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Anything less than perfect at this point just won’t do! Keep on keeping on.
The BTRCC show in Plaquemine is this coming Saturday. If the weather is good, I be heading that way again this year. Next year, we will have them parked next to each other!
I'm going to try and come by the show on Saturday, hope to see you and catch up!
I spent some time this week on all the small details on the rear clip: door sills, deck lid, etc to get them all smoothed out. This process has been going well and the details are smoothing out nicely:
Here's to give an idea of the collection of odd shapes I've acquired to handle the C3 curves:
Last night I was able to put in a late night in the shop on body work. I wasn't happy where I was on the quarters (high spots and waves still there) and wasn't certain the correct way to proceed. So I called in the pro to come take a look and get some recommendations, I learned a lot:
I was being way to conservative with filler and sanding too far! He said "don't be afraid of the filler!"
I was mixing the filler with too much catalyst and not giving myself enough time to sculpt it.
He showed me how to sculpt, shape, and refine the shape of my quarters correctly with block sanding and guide coat
Below you can see where I was: high spots (fiberglass showing) that made a tiny ridge and the contour wasn't quite right on my quarter. I soon as I saw primer I was supposed to stop he said.
Here we mixed a "cold" batch of filler (easy on the catalyst!) so we could take the time to sculpt it:
This is where we ended up - it's a lot of filler, but most of it is going to be blocked off!
Started with 60 grit to shape it and work it down, then 80 grit once we got closer. Decided to add a little more to the back to feather it in:
Once we were happy with it, we applied a dry guide coat which would then be blocked off with 120 grit:
And here is where we landed: no waves, no highs, no lows: a correctly shaped quarter! I'll have to skim the bottom and feather it out. Then I'll do a guide coat again with 220, then I'll lay down some more primer.
The process was repeated on the other side:
Made HUGE progress last night! I went from about 50% done to 80%! I'll finish the fine tuning and the rest of the body work on the rear, lay down more primer, then it's time to move on to the front!
Worked on refining and finishing the passenger side last night: I had to block out and blend the skim coat I put on the back, then I did guide coats with finish sanding with 80, 120, then 220 grit. Below you can see the progression and how much filler comes off with each stage.
Spent my weekend maintaining my property instead of working on the car. we had some bad storms recently and I had trees to cut up and remove. It as some hard work, but thank god for that tractor!! The past two nights I've been able to get a couple of hours a night in the shop and sanded my nights away! Most of my time was spent on details and getting and the little things perfect so I can get more primer on the rear clip. Most of my efforts were spend on the edges of the quarters and the deck lid. The guide coat displayed that I had low spots on the door edge. This involve more filler, blocking, guide coat, rinse and repeat for three round until I got it all straight.
Here you can see some of the process, but won't bore y'all with a bunch of redundant pics:
I also spent a lot of time getting the deck lid straightened out. I had some marks from paint stripping and other little defects all over that needed to be smoothed out. This involved more filler and blocking, then repeat when i'd find more!
The devil has been in the details lately, but I'm chugging along! I've been blocking out the primer ith 180, and every panel has little areas that need filler and to be smoothed out. I've found lways to get the filler on smoother and then mask off around it to reduce my footprint, and of course my sanding time. I used Kirker Enduro Prime and it actually sands well for an epoxy primer! little details are wrapping up on the rear clip - and I'll have to finally tackle the rear valance!
Still smoothing out the door sills - taped them off to get a skim coat where I wanted it:
Then pull the tape before it's hardened and I have filler where I needed it ready to sculpt:
Did the same on the Halo for some tiny spots I found when blocking:
04-16-2024, 10:57 AM
