Dave--

Those turned out amazing... When do you plan to "remount" in the car???

Rogman

 

Roger, as you can probably guess they're not screwed together tightly, so at some point in the near future I will disassemble them again and experiment a little with reassembling them on the car. Wrenching them out of there was rather traumatic and I actually slightly popped one of the bonding strips in the bottom of the nose, so I'm gonna see about putting the frame/door combination(s) up there first, adjusting and 'rigging' them (there I go with those airplane words again), whereupon I will assemble them the rest of the way on the car after paint so I'm not trying to drag that whole pile of parts through the opening.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions I'm certainly open, because it's getting close to crunch time. Basically there are three things left before I start laying primer (1) rip out the old carpet and seats (2) pull the trim off the roof panels and sand the edges, and (3) fill and smooth the few minor gouges in the body. After that I can start priming and blocking...woohoo!!

 

Awesome, looking forward to seeing your beaut in primer... Glad my radiator is out as I don't know how I would've got the headlights back in... Mine were assembled except for the buckets, bulbs and trim rings... Severe PITA!!! I plan to adjust mine in the car and then from underneath put a strip of 3/4 foam tape to cover the gap...

Still trying to figure the best way to do the door jambs with either doors on or doors off... I've yet to take off (or put on) my doors cleanly in the 20-30 times I've put them on and taken them off...

Rogman

 

Keep up the good work!

Im doing every step right behind you, except for the interior. I wonder if/when ill catch up and you'll start taking notes from me.

 

Finally got to the bodywork part of the job this past weekend. I did discover that once I got all the paint off of the car that there really weren't many significant defects in the car. By far the worst were where the rear 'bulkhead' (Navy talk; I have no idea what GM calls them) was glued up to the fenders- there was a pretty noticeable "W" shaped wave running vertically/diagonally up and down the rear fenders. Since those fenders have what are among the most voluptuous curves ever put on a car I just had to fix them...jpg[/IMG]
99% of THAT filler wound up on the floor. There really are no other factory-induced problem areas that will require filler. The other issue was the rear deck, where I got a little carried away with the scraper and dug a few small gouges into the surface. Not horrible, but still too deep to just prime and paint over...
Last but not least was the right front fender. After stripping the paint off there was still a good bit pf primer/surfacer from the previous repair that was there. I sanded that all away with 120 paper and there were only a couple small waves and gouges to fill. There was also kind of a concave area just behind the marker light so I took care of that as well.
That's pretty much going to be it as far as filler. There are a couple small fiberglass repairs that I have to do and a small disbond in the nose where the lower panel partially broke away from its bonding strip. If any of you have an idea how to glue that back together cheaply and sufficiently without buying Lord Fusor stock...I'm all ears!

Once all that is done the next step is to rip out the interior (seats and carpet, anyway), clean, clean, and more cleaning, and then it'll be time to start with priming/blocking...

 

Dave--

Do you have access to a double tube caulking gun??? I have a majority of the SEM adhesive I used to bond the fiberglass bumper to the body... I can send it your way if you have access to a gun??? It's for SMC, but I'd guess it would work okay on the older fiberglass... Some of the experts will probably chime in if it is not okay... I also have some Fusor 127EZ I can send (it needs the double gun as well)...

BTW, looking good... Glad you didn't have any body damage lingering under the paint as most of us find...

Let me know...

Rogman

 

Rog, I will look into getting one of those guns. There is a huge composite facility in the building where I work now and I think I've seen them here. Get back to you on that one. I'll be out of town this weekend so as usual it's 2 steps fwd/ 1 back but I'm actually getting somewhere now. One of the biggest issues I'm dealing with now is storage space; this car is torn down just about as far as I'm gonna get it and I'm running out of places to put everything! It really increases the workload when you have to go and move stuff around every time you start another task, but there's light at the end of the tunnel on that one too...

 

Dave,

Thanks for posting your project, I'm following along as I'm doing the same to my car now. Must be the summer of paint!! I posted in the Paint/Body section, but here's a pic of where I'm at. There was a good amount of damage that needed repair on the front end when I stripped it. Starting the actual body work this weekend. I've already learned a bunch from your thread, keep going!!

David

 

Thanks for the kind words, David. Pretty amazing how a forum like this can bring people together with common interests from 3500 miles apart! Looks like you've got a lot of the hard work behind you- I see your headlights looming in the background just like mine... As far as the "summer of paint", I'm not sure if I'll have mine ready to shoot before the end of next month and it gets REAL hot out here around July so I may wind up waiting until the fall to actually beging shooting. As for FL, make sure you've got a good dryer on your air line-pretty humid in your neck o' the woods!

 

Got home Tuesday night and yanked out old carpet. This is how it looks now....Hueymaster99/DSC02008.jpg[/IMG]
Spent most of last weekend camping with wifey...not my idea, but gotta keep the peace. Missed the Indy 500(MY Super Bowl)- Grrrr...
Also finally after 14 long years got my T-Tops aligned correctly. Turns out there was a little wrinkle in the corner of the trim piece on the passenger side that made the top 'roll' outward whenever I closed the latch. tapped it down with a hammer and voila! Good-fitting T-Tops at last!
Also found this underneath the carpet...
If this were an airplane, whoever left that rivet there would have hell to pay!!!

That is all....

 

[QUOTE=Sully1882;1580486191]I stripped the car down to nothing, even pulled the windshield and prepped and painted the windshield frame. When I got the car it was black with saddle interior. Under the black I found an orange paint and then under it's primer was the original code 988 steel cities gray. So two paint jobs done incorrectly. These pics are from the day I got it back home from the painter. Here ya go:

Familiar site. Mine was orange from the factory and bubba painted from the PO. I brought mine home today from the real painter.

I'm enjoying following the progress on this thread. Thanks

 

Hey 77, curious if your car was painted with the doors on or off and also wondering if headlights were in or out? Trying to figure out what the sequence should be to get the best result. My thinking is that to really get a good thorough paint I need the doors off, headlights out, bumpers off, etc. The car is completely disassembled now so that is easy. I would like them all painted separately but am definitely struggling with the idea of handling and reassembling all these parts post paint and the inevitable damage that could occur in that process. Any suggestions on best practices would be great.

Car looks awesome BTW, congrats!

 

Hey Bird, I bet I found a dozen rivets and other 'debris' from the factory in and around my car as I did my body off. Bonding and other adhesive applications were seemingly messy to, maybe just normal, but I'm thinking my car went through the assembly line late on a Friday afternoon back in May of 1980.

 

GBARMORE, The process we used is this. First made sure the doors would line up and operate properly. I ended up replacing body mounts and hinge bushings and my body shop actually cut out and/or built up under the right fender skins to accomplish this. I'm not sure of what that process involves. The hinge locations were marked for reassembly and the doors removed. At this point the insides of the doors, door jambs, bottom of the hood and under the hood edges on the car were painte. (see pic). This way you can reassemble the doors and hood without risking damage to freshly painted surfaces. Paint the car now. The bumper, t-tops, mirrors, gas cap, lights etc. were painted off the car. Once bolted back on I will return the car for wet sand and buff later in the week.

Main thing is to make sure all your parts fit right before you paint. Especially if you have a new bumper.

Bird, Sorry to get long winded on your thread. Not trying to hijack. I have enjoyed following it.

I will soon start one with process pics of my resto.

 

Wow, that looks good,what a great color!! I'll be working on mine this weekend, some fiberglass work and thanks to your inspiration birdsmith, my headlight assemblies!!

 

Actually no apologies needed for the semi- hijack. The main reason I started this thread (other than a combination of masochism and narcissism) was to solicit as many ideas as possible from y'all about how to do various things. As I mentioned about a year ago my car was Ontario Orange when I bought it, but the clearcoat had baked off of the top so I scuffed it and painted it yellow. If it had looked anywhere near as good as your car I probably never would have touched it!

Don't know exactly why, but for some reason when I tried to post pics of the now-gutted interior the pics wouldn't show up once I had posted them...hopefully not a chronic problem

 

Thanks 77, appreciate this info! You seriously got me thinking about a color in the same family as yours, that really looks sharp.

 

It's been awhile since I posted anything but actually I've made some real progress lately. A couple weeks ago my erstwhile at-home car-dealer neighbor who routinely paints cars in his garage test shot some Omni basecoat on top of some Rustoleum self-etching primer that I had provided him just to see what it would do. I had observed some sketchy stuff about Rustoleum in the past and since I had shot my door inners with this stuff I wanted to make sure it would work with all the other paint I was shooting before I blew a bunch of really expensive stuff on top of it. Sure enough, when he handed it back to me the Omni basecoat was trying to jump off of the Rustoleum primer.

SO, Sunday I hauled the doors back down from the rafters and sanded all that Rustoleum off, remasked them, and laid a coat of $20 a can(!) SEM self-etching primer on them. I also sprayed a bunch of loose parts (wiper door, vent grille, gas door, etc.) with the self-etching prime-
And I reattached the door hinges and re-hung the doors. there were some pretty visible impressions left in the birdcage where the bolts had been before so getting them lined back up wasn't really too bad. After I had them where I wanted them I drilled 1 ea. #30 hole in each hinge to make re-hanging them a little simpler when the time comes...

Those of you who are looking closely will notice that some of the door-to-body surfaces don't necessarily align as well as they could, but getting them perfect would mean more days and weeks of fiberglass, kitty hair, bondo, and sanding. I'll be very happy with "as good as stock" which is what I had before this adventure started.

I also took apart the loosely-assembled headlights save for the frames and doors and put them back into the nose to get the up/down and side-to-side alignment set. A real PITA, no room to work, but I think I got them pretty close...
...so now they're back out of the car and stored awaiting primer application.

Finally, the bumper mounting holes in the back of the car were pretty beat up so I repaired those by placing a base of two pieces of fiberglass mat behind them on the insides of the fenders and then chopped up a bunch of glass fibers, mixed them with resin, and globbed them into the holes on the outside. I held that in place with some aluminum tape overnight, then pulled it off the next day and voila!


I also did some minor patchwork in the nose where I had broken a seam getting the headlights out (should have disassembled them as far as possible while they were still in the car...) and around the gas door sill where the attach holes were torn out. At this point all the glass work is DONE, the doors are fitted (I was nervous about that), headlight doors are fitted, and a very few little housekeeping chores remain before I can start laying primer. I actually worked up a typed Job List today; there is light at the end of the proverbial tunnel...about 45 items in all. Momentum is gathering...

 

Dave,

Looking good... Know what you mean about the door gaps as I am fighting these pretty hard on my car... I'm only going to fight for a little more as the judges will probably award the fight to the car anyway (those Nevada judges are crooked ;-)...

Rogman

 

Dave,

Nice progress! It's alot of work, but it feels good when you see your accomplishments, even if it's a little at a time! You've got to be getting alittle anxious to get it painted, have you decided what colors your going to use?

I got some work done on mine yesterday, should be able to finish up the door gap on the drivers side today. I'm using the high density filler/adhesive I've used in other areas and it's working really well.