Body Work Continues

Issues on the body are generally fewer and less significant now, with this one exception.  The license plate area is very non-symmetrical.  Ty rolled up his sleeves and tackled this repair.

The circled area dips down about a quarter inch and the face is not symmetrical either.   

Ty reinforced the back with fiberglass, layed out a grid to understand the errors, then he ground away the dip and sanded the face until it was restored back to normal.  This area will look great once it's painted.

Ty also worked on the passenger side body lines.

The drivers side is equally as nice.

On 63 and 64 Corvettes the doors have a raised boss for the door handles but they don't match the handles very well.  We decided to outline the door handle then grind the bosses to match.

The bosses now match the handles perfectly.

We even worked on the hood and nose.  Yes, paint will make this look good too. 

Here you go Max.  A couple pictures of the whole body.

As promised, here's a little tidbit from the shop.

When we begin painting it will be critically important to keep moisture out of the air lines.  One of the ways to do that is to cool, condense and siphon off moisture before it goes into the air tank.  In this picture the manufacture had a 12" copper line that ran directly from the compressor to the tank.  As you can see we modified it.

This is the back side.  Using a design found on the internet, we made a radiator/condenser and it works great.  It even has an automatic valve at the bottom that purges moisture every time the compressor starts up.  Not only is the air drier but the unit runs quieter too.

We will switch to the shorter body dolly soon.  Keep watching!

Sanding Sanding Sanding

OK.  Here's the deal.  Finishing work is boring and there is little to photograph as far as progress goes.  So in order to satisfy those of you that demand periodic, meaningful updates, I will post progress photos and throw in some kind of tidbit information to keep your interest.  Lets give it a try.

  
Click on this photo and you will see a bump in the body line.  This was no doubt caused by all the fitting and sanding that was done when we restored the wheel wells.

Here is a little better look at it.  The bump is the original body line.  The area on both sides of the bump need to be built up.

After adding fiberglass followed by a little Bondo, the body line is looking much better.  Another couple hours were spent on this area after this picture was taken and the results are more than acceptable.

The same issue is on the passenger side but not quite so bad.

We are sanding the primer and the fiberglass until the surface is ready for the next coat of primer.  Since we are block sanding, the primer left on the fender is actually filling low spots.

The top of the right front fender is ready for primer.  It required very little sanding.

The right rear however required lots of sanding.  Yep, the same goes here.  The green that's left behind is filling low spots.  These low spots are only a few thousandths thick so it's not a big deal.

We keep finding that occasional area that needs to be repaired with fiberglass.  This one has since been dressed up and is ready for primer.

Corvettes are notorious for developing stress cracks.  The door handle area is especially prone because the handles are bolted down tight from the back side.  To help prevent new stress cracks we decided to actually mold the handles to the door panels.  The handles were wrapped in cellophane then held against the body with a wet layer of fiberglass sandwiched in between.  It worked great.

OK.  Here's that tidbit of information I talked about.  My brother Jim is moving to China and he didn't want to leave his Nomad in storage for several years.  He asked if I'd be interested and my wife told me I would.  I owned this car many years ago so it comes with a ton of sentimental value.  So we now have two Nomads and the garage is stuffed.  That's a good problem though.

Here's a picture of Gerri and I taken next to the Nomad about 25 years ago.  When the Corvette is finished this will be our next project.  Should be lots of fun.

As always, thanks for watching.