Mamma’s In the House

You knew it would happen, it was only a matter of time.

I love my wife of 31 years, she has the most gittyup-and-go of anyone I know, even Dale. She has patiently let me fumble through the truck project and even provided motherly support like one would to an eight year old building his first pine box derby car. But at some point she had to step in.

Well I was out of town with my daughter last week, this is another twilight zone story, and Stephanie said she would sand the fenders over the weekend. Just for those of you that play hockey, there are four fenders, not three.  She was going to sand all of them - okay this could be good.

I gave her a little advice before I left for Memphis and Dale was going to drop by for the final check out. Saturday afternoon I got a call and was told that the sander had completed its final orbit and burned up during reentry. Being resourceful, Stephanie went to Harbor Freight, she still talks about how much fun she had going there, and buying a new sander, a multitude of sanding disks and a whole lot of new friends.

I had told her that Dale being a Power aficionado used the large air fittings because you just can’t get to much air. To her credit she did put on the big adapter, I guess she was just use to working with big fittings, however she was having trouble getting the sander connected to the air hose. I walked her through the process and she successfully got it connected. The next problem was that air was leaking from the fitting.  I asked if she put the Teflon tape on the threads and the line went dead.  Okay, she is fine, I told her what to do and voila, the tape was on, the sander connected, and she was SANDING her pee- picking fingers off.

Bless her heart she used the Moses technique and sanded for three days and three nights and got the outsides of all four fenders in tip-top shape.

What could be better.

Next, Dale and I went to work on the front inside fender skirts. We grinded and sanded and chemically treated them until they were perfect.  I have to admit I had a bit of a crisis with the final prep. We used Eastwood Fast Etch for the rust treatment, it is excellent. But it did leave a gooey residue in some places. I tried acetone, lacquer thinner, engine degreaser, and Limco final prep. It turns out that sanding and a final lacquer thinner wipe did the deed but I was really concerned about the primer sticking to the goo.  Well time will tell.

We put on several coats of acid etching primer and man do the skirts look hot.

Well it looks like I am still in the Baboon phase but let me tell you I can see the light at the end of the long tunnel. I just need to keep my wife working on the fenders and hope she doesn’t try to polish my nuts.