LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

I'm going to repaint a friends 94 Formula over the course of two weeks. He pulled out in front of a lady and she smoked the front end. All that was holding the front bumper on was two plastic push pins. I started taking it apart tonight. For some reason I didn't get an overall pic of the car while it was together. Working 14 hours today and the beer this evening probably had something to do with it. I can't remember the name of the color but I call it a seafoam green/blue.

I'm replacing the front bumper, fenders and hood. Clear coat is peeling off the back part of the car. It has a few dents in it. The hardest part is going to be the driver side rocker panel. Somehow it has a huge *** dent in it from the bottom pushing it into the bottom of the door. I haven't decided if I'm going to replace the rocker or see about having it pulled.

Here's a few pics of the car. Again I apologize for not having a pic of the entire car.






I will get more pics of the car as I take it apart. I will try and document the process the best I can.

Products that will be used are
Omni primer/sealer
PPG K38 filler primer
Omni basecoat/clearcoat
Rage Extreme body filler

I'm going to try and get the car apart as much as I can before I take it in to the shop on Monday morning. There I will finish taking the doors and hatch off.

Oh, if anyone has a good set of LT1 tail lights for a formula or a set of T/A lights that you don't want an arm and a leg for shoot me a PM.

Thanks for looking.

Jason

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

After finally getting that street rod done I started on the Formula today.





Took the rear bumper off and started sanding on the quarter panels.

The clear on this thing is JUNK. When I sand it comes off basically as chalk. I started w/ 220 and it was working fine where the clear was coming off. There were other spots on the car where the clear was harder than a preachers dick.

Before I started you could see 80 grit marks below the paint. After sanding for a bit I could see where there was some body filler but it looks in good shape. I guess whoever did it only had 80 grit.

I switched to 150 to get the scratches out and to speed up taking the clear off. I took all the clear off to get to the base below. You can see here how chalky the clear is.


After sanding the passenger side quarter I found this.


You couldn't see it from inside the trunk. It's where the inner fender and the quarter come together. I cut some out and found more rust. Thank god the driver side doesn't look like that. I'm halfway considering to get into the joint just to make sure.

I finished sanding the drivers quarter and sail panels/roof and will deal with the rust tomorrow. I'm trying to decide the best way to fix this. I thought about getting a section from a donor car, drill the spot welds out and weld it in. I think with the countor of that edge it would be hard to fab up.

I thought I had some pics of the entire quarter but I don't.

Thanks for looking.

Novaman

Cool, you stayin with the same color?

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Yeah. It looks horrible as is but under the deck lid where the paint isn't faded the color looks awesome. I don't think I've ever seen one a bird this color in person.

The tail lights are junk so I'm going to put some 98 and up lights on it. I was trying to talk the owner into getting a ram air hood for it like the ram air formula's have but doesn't have the extra cash. He definitely won't now when I tell him there's going to be some extra work involved. lol

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Got a late start today. I ended up having to hand sand the lower part of the spoiler by hand. It took forever. I wanted to make sure all the clear was off. I don't want any adhesion problems later on.




Going to sand some more on the quarters and cut some more of the rust out. This as they sit now.

SinisterZ28

iTrader: (4)

Looks fun,lol
Nice shop,damn clean.
That color is pretty cool,my buddy had a z28 that color

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Thanks man. That's the bay we do metal work in to keep the dust/metal shavings away from where we put cars together.

The rust spot wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was. I was afraid it would go all the way the quarter but it didn't. I cut it out and there was a small rust spot on the inside of the inner fender about the size of a pencil eraser. I cleaned everything up with a grinder and wire wheel. We have had really good luck with SEM brand rust stop. I put a few coats on it and will let it sit till Monday. I'm going to get a piece of a quarter from a wrecked car and weld it in. With the double lip on the edge I don't see anyway to replicate it.




Car is going to the frame shop beginning of next week. The driver side rocker panel is caved in. I'm going to take it to them and I hope they can pull it out. I looked at putting a rocker panel in it but it runs under the quarter panel. I think this is a situation it's best to let someone else do it.

While its at the frame shop I'm going to sand down the front fenders and hood. Should be getting the door and rear bumper cover Tuesday.

14k

cant wait to see finished pics.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Sanded the rear bumper and front fenders down this morning. My friend picked up a used hood from somewhere. It has a few dings in it and decided to sand them out. Started with 150 and the hood laughed at me. Tried 80 grit, same thing.

Six applications of paint stripper and this is what I have.



It's not a basecoat clearcoat. I thought it was some super single stage enamel but my boss thinks its some industrial Dupont paint. They should paint the freakin space shuttle with this. I'm still going to have to use 40 grit or something on it. If I would have known all of this I would have had the hood dipped.

We worked on this tonight too.

SinisterZ28

iTrader: (4)

Damn that sucks,alot of work to strip that hood.is that a cuda,challenger?did u get a piece to go in the quarter of the firebird?crappy spot to have to weld in n make.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Yeah I'm not real happy about the hood but it is what it is. I "hope" to have most of the stuff in primer tomorrow. I'm going to try and make it to the salvage yard tomorrow to get that piece of the quarter. I don't think it will be too bad but will still be a pain. The front bumper my friend picked up for the car is junk. I'm hoping the salvage yard has one of those too. I could repair it but as long as it would take its cheaper/easier to get another.

That car is a 69 Charger. We are making it a Daytona clone. It's getting a new trunk floor, extensions, mini tubbed, air ride and some other stuff. Found out we are going to have to make new frame rails for part of the rear. Where the frame rails go over the axle there's not enough travel to get the ride height as low as the owner wants it. I hope to get the car dipped before we do anymore work on it. It has some rust but not much. It's so much easier to work on them when they are clean.

SinisterZ28

iTrader: (4)

Hell yeah, I could tell it was a mopar but wasn't sure, looks like a fun job though, I don't get to do hardly any custom or older cars cause I work in a production type body shop, but I do a few on the side when I have time. Love to do custom stuff wish I got to do more. Seems more rewarding doing something like that when you get done.production work gets alittle repeadative.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Yeah my boss is burnt out on restorations and is wanting to do more custom stuff. Things have slowed down because the economy sucks right. I'm waiting for things to swing back the other way so people will start spending money again.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Got a late start on the bird today. Put a few more applications of stripper on it and it was obvious it wasn't doing any good. Pressure washed it off with simpe green and then the most aggressive nozzle on the thing.



Then used 40 grit D/A on it. Anyone that hasn't used 36/40 grit on metal becareful because you can wind up with fewer character lines than you started with. I didn't touch the character lines or where the hood was curvy for fear of grinding it down.


Then used 80 grit on it and cleaned everything up. The dark spots is where there was body filler before and there are some DEEP gouge marks. I left them in there so the body filler I'm putting back in will have something to bite to.


I will 150 grit it when I get the body filler in. I will start w/ 80 to get it close then finish it w/ 150 then D/A the whole thing in 150. Depending on how it looks I will probably run 220 over it too. Then I'm going to shoot some PPG DP epoxy primer on it then K38 it.

I only sanded half the hood for motivation. Seeing how bad it looks helped me keep working on it. Hopefully when I start on the other half tomorrow the done part will keep me going. It's amazing how you can kill an hour sanding something.

I'm on the fence about paint stripping the hood where the nostrils or whatever you want to call them are. I would like to get it looking better, I know it will be covered up, but at the same time I'm afraid some stripper might get further up in the hood and it might rust some day. I don't know if GM put some sort of primer on the inside before the hood was bonded together.

Started fixing the rear bumper today. It had a few gouge marks in it but nothing deep. After talking to the guy I know at the body supply place I decided to use this;


He said shops have had good luck with it just make sure the prep is good. I hear Valvoline has some new super crazy urethane filler out but I didn't want to spend that much on this small of a repair.


With a grinding bit I ground out all the loose bumper material and tried to make a "V" so the filler would have somewhere to go. This sanded edges down w/ 80 grit.


The stuff is really easy to work with but quite a bit thinner than body filler for obvious reasons. I had to put several layers on because it was hard to build up because it was thin.


Sanded it down w/ 150. I put another layer on and will sand it out with 220 then do the whole bumper w/ 220. It just 150 done to it now.


I'm going to put some filler on the hood and go home. I'm freakin done. I started using Rage Extreme body filler about a month ago. I had been using Rage Gold on that street rod I did. The Extreme is MUCH better. It's thinner, no pin holes and sands like glazing putty. The stuff is very impressive and I doubt I will use anything else in the future.

Thanks for looking. As you can see my hopes of getting everything in primer didn't happen. Maybe tomorrow.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

Threw some EXTREME!! body filler on it before I left. Most of it will sand out.


When I do an edge I try to run it over a little bit to make sure there is enough to feather out to the edge. You can add extra if its short but I like to make sure its all the same. 6 of one, half a dozen of another.

SinisterZ28

iTrader: (4)

Both are good products from evercoat, we use them in our shop, the extreme you just need to mix right, it mixes different than regular filler n putty but is real good stuff.
The putty u have is good for plastic parts.
Makes me want to start mine, witch I will do hopefully in about a month. Will be getting my h/c/i done first though.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

What's different about it? I would appreciate any info.

SinisterZ28

iTrader: (4)

I was looking at our chart at work n got my products mixed up, it's the evercoat quantum I was thinking of, sorry bout that.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

It's cool man. I went to work the next day and re read the can like five times looking for something I missed.

LilJayV10

iTrader: (39)

I got the hood done. Took me longer than what I had planned but **** happens.

Guide coat


Ended up putting a thin coat of Evercoat "Metal Glaze" glazing putty of it and it turned out nice. The hood curves in a couple different directions as it goes down to the nose so I wanted to make sure it was right.


I was going to spray epoxy primer on it Friday but I forgot there were a few rust spots on the side that I wanted to treat. It has to sit for 24 hours so I didn't mess with this weekend.

I just realized I didn't take a finished pic of the hood.