Lizard King

Good job, man, good job! I spotted the Necrophagist sweatshirt too lol.

Black00Z

I love MMM. The work you've posted so far is outstanding. Lose the wheels and the truck grille, and this thing will be a work of art.

00SS4780

iTrader: (3)

Yep it is still around. I saw a post with your new wheels and rear end. Looking good my friend!!! Good to hear from ya.

98 WS6

iTrader: (20)

Awesome, thanks dude. Gonna order myself a kit!

White.Lightning

iTrader: (53)

Sick work. I plan on learning how to do body stuff at some point. Keep the progress coming!

HOTROD98Z

iTrader: (1)

Haha, i actually like the billet grille but i agree on the wheels some new ones are definately on my wish list.

Thanks for all the compliments guys but the pictures don't tell the whole truth, i've still got a lot of stuff to improve on.

HOTROD98Z

iTrader: (1)

We got the bumper covers resprayed today and they came out ok, as you can see from the pics there is still some peel in them. Also my body work didn't come out 100% there's a few spots where it's a little too wavy. I also have some small spots all over which i believe is solvent pop. So i'm not sure what i'm gonna do about that yet, i'm probably going to see how they look out in the sun and do a slight color sand and buff and see how they turn out before i go and respray.
Here's the rear bumper with 3 coats of clear

I went ahead and hung the rear bumper tonight for wetsanding tomorrow

Front bumper


Tonight i also got my wiper cowl painted, grille and headlight brackets. I've been using this color as an accent color for a few different things on the car. It's actually a chrysler color called Brilliant black pearl.





And just on a side note i ordered some of the purple mf cobra towels from autogeek because i was getting low on supplies and i think they suck ***. From alot of the boards and reviews i heard they were some of the best out there and while they feel like a quality thick towel imo they are way too grippy, they don't take polish off very easily and i wiped my chrome caps off with the towels and some quick detailer and they were leaving behind a bunch of fibers from the towel. So anyway i'm gonna call autogeek tomorrow and see if i can return them or at least swap them out for a different towel.
Cobra towel

My old Dragon towel

BOBS99SS

iTrader: (2)

looks good man that cowl looks killer, what did you do just sand and paint any other steps

9WhiteCamaro9

Did you smooth out the wiper cowl before you painted it to get the texture out of it?

HOTROD98Z

iTrader: (1)

Yes the wiper cowl was smoothed and it was a pita. That plastic is tough stuff, around some of the small crevices there is still a tiny bit of texture becuase it was a nightmare trying to get in there with sand paper.

Basically what i did was start out with 80 grit to really knock down all of the texture then follow up with 180. Then 3 coats of 2k primer sanded with 320, this was followed another 2 times with the final sanding of the primer with 600. Then 3 coats of the base and 3 coats of spi clear.

ramairjohn2000

iTrader: (3)

hey hot rod awesome work so far question on the cowl did you or could you use a dremmel to smooth it out???? or did u sand the whole thing by hand?

HOTROD98Z

iTrader: (1)

Yeah it was sanded by hand. You could try a dremel but i don't think it would work very well. I tried my die grinder on a small section with a fine pad and on the lowest setting it didn't work too well. It more or less just kind of melted the plastic and then i hand to go back and sand it out. If you've ever used a dremel to cut plastic or anything then you know how it makes the plastic look.

99Ls1fever

iTrader: (3)

wow very nice man!

HOTROD98Z

iTrader: (1)

Working on the SS hood, it's a factory gm hood that came with the car but it's got a few rough spots on, it's got some rock chips on the front that needed some body filler and also the one corner of the hood has been repaired and needed some shaping to match up to the other side. I also decided to fill in the seem around the edge of the hood and on the back corners. I wanted to fill and smooth the two middle sections as well but decided against it.





Gonna flip it over and prime the topside here in a bit. When i lay bc/cc i'm gonna hang the hood so i can shoot both sides at once.

White.Lightning

iTrader: (53)

I might have missed this, but did you have any formal training in body work? Or is this a DIY/first time thing? I want to get a compressor and spray gun when I buy a house with a garage. I'm just curious if I'd be able to teach myself and figure it out.

HOTROD98Z

iTrader: (1)

No i've never had any body work training. I worked as a tech for about 5 years but never done the paint and body thing before. There's a lot of good videos and info out there but no doubt taking some auto body classes would have come in handy, or if you know a pro paint and body guy get him to help you that would be the best imo. No doubt you can learn how to do it just be prepared to go through more supplies then you need and have to redo some stuff, that's the part that suck. Here's some good sites:
http://www.autobody101.com/content/
http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/body-exterior/
Check out my friend pete, he's got a ton of videos on youtube and he's very entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/user/swrnc
http://www.youtube.com/user/diyautoschool?blend=1&ob=0

White.Lightning

iTrader: (53)

Thanks for the links!!!

HOTROD98Z

iTrader: (1)

Well this hood has been a real nightmare and has kicked my ***, i'm beginning to think it is cursed.
Here's the corner that had been damaged and repaired when i recieved it

After shaping it to get it as close as i could to the right shape


Now is where the real fun begins, after the first block sand i put it back on the car to test fit it, i had some blankets covering my wiper cowl so i wouldn't scratch it and the corner that was damaged got caught up in the blankets and busted off. So i got some fiberglass epoxy and smoothed it back in. Well after getting basecoat sprayed on the crackline was still bleeding through a bit so i sanded the corner back down applied some more body filler spot primed, wet sanded the front down with 600 to denib it and blended the base back in well same thing happened again.

Also the bc and cc layed down absolutely terrible, I know my compressor is a little bit undersized but i don't have $800 right now for a new setup. It has been working out ok for the smaller stuff but i really think with the larger area of the hood and the long strokes it takes for coverage that the compressor just isn't able to keep up and it's not putting out the proper cfm to atomize the paint efficiently. So hopefully before the fbody gathering in may i will be able to get a new compressor and the hood will be getting stripped down and resprayed.

So that left me with trying to make chicken salad out of chicken ****. I'm embarrassed to even show these pics.




After a very tedious color sand and buff




I also ended up with some tiger striping in the base and there's a few spots on the edges that i'm not happy with either, oh well it will be getting redone anyway, good practice i guess as long as the same thing doesn't happen twice.


Back to the curse, to top everything off when i was putting on the hood tonight i put a small nick in the paint on the driver's side rear corner.

Enough of that disaster

Front bumper color sanded and buffed



Tinted tails re cleared


Painted backs of headlights, still have to wetsand and buff the lens their in pretty bad shape, i'm eventually gonna get some new ones i just haven't decided what style i want


Lid and base painted


So i'm gonna get everything back together and head down to winternationals to try and enjoy this piece a little bit since i still haven't even driven it since i got it.

djfury05

iTrader: (30)

lookin' good man!

bad_408_vert

iTrader: (6)

I 'd do bixeon projectors in stock headlights.
Best Appearence & Performance over any other style or brand.