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Saturday, July 7, 2012

Rear Valance, Hood Locks & the Doors

It's been a long time since we worked on the exhaust valance.  I gave it a quick hit with brown primer then took a few swipes at it with sandpaper just to figure out how much work had been done.  The brown spots are low spots and that tells me the last thing done on this was fiberglass work only,  No finishing work.


With that information I used our Icing glazing compound to fill the low spots then hit it again with brown primer.


That was followed by block sanding.  I then circled all areas that still needed filler then did it again.


When I was satisfied it was nice and flat I gave it a couple good coats of our green two part primer.  I let that dry for a day or two then sprayed on the brown primer as a guide coat then started sanding again.  You'll notice in this picture I cut the slots for the bumper brackets.  The cross section thickness of the fiberglass in this area tells me this is way stronger than a stock valance.  A special thanks to Ty and Lester for that little surprise.


When the finishing work was done/done I sealed it with black primer sealer.  It's now a thing of beauty.


Somehow I ended up with 4 hood latches, all of which looked like the two in the background.  I refurbished the two in the foreground by sandblasting, soaking in carburetor cleaner, 20 minutes in the ultrasonic cleaner, then I gave them several coats of  paint.  They look great and I've already installed them.


Now here's a puzzle.  There are a couple indentations on the door skin that I can not figure out.  This door has been fully guide coated and block sanded yet here they are.  You'll have to double click on the picture to see at least one of them.


A teaspoon of body filler followed by block sanding fixed the problem.  The filler is white. 


So then I thought I better check the other door and, guess what?  Humm...  It's puzzling.  Brother Jim thinks it might be because the doors are now hung and not on a table.  Could be...


So now I am going to go over the entire car to make sure we don't have other surprises.  I've looked at half the car so far and nothing new has shown up.


So next I'll be taping and masking and doing everything we can to protect the chassis, engine and the door and hood jambs.  Should be interesting work.  Wish me luck.

Thanks for watching.

3 comments:

  1. John, itseems impossible that your gettmg so many divits in the doors. is it possible (OMG) the filler you used on the doors is different than what you used in other areas, and is itpossible that, that material is somehow settling in over time somehow ? (retract / shrink ) ?? OMG. Jim p

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  2. Jim, no I don't think it's shrinking. I am pretty much convinced the imperfections were just overlooked while the doors were on the table. These areas have a lot of curves so it's not easily block sanded and when the doors are on the table the areas are hard to reach because you're stretching across the whole door skin. I looked over the entire car and I've not found anything else. I think we're good.

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  3. Hi John, I am also currently restoring the -63 Split window and I am missing the hood latches from my project? Do you still have the additional hood latches and would you be willing to sell them?
    Thank you for the great blog, it has been extremely helpful for me to see forehand what kind of work there are still to come in my project since my project is still in early phases.

    -Tommi

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