Gonna help retain heat and cold as well. Your A/C is hardly gonna have to work at all.

 

Far better coverage than what I did on my car. I just put it over the existing underlay and just went until the "booming" stopped when I hit the floor with my fist.

Very good work!

 

Thanks for all the compliments guys! I was pretty excited to get that down. Now I'll have to enlist another able body to lift the car off the dolly when it comes time.

Thanks for the tip! I just was looking at the original order and I got two rolls of the Heat Wave Pro, which should also help with the heat dissipation. I just placed another order for 30 square feet. That should be enough to do both sides of each door and the roof.

I know I went a little overboard, but in for a penny in for a pound. I have no real reference point to go from, but I hope this at least helps make the ride enjoyable and less "tinny". Anything I can do to help make this ride more enjoyable for my wife will be money well spent!

That's the plan!

Thanks so much ACR_RX-7! Hoping to get a more solid feel when the doors are shut and this thing finally gets down the road. I kinda did a test in the spare wheel well before and after I installed this stuff and it certainly sounded better. I had removed almost every bit of the factory sound deadening material to do all the welding, so I hope this is better than a factory replacement.

 

Well, I devoted this weekend to cleaning out the garage enough to build a tent and get old Rusty primed and sealed. Here's the tent and the stuff I bought to prime and seal with:




Neighbors thought I was breaking bad and starting a meth lab!



My PPG Shopline 2k primer and sealer, with reducer and hardener. That's what $217 and change looks like folks.... Wowszers! Glad I'm not paying someone to do this...

So with my materials in hand and my tent built, I went to town. I enlisted the help of one of my sons and taped up the car and sanded down some rough spots. Then yesterday, I sprayed on the primer and then let it sit overnight.

Today I got two of my boys out there to help me hit the primer with 400 grit to remove what little orange peel there was. I gotta say, that little 20 gallon compressor I bought KICKS ***. It keeps up with whatever I need from the paint gun. It's freaking awesome.






starting to hit the primer with 400 grit.



My proud helper! Couldn't have gotten this far without him.











That stuff goes on nice.

All this with a $10 Harbor Freight purple HVLP gun....





Looks like a redneck assembly line!


After we sanded down the primer I sealed it with the sealer. Looks awesome if I do say so myself. I'm happy as hell with the results. Just need to sand this down a bit and its ready for color.

The only complicating factor I have to deal with the lack of space. I have to manage by planning to have the car in the tent, shoot it, let it flash, pull it out, set up the saw horses and then get all the little bits and pieces in, like the fenders, doors, hood, bumpers, front valence, etc. I ended up not getting all the parts in there to paint, but I am absolutely STOKED to have gotten this far.

 

that is exciting! the car is turning out great

 

Looks awesome ,good choice on the primer, that's what we use at my work it works awesome

 

I've got the purple gun too.

LOOKS FANTASTIC!!!

 

Fantastic job priming and sealing! That's a whole lot of work but I'm sure it's sooooo satisfying.

 

Thanks J9!

That primer lays down so silky smooth. I love it!

That purple gun is actually pretty great for a $10 paint gun. I ran into some trouble with it as you'll read about, but it got me finished.

Thanks craaaazzy, it is really satisfying to be done with the paint!

Well, I FINALLY have finished with the paint. What. A pain. In the ***! I see now why professional painters are paid to do this sort of thing, and why it costs thousands of dollars to have your car professionally painted. This? This is a good 10 foot paint job. Not bad for a garage paint job in a hand crafted plastic tent and I’m GLAD to have gotten it done. I learned A LOT along the way.

I learned that, when you lose power in a hurricane, not to have finished doors and hoods leaning up against the tent. Why you ask? Well, let me tell you! When you open the door to the garage to get your 2000 Watt inverter hooked up so you don’t lose all your newly bought groceries, be sure to be careful that a 40 or 50 MPH gust of wind doesn’t collapse your tent – like mine did. Because it will take the final primed hood and doors and throw them into the freshly painted and cleared door jambs, making a mess of your door jambs, hood, and doors. Yup. That happened. It also messed up the finished, primed and sealed rear quarter panel which required a bit more bondo to fix the 3 inch long dent that the door put in it. Mother Nature. She’s a real bitch to the ignorant – like me. Did I tell you that the dry time on the sealer is 72 hours? Yeah. Makes it hard to get this done on weekends.

THEN, I learned that although these $10 purple Harbor Freight paint guns are a great buy for the money, they are .... finicky. I had gotten the color down on the body and began the clear when I had trouble with it spraying correctly. Unfortunately for me, the village idiot, I didn’t really realize the magnitude of my problem until the tent was so full of fumes you couldn’t see across it, my filters clogged up on my respirator, and I could later see that half the body was nice and smooth with clear, but the other half not so much. All I had accomplished was spraying off half the clear into the air, making half the car nice and the other half rough and dull. SO, with the help if Erick31876 and an internet search, I realized I had to sand off all the clear from the body and shoot more color. Glad I bought a gallon of it!! I used almost every bit of it in redo’s...

I also learned that, like young children, paint doesn't lie. I could have bet dollars to donuts that whatever surface I had put filler on was as straight and smooth as could be. That is, until I saw those surfaces in the light with the clear coat on it. Wow. Almost everywhere I put filler on I can tell when the light hits it just right. Oh well. I'll know better next time.

Like I said, it was an experience, and one I’m GLAD to have gotten behind me. The paint looks ok, I have a couple of runs to deal with, but nothing I can’t sand down and buff out. This marks a huge milestone in my rebuild. No more tearing things apart. Only putting things together. So, on to the next part of this project!!
























This little thing has given it's $10 worth 100 times over!

 

Double post - sorry!

 

Nice, so is the car gonna be full blown garage queen when done, or are you gonna tear up the road?

 

^^Beautiful Mike. Incredible job!

 

Awesome job, I'm sure the pictures hide lots of imperfections (mine always do lol) but it looks great from here! In the end who cares if it's perfect, you have the satisfaction of doing it yourself and learning a bunch along the way.

My paint jobs are never perfect at all, but I love them anyway

Good luck getting this all reassembled, would love to see it in person someday.

 

I think it will be a bit of both. I don't plan to EVER drive it in the snow, or around here in the winter when there's the threat of snow because they throw brine on the roads, which makes cars rust out even faster than in the old days when they put rock salt on the roads. That salty stuff gets into every nook, cranny and seam everywhere on a car. But I do plan on driving it.

Thanks Tim! It looks ok from 10 feet and prolly a lot better from 2,500 miles away!

Thanks Sean! Yep, with the accident evidence on this car there's no way it was ever gonna be perfect, but that's ok - the car has character. Next time you're headed to the OBX let me know and we can meet up!

Funny story: My mother-in-law had asked if I had painted it yet, and when she first saw it went right up to the worst run in the clear coat and announced "you have a run in it!". Gee, thanks. I think it looks good too...

 

Damn,that looks great,especially being your first time painting

 

I've managed to almost finish color sanding old Rusty. Only have the front nose piece, lower valence/spoiler pieces, and the bumpers to sand and then I'll be ready to buff this thing out. Or so I thought....

I removed just about every nut and bolt to get this stripped down to paint it. I removed all but the quarter glass, the door strikers ('cause those sumbitches were stuck in place), and the lock cylinder on the back that opens the rear hatch glass. Today I decided to take off the tape I had on there and found out that just the teeniest tiniest piece of tape got stuck under the paint and peeled the paint back. I was EXTREMELY not happy!! Many MANY very loud naughty words were said.












So, after some consultation with erick31876 (you ROCK by the way!) I ended up peeling back the paint on the entire panel between the tail lights. Erick31876 helped walk me through the best way to attack this problem and I started working the plan this afternoon. Seems the panel was too smooth to accept the paint correctly, which is odd because I sanded the sealer with 400 before I painted it. Unless, you're not supposed to do that?







Anyway, this is what I'm faced with fixing. As soon as I buy more paint. Next week. Cause the paint shop isn't open on weekends...

 

Damn

 

Great color!!!! Cheers for that!!!!!

We are always in a similar stage aren't we???

 

Thanks! It's K3 sunbeam silver metallic - the original color. It turned out "meh..." I'm not at all happy with how the back end peeled off or my subsequent attempt to fix it.

I haven't had a lot of time to do much with old Rusty these days. I was hoping to get a buffer, but I'll have to wait on that.

In the mean time I've created a list of things that I have to do to put the car back together. It's obvious that it is much easier to tear a car apart than put it back together!!

Concentrating on getting things done that don't cost money, I did manage to get this done yesterday:




Found the muffler shroud and put it in an electrolysis bath.



After an 18 or so hour soak it's still going. This will prolly take a few days to complete



Sanded and repainted my sorry looking license plate lights. I'm happy with how these turned out.

 

<3 Nice restoration, Sir!

 

Looking good!

 

Thank you!

I had been holding out until after Christmas to get me a polisher, but my lovely wife beat me to it! I set out to research all the different types of compounds that I could use with a rotary buffer and had settled on Maguires M105 and M205, but couldn't find any at my local parts stores, then I had a thought - the guys and gals at the paint store prolly have what I need. I was really confused about the different color pads, like, is a red pad a red pad no matter what manufacturers make it? Never did get an answer to that question, but I decided I would ask the pros at the paint store. This is what I got:




The nice lady at the counter recommended it, and even rang me up with a discount - awesome!!


So with my new buffer and this seemingly small bottle (she assured me it was enough) I set out to work polishing my paint job. I'm pretty stoked about the results!
















The hood is just laying there, but I got the fenders lined up. It's not the best paint job in the world, but overall I'm pretty happy. It has some streaks and fisheyes here and there, but I learned a lot and as Sean said a few posts back, the paint may not perfect but it's good to have it done so I can put it back together and enjoy it.

 

Congratulations on getting this far. This year marks the beginning of the 5th year of redoing your Dad's car? Re assembly is the home stretch but can be very time consuming. Take your time and keep going as time and money allow. This could be the year you get it back on the road!

 

Thanks Banzai! I can't believe it, but it will be 5 years this October ('17). I had to go back to the first post to check it 'cause it certainly doesn't seem like it's been that long. Holy cow. I really would love to be able to get this thing on the road this year, but we'll see.

I took advantage of the nice weather today and between an oil change and helping my boys wax the truck and my oldest son's car (he couldn't wait to use the buffer on his car), I started fitting the rear lights back in. I just set the old tail lights in place, but I cleaned up the rubber gaskets and reinstalled the license plate lights. I LOVE the look this is gonna have!!

 

came out really nice