Painted Hood and Fender

Three major body parts are ready to be sprayed with the final metallic blue top coat. Dayum.  I called Boojack last Friday and he had time this week to do the deed. On Monday I got a gallon of the good stuff – high test. I borrowed a truck to transport the parts and spent most of the evening carefully wrapping the hood and fender before placing them in the truck bed.

I pulled out my daughter’s Ninja Mutant Turtle Snuggie, my wife’s Navaho rug, two shams and our St. Kitts huge ass beach towels. Nothing was going to scratch my parts. I must have used a mile of rope to tie everything down and since there was a chance of rain on Tuesday I topped it all off with my camouflage tarp.

I am an early riser, so I was up at o’dark-thirty trying to figure out what time Boojack opened shop. The complication was that it was forecasted to rain all day and was drizzling already. I was watching the weather radar in order to time my run between the rain bands. It would be very bad if my parts got wet.

I finally called him at 7am and got a recording that the number had been temporarily disconnected. Nothing is easy, I am ready to go and my painter is out of business. I really hoped this was a cash flow situation and not a shutdown.  All I could do was head out and see what the deal was.

Here I go, driving 30 miles out in the Alabama country in a big pickup truck. My parts are wrapped in Snuggies and Indian blankets, covered up under a camo tarp, and it is raining. If this ain’t Hillbilly I don’t know what is.

This picture shows what I felt like as I was driving down the road. I am just glad a game warden did not pull me over, I am sure he would have fined me for impersonating a redneck.

As I had hoped, Boojack had not paid his phone bill on time and it was disconnected. He acted like it was a common occurrence. The rest was pretty routine. Boojack took the parts and three days later I picked them up, this time with a trailer.  He did a great job and I really like his shop. It makes me feel right at home, he must live in the historic district too.

These parts look so good I am storing them in the house. Since, Stephanie would not let me keep them in the bed room, I converted the dining room into the Parts Display Room and give tours on Wednesday afternoons.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backwards

In the last episode our auto body metal man had just finished spraying on a beautiful semi-gloss black topcoat over the hood. It was a sight to behold as he rode off into the sunset. Everyone had tears in their eyes.

The reason for painting the hood black was that BooJack, my professional painter suggested putting a black coat over the yellow sanding primer. This way it would not take as many coats of the final metallic blue color coat to cover the yellow. So I did.

A few days later when Dr. Culpepper was making his rounds, you know checking up on his neighborhood automotive patients - I proudly told him what I had accomplished.

He calmly stated in his Dalearian manner that I shouldn’t have done that. Okay Doc, what is the problem, BooJack said to put on black? He explained that the black paint I used was a topcoat and my pretty metallic blue topcoat paint would have a bad reaction if I sprayed it over the black paint.

I did get a second opinion and the guys that sell the paint agreed that my hood would go into anaphylactic shock if I mixed my topcoats. They also stated that having the yellow under the metallic blue base coat would give the final blue color a deeper luster. There is a lesson here, something about knowing what you are doing.

So, back to the beginning once again. It took most of a day to sand off the black paint, spray on the YELLOW sanding primer, and block sand it smooth. I have to admit though, the hood is perfect and will look beautiful with the blue topcoat.

Now the underside of the hood is another story. Plain old black topcoat is a perfectly fine color for the engine compartment. I am getting to be a better painter, but spray painting it the Hillbilly garage has its challenges. I am an expert at pulling bugs out of the wet paint, but water drops leaking from my gun onto the paint was a new experience.

I decided to upgrade my shop and purchased a huge ass air compressor. It is bigger than my wife and is guaranteed to pump out more air than congress. I might have just become a redneck shop.

Can’t wait to see the body parts with the metallic blue final coat.

April Column

My April colum is out. This month it is about blasting the 54 truck frame.

Hope you enjoy it.

Brimmer


http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/04/stripping_down_the_pickup_in_m.html

Stripping down the pickup in my hillbilly garage

 

Grilling in the Hood

The front grille that came with the truck was in sorry shape. One of the cross members was crushed, several were split and overall it was covered with a category EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Rust scale.  In other words, it was a disaster. So instead of spending countless hours repairing it, I decided to purchase a refurbished grille on eBay. This way I could spend my time at the brew pub instead of the hillbilly garage.

The eBay grille came primed and ready to paint, according to the seller’s description. The dilemma was, did the seller really do a good job with the prep work. I thought about asking TSA to help since they could x-ray scan it, but they just don’t have a sense of humor. As it turns out I waited about four weeks before I was able to work on the grille and I was disappointed (but not surprised) to see rust blooming everywhere. Glad I waited.

My friend Dale came over to help last weekend and I asked if he would work on the grille. He agreed and proceeded to take it apart. Drilling out the rivets did required “special” tools, which I knew he was itching to put to use. Once the grille was disassembled he used a sander/grinder to remove the paint and rust on every dad gum piece.

My task for the day was to weld in a replacement part on the hood support where it had rotted out. We both worked all of Saturday and Dale shamed me once again by completely finishing the prep work on all the grille parts. I did weld in my little part, but it didn’t seem like much by comparison.

The next task was to prepare the underside of the hood before it was primed. It took most of the next day to wire brush and sand off the rust and old paint. When I was done the underside of the hood was shiny and bright just like new. However, the next morning everything had flash rusted and I was back to ground zero.

I am convinced that Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, was not weaving and unweaving a burial shroud to stave off her suitors, but was really working in a chariot shop. During the day she would sand the rust off the chariot fenders and each night they would flash rust. She would start over the next day and repeat the process. In fact I think Odysseus was really a used chariot traveling salesman.

Once again I resorted to my chemical dependency and was able to remove the flash rust with Eastwood’s Fast Etch. With the rust converted I sprayed on the epoxy primer. Sweet.

I am finding that as I get more experienced and skilled with each stage of the restoration, it is harder to find interesting stories. Only Penelope would be interested if I described the technical details of applying body filler and sanding it to a smooth contour. But I do find that Stephanie is much happier with my progress.

The plan for this weekend was to finish the top of the hood. I sprayed on the urethane sanding primer and was disappointed by the rough texture of the coating. In discussing my technique with Dale, my spiritual and technical advisor, I discovered that I was spraying at 10 psi when I should have been spraying with a pressure of 50 psi. Here is the deal, at 10 psi it is like pooping out mash potatoes onto the hood. And of course they are lumpy. However at 50 psi, even mashed potatoes get atomized and a fine mist coats the part being painted. Employing my new technique I put a black top coat on the hood a dayum it looks good. The next step is to take it to Boo Jack to put on the final color coat.

Happy Day

The grille that came with the 54 Chevy truck.

Dale at work on the grille.

Rust coming through the primer.

The replacement metal for the rotted area.

Grille parts preped and ready to go.

One side is clean and the other side has the flash rust.

Grille parts primed.

Nectar of the Gods.

The underside of the hood primed.

Body filler on the hood.

Urethane primer on the hood.

Black top coat on the hood.

A New Column

For those of you that don't subscribe to the Huntsville Times, my Sunday column was published this week. It is not related to the truck project.

Hope you enjoy it.

Brimmer

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/03/a_race_against_pride_the_clock.html

After my daughter had run well in a local one-mile race, I thought we could try a 5K race. Neither of us really had any knowledge about road racing, other than the basics - run like hell to the finish line.
A 5K is 5,000 meters long, which seemed like a lot until I got it translated into English.
It turns out to be a little over three miles. If Brooke ran one mile, surely she could run three - she was a 6-year-old after all.
....

You Never Forget Your First Fender

The time had come after too many weeks of puttering around on the front fender to paint it and see if my body work was any good. My internal project clock was ticking, time to get something done.

I decided on a deep blue and started making the rounds to the car lots. Selecting the actual color from a paint chip is risky business; they are just too small to get the full impact of the color. The best way to insure you have the right one is to see it on another vehicle. I made many new friends at the dealers, all the sales people suggested that I just buy a car with the color I liked – they were just looking out for my best interest. I picked a hot color – Blue Topaz Metallic.

I had bumbled through the body work because I could fix my mistakes. Didn’t Confucius say, “the best lessons are learned from your mistakes”. I didn’t have any idea how to fix my inevitable painting boo-boos and frankly wasn’t sure if my body work was good enough. I wanted a professional to spray the fender.

I figured the guys at the paint shop could give me a few names since surely my orders were not keeping them in business.  When I asked for some names, they said that none of the pros would touch anything unless they did all the body work. You have to be kidding me, here I spend months working on the fender and now no one will touch it because they don’t know if I did a good job. The ring of truth in the statement knocked me to my knees. Since I was already down I started begging and pleading, I think he gave me a few names just to get me out of the store.

The first guy I called said he would paint my fender and gave me all the disclaimers that he couldn’t be held responsible for my “shoddy” workmanship. He wasn’t Confucius after all. He told me the paint and supplies to buy, which turned out to be the very best that the paint store sold – now I know why they suggested him.

Bare with me on this.  I bought a quart of color coat, a gallon of clear, reducer and hardener - all for the tidy sum of $500 dollars. Remember this is just for test run. I know this is a conspiracy. Each step of this project requires higher priced materials.  By the time I am ready to purchase the batteries, I will be so conditioned that when the salesperson says they are $1,000 each and you need twenty. I will say – is that your best shot; I spent more than that just painting my fender.

I am now ready to take my beloved fender and expensive paint to the painter. I give him one more call to make sure he is in and now I get the run around, he is just to “slammed” to fit this into his schedule. After a few minutes I can tell that he really doesn’t want to do it. Better to find out now than after I get a poor paint job.

Not to be daunted, I call another painter and thankfully he is very accommodating. He even said to bring it over that afternoon.  When I got there and explained that I was doing a frame up restoration and doing the body work myself, he asked how long I had been doing body work. I replied – a long time, about two months and all of it on this fender.  That’s when he said he needed to examine my workmanship and that he had a few questions for me. To my great relief he complemented my workmanship and said he would paint it. While we were discussing the price, he did point out one spot that could be improved, there was a hollow spot near the bottom, and he said for a few extra dollars he would fix anything he didn’t like before he sprayed it.  Deal.

When he said he would spray it the next day and I could pick it up on Saturday, I thought I was in heaven. I didn’t hear anything on Friday but at 7:30 am Saturday I got the call and went to pick it up.

It was a sight to behold, nothing has ever looked this good to me. In fact I am taking down our flat screen TV in the living room and putting this fender on the wall over the fire place.  I don’t need to watch West Coast Customs anymore.

Here is the before picture and another of the unfinished fender.

New Sunday Column - Orange just isn't a color for a home in Huntsville's historic district

For those of you that do not get the Sunday Huntsville Times, here is the link to my column.

Orange just isn't a color for a home in Huntsville's historic district (By Brimmer Sherman)

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/02/orange_just_isnt_a_color_for_a.html