Bringing Light to Headlights

Dateline - 29 Mar 2014 - Continued sanding on the car to remove all the primer and get it ready to go to the paint shop.  This weekend it was focus on the front fenders.  What I had forgotten was that I needed to do some more metal work because of the front headlights.  As I had put in a previous post, the outside headlights had been replaced in this car.  The original headlight buckets, which had 6 inch sealed beams bulbs had been removed and 7 inch bulbs were put in their place (as well as Chrysler Cordoba light bezels!).  The way the light buckets had been mounted into the car was, well how should I say, not the best (read, "Sheet metal screws drilled through the light buckets directly into the fenders.")!  The buckets themselves were also in pretty bad shape with rust and bad attempts at welding new pieces to fix them.  Several years ago, I made a mental notes to myself that I needed to spend some time on the headlights to get everything working before I sent the car to paint.  Well, I forgot about the note!  So as I'm sanding on the fenders, I realized I still had a couple of days work to get these sorted. 

The first order of work was to sand the fenders.  Done! The second was to repair the headlights. I have no idea were the headlight buckets were sourced (Chrysler?).  There was a part number on them, but three hours on Google did not bring up a match.  So repairing them was the order for the day.  One reason these buckets were originally installed so badly was that parts of them were missing (broken or rusted off) and since they are not the correct buckets for the car, they were missing tabs needed to mount them.  So I pulled out the trusty sheet metal tools, bench vice and welder and went to work.  I was able to add the tabs and weld new metal where needed.  Not the best welding job in the world, but far better then what had been done before and should work to hold the lights.  I will even be able to adjust them, which I could not do before! 

The chrome bezels, being from a Cordoba where mounted on this car by by screwing them directly into the fender.  Ideally, there would be a nut plate that the bezel would screw into but these have to be designed into the fender.  To mount the bezels correctly requires screwing into the fender in a place were there is no metal! So in the prior installation, the bezels were turned about 10 degrees off center.  Well, I could not have that!  So I welded new metal into the fender to allow for the bezel to be mounted correctly.  This would also aid in headlight adjustment since the indentations in the bezels designed to allow a screwdriver between the bezel and the bulb now line up!  I finished the work on the left hand fender and started on the right, but ran out of time before I could finish.

Finally, I had to source two chrome headlight retaining rings.  These rings hold the headlight bulb to the bucket via three sheetmetal screws.  The rings on the car are in pretty tatty condition.  Both had been welded in the past and the heat flaked the chrome, which rusted pretty bad.  An hour on the interwebs and I found universal mount stainless steel rings for $10 a piece!  They should be in this week and I can see if they will work.  I may need to cut off a couple of tabs that are not needed.

So, as usual, I didn't get as much done as I wanted to, but I've definitely improved on a shoddy job and I still keep moving ahead, and that's the point!

Still Sanding

Dateline - 03/22/2014 - "Still Sanding" says it all.  I wish I would have known that I didn't need to spray all that primer!  It sucks to have to sand it all off.  Good news that I found a few wobbles in the finish that I'm getting cleaned up (e.g. Body filler) and I've finished all the doors, back two fenders, boot lid and back end.  All I have left are the two front fenders!

Next, I need to get some air in my tires, get them mounted and get the car off of jack stands!  Yup after over five years!  I need to get the car into the driveway so I can spend some time de-greasing under the hood with some simple green and water.  Don't want to do that in the garage.  Once that is done, I'm pretty sure the car will be ready for the paint shop!  Pretty exciting!

Slow Plodding

Dateline - 03/15/2014 - I noticed that I have not posted anything in a couple of weeks.  I'm still recovering from my cold, so haven't felt up to working much on the car.  Over the last two weekends I've finished up the soundproofing, which took much more time then I thought it would, but I'm also way to annal about how nice a job is done, so I could have probably been done a lot earlier if I could just let go!

This weekend I cleaned up my garage (which had gotten into a bad state between some home repairs that required cleaning out the attics and crawl space, and just general "piling on" of stuff on my work bench.  I did manage to start sanding the primer off of both the right hand doors and right rear fender.  I found that the rear right door had a pretty good sized dip in it that I had not noticed while it was hanging on the car, so I did some more bondo work to get it flat. 

After I get all he primer sanded off, I can take the car in for paint.  So that is were my focus needs to be now.

Slow Progress

Dateline - 03/01/2014 - Still feeling under the weather fighting a cold.  So I decided to do as much work on the car as I could before I got too tired.  Turns out that I was just about able to finish up the soundproofing.  I would have finished if I had not ran out of foil tape.  So, I still have a few more hours left on the soundproofing before it’s done.  Then I get to focus on sanding!

Couple of Weeks Sick Curtail Work on Car

Dateline – Feb 21, 2014 – Over the last couple of weeks, I've had slew of illness, starting with a very, very bad stomach virus that almost put me into the ER, followed immediately with a head cold.  So I haven't felt like doing much more than resting and watching TV.  I did do about six hours of wet sanding on the carbon fiber center console and it is getting close to ready to put the lacquer coats on.  It’s a lot of work, but I’m going to be happy with the results!

Hopefully I'll feel well enough next weekend to get back at the car, finish off the sound proofing and start sanding primer off the car.  I would like to get it into the paint shop soon!

Another Day Soundproofing

Dateline – 02/08/2014 – Spent most of the day Saturday doing the soundproofing on the driver’s side of the car.  From last week, I knew that it would take most of the day, and it did.  Didn’t finish because I had a friend come over mid day that distracted me for about two hours.  But that’s okay.   I ended up bruising my fingertips from pressing the material into all the small nooks and crannies.  So it’s just as well that I didn’t do any more than I did!

It looks like I’m going to be a little shy on soundproofing material, so I bought a couple of small boxes, which should be in the mail right now.  That will give me enough to finish up the back of the seat, the back deck and up the A and B posts. 

A Day of Soundproofing!

Dateline – 02/01/2014 – I had a day off during the week to take care of some house issues and decided to run down to the paint shop that was recommended to me by my late neighbor “Bob the Cop.”  The shop is called Showcase Collision Specialists (http://www.showcasecollision.com/).  They are one of the few paint shops that still do full car paint.  I talked to a really great guy there who has seen many project cars.  He showed me a Ferrari Dino that they are restoring, a 69 Nova that just came out of the paint booth, a couple of mid 80’s vets, and a 944 that they are working on.  All great work, so I know this is the place to go.  Plus, they are only about 4 miles away from my house! 

So talking to the guy I asked him if it was better to bring the car in all together, or in pieces.  He said it was up to me, but if I want to best paint possible, bring it in with all the doors, fenders and hoods off.  That way they can paint each without needing to mask and they can get a clean shot at all the nooks and crannies.  So, I’m pulling everything off.  He also said that all the primer needs to come off the car since they are going to spray a sealer coat on before they put the blocking primer on.  Since they don’t know what the surface below the primer is like, they can’t tell how well the paint will stick.  So I need to go back over the car and get the primer off.  Shouldn’t be too bad.

So, the entire process is, 1) Sealer, 2) Blocking Primer, 3) Blocking, 4) Finish Coat 5) Baking.  Price?  Well, that depends.  Materials are around $1,000.  If I decide to let them do all the work, it will be about $8,000 for the entire car.  However, he recommended that, after the blocking primer is spayed, I take the car back and block it myself.  That will take about 60 – 80 hours of labor out of the equation and will bring the cost down to around $3,500 - $4,000.  So, I will need to have to car towed four times, but that is going to be a lot less than the $5,000 difference!  And I get to have my hands in the work too, which is also nice.  So, definitely moving forward there!

On Saturday, I really didn’t feel up to sanding so I decided to put in the sound proofing.  So I took all the doors off the car and removed the seats:

Doors and fenders off!

Next I vacuumed and washed down all the interior surfaces and after they dried, I started putting in the soundproofing that I bought from Eastwood a couple of years ago. (http://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-thermocoustic-material.html).  This stuff is amazing, but it is no pleasure to install!  You have to cut each piece to fit, than press it into place trying to get all the air bubbles out.  Considering that there is really no flat surface inside the car (even the floorboards have ridges in them), it is a lot of work and in eight hours I was only able to get one half of the car done!  The driver’s side should be a little easier since there are not as many curves, and I’ve got more experience working with the material.  It really does deaden the noise in the car, and with padding and carpets on top, it should be really quite inside!

Here are pictures of the inside that I got done:

Passenger side looking forward through back window

Front Passenger floorboard

Rear Passenger Floorboard