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.

Headlights, Clutch and Steering Column

I thought I'd show you a picture of the hood and upper air intake cowling.  If you've been following this blog from the beginning you'll know that this area had a lot of issues and consequently received a lot of TLC.  I think you'll agree that the time invested was well spent.  This really looks nice.

I am getting tired of the body work postings so I'll skip all the steps that got us to this point.  All the hard work has already been done to these primered headlight buckets.  They're now ready for paint.

When I let the paint dry for more than 4 hours I have to scuff the paint so that the next coat will stick and not lift.  The bucket on the right has been scuffed and I am getting ready to do the other one.

The buckets are fiberglass but they do have a lot of metal reinforcing on the inside.  I thought it best to paint the inside as a rust proofing measure.

This is the hardware needed to install the buckets.  The assembly manual in the background is a must have if you've never done this before.  I chose stainless steel screws since the headlights on a C2 Corvette are notorious for rusting.  Note the tube of silicone grease.

I chose silicone grease for the headlight mechanism because it's waterproof.  Waterproof?  Yep, that's right.  Not all grease is waterproof, but the silicone grease is.  If I didn't use silicone grease it would only be a matter of time before rain and car washes would wash away the lubricant.  Silicone grease is a great product but it comes with its drawbacks.  It's almost impossible to wash off and it's the worse contaminate you could have when painting a car.  That's the reason for all the tape in this picture.  I am trying my best not to get anything on the primer sealer.

It took a whole afternoon to install and align both buckets.  I even painted and installed the electric motors.  There is still work needed under here but you can see how it's set-up.  This is directly behind the nose of the car between the headlights.

Ty and I did a lot of work on these headlights over the last couple of years.  We must have at least a 100 hours invested.  They look great and I am sure they are better than factory installed. 

Switching gears, this is the clutch pedal and the clutch rod that goes through the firewall.  The clutch never quite felt right to me and it took me a long time to figure out why.  After a lot of research I found out why.

We were missing this plate.  The plate moves the clutch rod higher and it engages the rubber bump stop.  The clutch operates much better now.

Then there's that grungy old steering column.  It's original to the car and it's an original 63 but it's not friendly to "men of measure".  It gets in the way.  I talked to several people that own C2 Corvettes and many of them have the same issue, they don't fit well in their car.  The solution?  A tilt wheel!

Flaming River sells a tilt wheel steering column specifically for C2 Corvettes.  Everything is identical to the original except for the extra lever.  This one will be painted to match our car and it will allow big boys to drive in comfort.  At least that's the plan.  I know, it's not original to the car but this is one of the few things we are doing to improve the driving pleasure.  Besides, it comes with a flasher and that's a great safety feature.

Next I'll start working on the rear exhaust valance.  That is the last piece that needs body work.  Hopefully paint will follow afterward.

As always, thanks for watching.

Cool Desert Nights 2012

Cool Desert Nights 2012 was this weekend and we decide to bring our Corvette after all.  Check out this video as we prepare for our favorite car show:

http://youtu.be/PKQLvjkx15E

It rained most of the night so we decided not to park in the grassy area for fear of getting stuck.  Dennis and Annette and Gerri and I caravaned to the show with 4 vehicles.  It was amazing how many cars were already there and it was only 6:30 am.

Here we are with our 4 vehicles (5 counting my truck).  Gerri's bug made everybody smile.  Young, old, boy, girl... it didn't matter.  Everybody smiled and most had to take a picture of her car.

We left the Corvette on the trailer because thunder showers were forecast throughout the day.  We raised the hood and opened the door but other than that, set up was easy.  Everybody loved the Cobalt Kandy Blue color and I have to admit seeing it in the sun it was pretty spectacular.  I like it.

We think 700 plus cars showed up for the event but many left when the thunderstorms arrived.

This guy stuck around even though his car wasn't water tight.  It has a blown 4 cylinder engine with most everything being heavily modified.  Check out the billet dash.

The grassy area was full in the morning but we lost half of these cars when the first rain arrived. 

This is a beautiful pick-up truck.  Super clean.

This looks like a hot rod cement mixer but it's advertised as a Tequila mixer.  I think it really is a beverage mixer and if I am right, this guy wins the coolest blender award ever!

Another 4 cylinder and it's pretty cool.  The aluminum tanks in the rear are for storage.

A snare drum air cleaner.  Works for me.

Now that we own a VW we have a keen eye for other bugs.  You gotta love it!

Just too cool.

Everything on this motor is either polished aluminum or chrome.  

Ya gotta love it.

This color was stunning. 

I don't know what they were discussing but they spent a long time checking it out.

So here's the rest of the story.  While we were at Cool Desert Nights two big thunderstorms came through and we stuck around for both.  Each time we wiped down the cars and each time we set up our area when the sun came out.  Many of the cars left but we stuck it out... at least until the third storm rolled in.  We packed our bags and headed home for that one.  Did we win a trophy?  We don't know.  Did they give out trophies?  We don't know that either.  What we do know is we had a great time and the day was filled with non-stop discussions about the Corvette and the VW.

Thanks for watching!

The Hood Continues (with a post script)

If you think about it, both sides of this hood have about as much surface area as the roof, both of the doors, and then some.  No wonder it's taking so long to finish this thing.

The top of the hood has been primered 3 times, block sanded and guide coated in-between each coat.  I let it dry for a full week then went over it with a red scuff pad to help the adhesion of the black primer sealer.

Two coats of black primer sealer were applied and allowed to dry for several days.

Then I flipped the thing over and continued to work on the underside.

Now here's the problem.  I know it's the underside of the hood and I know nobody is going to pay it any attention.  Yet I find myself giving it almost the same amount of attention as I did to the body of the car.  Look at the sanding discs I am going through.  Yes, I am block sanding the underside as well... but what the heck.  I bought the car to keep me off the couch and it's doing that.

Here it is after it's first sanding.  We still have a few spots of fiberglass showing so I'll add more primer.

Here it is, re-primered, re-sanded and ready for primer sealer.

The primer sealer really only needed to be applied around the perimeter of the underside of the hood since that's the only place that gets color.  But I had a little extra primer left over so I sprayed the center section as well.  The center will be painted with Por 15 Chassis Coat Black, the same stuff we used on the firewall and inner fenders.

Three medium coats of Lapis Blue were sprayed around the edges.

Then several coats of Cobalt Kandy Blue were sprayed followed by several coats of clear.

After drying for about 12 hours I started masking with 1/4" tape as shown.  This was followed by 1" tape.  This "two tape" method allows nice tight radiuses where the 1" alone can't do it.

Everything was then scuffed to remove all gloss.  The area was cleaned with a wax and grease remover then all the holes and threaded areas were plugged with foam ear plugs.  A final blast of air removed all lint and debris making the underside of the hood ready for paint.

3 medium coats of Por 15 were applied then allowed to dry for about an hour before the ear plugs and masking tape were removed.  I'll let this dry for at least a day before I put it on the car.  Hopefully it will fit as well as the 67 hood we were going to use originally.  Wish us luck on that! 

Thanks for watching.

Post Script:

Brother Jim asked for a couple pictures of the 63 hood in the early stages of repair.  This hood had major damage caused when it buckled during a head-on collision.

These repairs are representative of about a dozen repairs made on the underside of the hood.