and the second unit inside the garage and it would pick up the signal.
These were $300.00 at Best Buy about two years ago. There may be something similar for less money or Best Buy has open box sales. Hope this helps you out. They are called a mesh system. Lou.

 

So, there's been lots of applying body fill and sanding on the passenger's side quarter panel in particular. I was working about 3 hours per weekday on it and was toying with the idea of trying to make it 4 when the tendons that attach to my elbow in my forearm started to hurt and tell me I can't even keep up the 3 hours. So, I cut back to a couple of hours a weekday and that I can keep up, or a little more. I try to average at least 10 hours a week on this. I've been struggling with getting the horizontal mid quarter panel character line (shown in approximate location by blue line in picture below) in the right place on both quarter panels



As near as I can tell, the body line is about 1" above the side mounting pad for the bumper. The two arrows in the picture above show where fiberglass mat and resin is showing through. I need to sand those areas down a bit so the next time I apply filler and sand smooth the mat and resin will be completely covered with Vette Panel Adhesive/Filler.

I had started trying to finish off the passenger side quarter panel and was having a hard time with it. I thought I had it nearly done when it occurred to me I should really compare it with the driver's side and see where my character line was on both. To my amazement, I had the character line on the driver's side about 1.25 to 1.5 inches higher than on the passenger side. When I originally laid up the matt and resin and I was sanding it back I just kind of eyeballed where the character lines should be thinking I can get it close enough that way - clearly not, lol! In hindsight I should have leveled the car, worked on each quarter panel a little at a time and have been measuring each to compare instead of trying to mostly finish one side before tackling the other. I also had both lines higher at the wheel well and lower at the rear of the quarter panel when it should have been the other way around.

I continue to get better at bodywork. I used to have to apply fill several times to cover the entire quarter panel. Now I've learned how to mix up enough to cover the entire quarter panel at once It turns out it takes about the same time to mix a little bit of fill and hardener as it does to mix a lot:



I also used to sand down the filler after I applied it until all the marks from the application were sanded smooth. This would thin the fill to the entire area to the lowest level of where I applied it the thinnest. That would then require more applications of filler than one would like and would often having me sanding all the way through the filler in places.



What I learned to do instead, was to sand it down with the air powered inline sander until most of the marks from spreading the fill were gone but not the lowest spots as seen in the circled area in the picture below:



Instead I stop sanding before that application mark is gone and then just sand out that small low spot with my thumb and a piece of 80 grit to create a little dish so I don't have to apply as much fresh filler to cover the entire area next time. The pieces of tape show me where the filler was the thinnest so that as I'm applying it I know where to make it a lthicker. The part of the quarter panel above the bonding seams ("A" in the picture above) has a high curve and I kept sanding all the way through the filler with the air powered sander (blue arrow above). I kept trying to use the air sander here because sanding sucks but in the end I realized I had to do that area by hand to minimize sanding through to the underlying SMC.

I may have posted these before, but I've been using these "Durablock" sanding blocks a lot to minimize oversanding with the air tools:




Prior to doing any work on the quarter panels I made these two marks to show (as close as I could tell) where the horizontal mid- quarter panel character line goes. There's two lines because I wasn't sure exactly where the soft line was. I did the same on the other side but I really should have leveled the car and measured the height of them both and come up with an exact measurement for both sides.



The spousal unit said it wouldn't matter if the horizontal mid quarter panel body lines weren't exactly the same on both sides because you only see one quarter panel at a time and no one would notice. In any event, a 1.25" to 1.5": difference in height was too much so I set to sanding above the line on the driver's side to lower it and below the line on the passenger side to raise it. It turned out, to my reIief, I had more than enough mat and resin on the driver's side to sand the character line down that 1.25" to 1.5". I also moved the passenger side line up about 1/4 inch while getting the line on both sides rising towards the rear a little bit ( had the lines rising to the front). As you may recall, on the rubber bumper cars that character line rises to the rear substantially more than it does on the chrome bumper cars where it is closer to horizontal.

As I continued filling and sanding alternate quarter panels I realized I shouldn't have moved the line up 1/4 of an inch on the passenger side, it was best where I originally had it. So I now sanded above the line to lower it back down about that quarter inch.

I initially sanded this character line on the passenger side to a sharp edge, unlike the much more rounded "edge" it should have. I did this so I could more precisely measure where the line is thinking I'd just round the sharp edge off after I got it where I wanted it. It turned out I shaved too much filler off above and below the horizontal character line because I kept it to too sharp of an edge for too long while I was sanding the fill down. I thought I had the passenger side just about done but when I sprayed water on it to check the shape it wasn't quite right but I wasn't sure exactly what was wrong with it.

I went back to the driver's side and shaved off the sharp edge of the character line sooner than I had on the passenger side. II spent most of the time sanding in the dark with a hand held light when I decided I needed a better look at it. I turned the lights back on and sprayed water on it and to my surprise it didn't look too bad although I could see a few spots that were a bit too high. I gave each of them 4 or 5 strokes with 80 grit on the sanding block, sprayed it again and it was darn near perfect! I couldn't tell why the passenger side wasn't quite right, but with the driver's, just seeing it I knew it was right.

I spent probably three times as much time on the passenger side as I had on the driver's and yet the passenger side still needs more filling and sanding.. I need to wear my reading glasses to help with bodywork now which works poorly with a mask as it fogs up the glasses. I really hate to sand without a mask because Vette Panel Adhesive/filler is carcinogenic, so keep that in mind if you plan on doing this kind of work.



So, the driver's side in the above picture is finally the right shape, except for the area under the blue circle which has a low spot in the aftermarket ACI 70-73 rear clip. When they say these body parts aren't ready for paint, they mean it, I probably will have at least an 1/8 inch of filler in that area before its high enough.


In the picture below, the quarter panel dips inwards in the area of the blue rectangle (Don't take my word for it that the rectangle I posted is the correct shape of the dip in the quarter panel, it's just my best guess). To compare how deep the dip is from side to side I put pieces of tape on each side in these locations so I could compare the depth from side to side with a straight edge. It turns out I took too much fill out of this area on the passenger side so again I need to cover the panel in filler when I might have avoided that if I hadn't sanded down too far.




So, hopefully this will be the last time I have to add filler to the passenger side. I used a piece of blue tape (grey arrow to the right) to show me where the character line is as I add fresh filler:



I'm feeling a lot more confident now that I can do a good job on this. Hopefully now I can get the passenger side to look like the driver's side. It shouldn't be much longer and I can sand the entire rear clip with 120 grit and prime.

 

Truly amazing work. I can't wait to see this in paint. But then we will miss the updates. What's going to be the next projec