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Once the preliminaries such as adding the new floor and rocker panels has been completed and the interior has been stripped out of the car, it was time to have it hauled to the body shop - that is the FIRST body shop.
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At last, having chosen a body shop and completed the preliminaries, the new coupe is off for a big adventure. The body shop was chosen because of an accident earlier in the year involving our Dodge Grand Caravan. This body shop had done good work, although a bit slow. We won't name the body shop because we later had cause to regret our choice - but if anyone in Utah wants to know who it was, contact me and I'll tell you - Bill
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Since the car was pretty much disassembled, we decided to paint all the loose pieces before reassembling it. This added to the cost, both in time and money but the results are quite remarkable. The painter would work them in anytime he had a hole in his schedule.
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This is one of my favorite photos of the entire project. It shows the dash, hood hinges, a couple of engine surround pieces and the bumper brackets, just waiting for reassembly.
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Work on the larger areas of the car progressed at a VERY SLOW pace, but the quality of the body work was excellent. I learned a lot about how not to "sand holes" in the primer.
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The firewall was the first major panel on the body to be painted. By this time, I had cleaned the frame and running gear. All the frame & running gear was painted with POR-15 paint. Boy, is that stuff hard to get off. In cleaning the frame & running gear, I scraped at least 10 gallons of dried grease & road tar off the car - what a mess. I used several gallons of mineral spirits, diesel & paint thinner to get it off.
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Once the firewall was painted, it was time to hang the engine and start on the wiring.
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This photo pretty much says it all about the condition of the trunk. The bar below the trunk lid (when closed) was riddled with rust-out. The body man cut out the rust-thru areas and welded a new face on the bar. This was hard to do but it turned out pretty good.
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Wow, what a mess!
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It was necessary to weld a patch into the rear corner-passenger side and then use a lot of seam sealer to fill in the crevices that are normal to this particular trunk. Talk about poor design - any water that gets in there stays in there, leading to rustout through the body both into the fender well as well as through the outer rear panel. This area took some work!
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As you can see, the trunk was primed along with the rest of the interior of the car. The inside primer was done so as to help make the job neater - the "illusion of progress" perhaps? Nevertheless, it made the whole job look better at little cost. Before final color was applied, the empty weatherstrip channels were smoothed out with seamseal.
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Once the trunk was painted, it was time to paint the inside of the trunk lid and move on to the rest of the car. The hardest thing was waiting for the paint to sufficiently dry to put the weatherstripping on - otherwise, it would have chipped the edges.
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Sometimes, when you put things back together, they just don't quite fit the way they did before. When that happens, you have to use a "persuader" like this body jack. In this case, when we went to put the drivers side door back on, it didn't quite fit the fender - so - we applied a little muscle to move the fender forward and everything then fit just fine.
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To see the above photos, you would think that the car was progressing nicely. WRONG!! These photos were taken an hour or so after the application of the clearcoat.
The next day, this paint was full of small flaws called "solvent pops". When clearcoat is applied before the solvent in the base coat has had a chance to evaporate, it gets trapped under the clearcoat. It has to go somewhere, so it dissolves holes in the clearcoat in order to escape, leaving little holes in the clearcoat.
The painter, who had been very quality conscious up to that point decided that this was good enough and that he wasn't going to fix it. I was getting tired of waiting - I wanted the car finished in my lifetime. The car had been in his shop for 14 months now and this was the last straw for me. In the meantime, I had seen the work of Mack McBride and had talked to him about the possibility of having him finish the paint job. This seemed to be the best option so I told the first painter where to go and pulled my car out of his shop. Mack stripped the paint off the top and the hood and had the car finished in less than 3 weeks. Again, this change ended up costing me a little more, but Mack stands behind his work and doesn't have an "attitude".
Incidentally, the first painter had a car belonging to one of my buddies for over 6 months and then, when pressed for a finish date, finally painted it - the wrong color. My buddy paid him $250 for body work and told him to go whistle for the paint job. I think that had something to do with the attitude that resulted in my pulling out.
Why do I bother with such trivialities - so that the reader might understand that restoring a car is a real experience, fraught with pitfalls. I wish this body shop experience was the only problem I had in finishing up this car.
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Once we got Boop's Coupe to Mac McBride, he had the paint stripped off the top and hood and the entire exterior of the car painted within 3 weeks. It just goes to show what can happen if you get a painter who tends to business. He moved so quickly that I didn't get a chance to take many progress photos.
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After Mack was finished, it was time to take the car to the glass shop. This is a dangerous time - just after painting. It is a given that the glass man is going to scratch some paint and this was no exception. Touch-up paint saved the day - sort of. Some scratches will be there forever but I console myself in knowing that only the guy that waxes the car knows where all of the scratches are.
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Finally! The glass is done, the paint is done and it's time to haul her home one last time and start reassembly. Everything that happens from here on out is finish work. And to think I've aged only 3 1/2 years since starting this project.
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