But if I could interject into this Bryan if you did wash with water Allan is right you will have flash rust, all isn't lost however you can wash it with some dupont metal prep available at auto paint stores and on line, where rubber gloves as it is mildly caustic, this will also clean in pitted areas , then even if you use a spray can put a little etching primer on it , then a sealer till you are ready to do more work again use a spray can if you have to because every time you blast the metal is getting thinner and thinner


Sorry to stick. My nose in an Brian sorry for stepping on the thread

 

No problem.

 

Spent some time getting the front door panels installed. These, like the rear panels are reproductions by Legendary. Nice quality. The first thing I wanted to do was install the water shields that I also bought from Legendary. They make them out of a mylar or other type plastic. When I held one up to the door, it became clear (no pun intended) that something wasn't right. Fortunately, I did have 1 original water shield so I pulled it out to see how it compared to the Legendary one. Hmm, not good. I'll give Legendary and F on these parts. Don't waste your money on these from Legendary and look elsewhere.
This type of thing pops up from time to time and it pisses me off that people sell this stuff and it's not close to being right. And I bought them about 6 months ago so not likely to get any support returning them. But I'll call to let them know and then it's up to them. If nothing else, maybe they'll fix them so they are right for others. I placed the clear plastic one over the original and you can see the holes are way off and it was short along the back edge by several inches.

 

I had a piece of 4 mil poly laying around so I used that to make my own. I used the original water shield as a template and traced it onto the plastic and cut out 2 of them. Legendary also supplied the 3M black ribbon caulk, which was great, but someone thought it would be a good idea to cover it with clear packing tape. Not a good idea and I had to throw half of it out. I had a box of this same stuff so it wasn't a huge deal.

The bottom of the door has a slot in it and you need to install the bottom section of the water shied inside that slot. That way any water that comes in contact with the back of the shield will run down and be directed back inside the door where it can run out the bottom door drains. I tend to think when this isn't done, the water gets on the bottom of the door panel and that is why so many are destroyed along the bottom edge.

 

I had a small issue with the door panel in that I didn't like the lock ferrels that were used. They were much larger than the original. I polished up the original one and swapped it into the Legendary panel. Also installed the new repop emblem that was used on 442's. Used the old panel as a template to locate the emblem in the new panel.

 

Here is the panel installed. I noticed the chrome strip on the front and rear panels does not line up. I checked the placement of the strip against the front old panel and it is exactly in the same place. I couldn't check the original rear panels as I put them in the trash that same morning. Never fails...sit on something for several years and the time it's needed is just after it was thrown away. Not sure if this misalignment is the way they were originally or not. If anyone has any input I would welcome it.

The last photo shows the lock button installed. Need to work on the arm rest pads. A reproduction set came with this car but they don't fit to my liking. I was able to put together a good set of used ones but they need to be dyed. So I'll give that a shot first before buying anything else. Dye should arrive tomorrow or Monday.

 

Here's the passenger side done too. I forgot to show on the driver's side the spring that is installed on the window crank behind the door panel. The spring keeps the door panel pushed up against the window crank and it does make a difference in the appearance. Most of the time these springs were thrown away when the panel was removed.

 

Brian,
In reviewing the door panels, you've raised another question mark in my mind. Just Tuesday I saw a 68 Cutlass S Post coupe with original door panels and the lower trim was the same style as yours. I know in 66, 67 and 70 + the lower door panel changed to carpet. Any idea about why the difference in trim? Maybe the 68/9 were experimental with that lower design?

 

Allen, All my 69's have NO carpet at the bottom of the door pannels.

 

Allan, I'm not sure why they didn't use carpet on the door panels for the 68/69 cars but if I had to take a guess, I would say it may have been due to input from the bean counters.

 

Bryan I was referring to metal prep from Dupont and you can rinse it and then use metal conditioner, which is another project if your using por 15 over it no you don't but I have never used poor 15 on a piece top side of the car it will require a special primer so you have a good surface for normal auto paint. I would suggest to start a new thread as we seem to be stepping all over Brian's restore thread which is bad forum manners my friend.

 

Bryan, the Metal Ready instructions are pretty clear if you're using it in advance of POR. But your question ^^^ had no reference to that. You're cross referencing is like comparing apples to oranges. For POR products, just follow their instructions and you'll be good. If you're grinding or blasting - follow the instructions we gave you. Now, back to the 69 442 vert!

 

Didn't have a lot of time over the weekend to work on the car but I did get the arm rests assembled and installed. The reproduction plastic base does not have holes for the stainless trim so I made a template from the original base and drilled the holes. The molding was polished and installed by bending the tabs over on the back of the base. I cleaned up 2 used arm rest pads and dyed them and they turned out great.

 

The freshly dyed pads look dark but they are a perfect match to the original. The flash on the camera may be making this look like there's a greater difference in color than there really is.

 

I decided to take a break from the interior as I wanted to detail the reverse light assemblies. Plus Allan R with his thread inspired me to get this done. I had 3 sets of lights to pick from given all the parts that came with this car. Some were rough but there were 2 that were pretty nice. I looked at how I would take the wires out of the lights and the best thing seemed to cut off the small contact button that sits against the bottom of the bulb. With that out of the way, I could slide the wire out the end of the light. The grommets on the wires do not slide and they must be glued in place or they just bonded to the wire over time. I didn't want to break them so this also led me to removing the contact buttons. I tried to photograph the buttons after I had them removed but my camera just wouldn't focus well enough on them. They appeared to be soldered to the wires and there is also a indentation in the side from being crimped. After getting them off, I decided to drill out the wire and solder in the button and I used a #44 bit. It seemed like a good size to use and it was. In drilling down into the button, the bit also removed the metal from the indentation and this left an open slot in the side. I show a picture of this with the button on the bench and I placed a piece of black plastic (from drilling the arm rest base holes) into the button so it would show the slot. A little hard to see but it's there. This will be a perfect place to feed new solder into the contact button when I assemble the light back together.
Also, the rubber isolators that the wires pass through also push out the front side of the housing which makes it easier to get everything cleaned up.

 

With the light housings stripped down, I put them and the brackets that hold them to the bumper into the blast cabinet for cleaning. About 10 minutes later I had them cleaned up. I made a comment to Allan R on his thread about his new bead blast cabinet, stating for him to watch for wear on the blast nozzle, as they do wear out with time. Looks like I need to take my own advice. I noticed the parts weren't cleaning up as quickly as normal. A quick inspection of the nozzle showed that sucker was completely worn out. I installed a replacement and it was back to normal working order.

 

You an Allan I am reserving a table at the rubber room holy cow between all the great work and looking over what has been done already and now I will have to go back and redo I am a candidate for the nut hut for sure:-) I heard Allan was a graduate from there lol

Nice work brian

 

I cleaned up the wires, grommets and the spade connectors that connect to the rear body harness. I removed the plastic ends and have them soaking a little so I can clean them up. I found it interesting that the rubber grommets were a tan color rather than black. They were originally black looking with all the crud on them but tan after cleaning. Also got rid of the red primer on the wires from the previous shop. They had that stuff everywhere and it seemed like their favorite thing to spray.

I started to clean up the 6 lenses I have and it looks like new ones will be needed. All have stress crackes in them and wouldn't look right on this car. As soon as I can spray new white paint on the inside of the light housings, I'll be ready to get them back together. The back of the housings look so nice I just might spray them with satin clear. The light brackets were painted tonight but I didn't get a photo yet.

 

Brian,
Very nice work on the cleanup. I was more lucky with the design of my backup lights, but have exactly the same problem with my tail lights. I'm watching to see how yours turn out to decide if I want to go that way, or solder/shrink wrap. Know what you mean about those boots seem to be frozen in place. I found that a bit of sun and gentle twisting/pulling worked to free them, and moving them on the wires was tentative but definitely worked. Interesting, I just noticed the 69 back up lights have their own rock guards. I just may have to take mine that I did with the sander and redo them in the blaster.

2 things on the sandblast.
a) how many hours do you usually get out of a nozzle? I have a several hours on the one I'm using. What diameter on the ceramic do you consider worn out?
b) the decision has been made. I'm getting the 60 gallon 100PSI 18.5CFM compressor. More than I planned to spend, but I'm really tired of running low on air when sandblasting.

The one tail light housing that I started to sand has some deep abrasive scratches that won't come out with finer grit paper like 180 or 220. I'm not sure if glazing putty might help me on this one, any tips on fixing deeper sanding scratches?

Your housings came out looking mint!

 

Thanks Eddie. I can take a little comfort in knowing that the bad influence is not just me anymore. Now that Allan has his bead blast cabinet, he'll be tormenting you too....if you choose to look.

This car stuff is a disease but if this is the only disease I get in my life, sign me up as a lifer. Still trying to see if I can find a nursing home with a shop/garage. I told a friend that if something like that exists, we (he's a car guy too) would be golden. They could put an engine in there for us to work on and it would last us for years! Every day when we came back to the shop, no one would be able to remember what we did the previous day so we'd have to take it apart again. We'd likely wear out the bolt hole threads before we actually accomplished anything. They would also need to keep us away from doing any brake work on the facility's van. Could get ugly!

 

Thanks Allan.

The nozzle in the blaster has been there for about 6 months and I really don't know how many hours of use it has. I was also using a coarser media for a while and I'm sure that accelerated the demise of the nozzle. I knew the nozzle was bad and needed to be replaced for about a month now and I had ordered new nozzles a few weeks ago. I didn't change it prior to yesterday since I hadn't done much blasting. I can usually tell when it isn't cleaning correctly and that became obvious yesterday but I was a little surprised at how worn it was. Normally I would change the nozzle when the wear is somehwre between the new one I showed and the bad one but I still judge a lot by the cleaning efficiency.

Regarding your scratches, it sounds like you will need to fill them with something to get rid of them. I would try:
A) apply a coat of bondo with your finger and sand. You will need to primer over the bondo and sand before painting.
b) use a glazing putty and this goes over primer and then is primed again after sanding.
c) apply a few coats of primer and sand to see if that would work.

You'll need to determine which way to go based on how deep they are because once you apply primer, you would need to remove it in order to apply bondo. So if you tried C first and that didn't work, you would need to go with B or if bondo was needed, then your back to square 1.

Brian

 

I had the same problem with my sandblast gun , but it was after quite a bit of use . The ceramic on the end was all worn out on one side , almost all the way through , but the sandblast gun was the cheap Chinese version ..... Kinda weird that yours would be wearing out already . Believe it or not the cheap sandblast gun came with a parts breakdown list for replacement parts , but I ended up just buying a new one and using the old one for spare parts . Good choice on the compressor ! You will be happy with that choice .

 

Ok (sigh). I liked the look of your back up lights so much, I thought I might blast the tail lights again and clear them like what you're doing. Without replacing the light housings, I think that's out. Lesson learned. Time to move forward. I think a high build primer will take care of the scratches.

BTW, I didn't recognize your blaster nozzles, they are different from mine but now I get what you're saying. I have 3 replacements that came with my blaster, so I'll compare diameters. Thank you for sharing the 'tips'. I think I did my oil pan wrong so I'll blast it clean and start over on it later.

 

I will also have to do a complete tail light restore on mine . Probably more of a replacement on the sockets themselves . The bulb in one is so loose that It does not make a connection anymore , or is grounding out because the right rear turn signal is lit up when the lights are on , and won't blink . I have to manually blink it .

 

Got a little time each evening to get these reverse lights finished. I painted the white on the interior as was there originally and sprayed the back with satin clear. The brackets were painted with Eastwood Spray Gray (note how they look almost the same as the clear coated bare metal on the rear of the housings) and the screws were either refinished or polished. I ended up buying new repop lenses and gaskets since all the original ones had stress cracks. The original gaskets were also in sad shape.

When it came time to install the contact button that sits against the bottom of the bulb, I planned to solder it to the wire. But my soldering iron wasn't up to the task as it wouldn't get the button hot enough. So instead I put a solder tinning on the wire and crimped the button in place. It's really on there and turned out fine. Don't forget to install the spring first before crimping the button in place. And there's a reason I say that.. Fortunatly I had another button to take from another trashed light. Once both were back together, I tested them on the battery and both worked just fine.

 

Next was the tag light and I had 4 to choose from; nice to have options. The inside wasn't too bad and after a few minutes in the blast cabinet it was looking very nice. This light is assembled in the same manner as the reverse lights so I knew exactly how to tear this down. After cleaning the first task was the paint the while color on the interior.

 

The rest of the light housing was sprayed with the Eastwood Spray Gray and satin clear. I was trying to expedite the drying of the paint and used my heat gun. In doing so, the clear came out glossy. I let it dry and sprayed it with another coat of clear and let it air dry and it was fine. You can see the finished product is not glossy.

A few years ago I saw an NOS tag light lens and gasket on Ebay and bought it for this car. Geez, even GM is having parts made in China! Quite a difference between the original lens and a new one. Finished light was also tested and works perfectly.

It may seem like a lot of work to do this with these lights but the owner of this car had a '69 HO restored at a well know PA shop not that many years ago. He was not pleased with the car as it had a lot of little issues. Some of those issues were rear lights that didn't work at all or would only work intermittently. I'm making sure that he won't experience those issues with this car.

 

Brian this tag light part looks suspiciously familiar. BTW I had ordered a tag light lens from ILT because I didn't know my original would clean up so well. What I noticed:
The 72 OEM Guide 35 SAE L66 ; part number 5957401-5
The repop - Guide 25 SAE L65 ; 5956693-2

The repop has the proper mounting tabs, but has numerous casting differences that clearly identify it's not OEM. I know that's probably being nit picky, but I'll keep my OEM because it's actually in great condition for 40 years old. Now that I've seen how well yours turned out, I may redo mine just because I can do it better now. You sir, are a positive influence but you're killing me with all the things I see that now need re-doing. It will go much quicker the second time around though.

 

Thanks Allan...and sorry to cause you any grief with your project.

I found it interesting that the new GM tag lens I bought does not have "Guide" on it. Instead it says GM with a part number of some sort. If it matters, I can get the specifics. I doubt anyone would ever see it and if they did and they knew what they were reading on it, then you'll see it's not original.

 

Still picking away at the interior but I did get the console back together and installed it in the car. I had to heat and bend the wire latch inside the storage box to get the lid to sit correctly. There wasn't enough adjustment as it was, which caused the lid to sit up about 3/8" so I modified the shape of the holes for the adjustment to make it so the latch could be pushed down further. The console plate was rechromed and a new woodgrain decal was installed.

I also dyed the kick panels to freshen them up as they were dull looking. I used SEM dye and I was impressed at how natural they look. If I didn't know these were dyed, I would swear they were original.

 

The front seats had been recovered by the previous shop and they are not too bad. I think the job could have been a little better but it's not worth the time, effort or money to redo what is already there. However, the seat tracks looked bad and needed to be cleaned up. The legs of the tracks can be seen so the rusty stuff needed to go. I started with the passenger seat and cleaned and detailed those seat tracks. They didn't operate all that smoothly at first but after cleaning and painting, I also greased them which greatly improved the function. I also painted the rear hinges for the seat back as they didn't look very nice. It's a little tough to do this with the upholstery in place but it's doable. I did unbolt and remove the seat back to do this.

When I moved on to the driver's seat tracks, they felt sloppy from a lot of wear but I hoped I could make them a little better with cleaning and greasing. However, when I started to bead blast the one track, it immediately starting puking it's guts out in the blast cabinet. The track is badly worn so I ordered a set of repops for this seat. Hopefully I get them some time next week. It's always something as they say. I thought that seat didn't feel like it was going all the way back and now I know why.

I was hoping to wrap up the seat and interior work this weekend but it looks like the work will be less the driver's seat.

 

Brian,
I'm very impressed with the SEM finish on the kick panels. Did you use air or rattle can? Really too bad about the seat track. I'm guessing it's not repairable hence the replacement track order. By the way, are you using aluminum oxide now or did the metal just clean up that well with glass? I'm going to change over to 30/60 glass this weekend to do the control arms - unless the increased pressure I'll be getting does the job with the finer grit.

Can't remember, do you have a filter on your blaster to remove small crud particles? I cleaned a small bicycle piece for my neighbor (I call him Fruit Loops). He used high build primer. It blasted off after awhile but in big chunks that will clog the gun if it gets sucked in there. Not doing any more parts for him unless I have the time and he wants to buy me a new bag of media.

Before long this project will be out the door and you can move on to the domestic promise jar.

 

Allan,
I used the rattle can SEM dye and I am very impressed too. I cleaned the heck out of these panels, used a dark red scuffy pad on them, cleaned them again (twice) and then put a coat of plastic prep on them. The plastic prep was also a rattle can product I had left over from the dash work and is made by Parasol. As soon as the plastic prep dried, I sprayed 2 coats of the dye allowing about 5 minutes between coats. The SEM cans spray very well too.

I am using glass media and it works fine for cleaning up the rust you saw. I blast at 90psi which also helps and I think you'll find similar results when you get connected to your new compressor. I think the higher pressure and flow from your compressor may break up some of those paint chunks into smaller pieces.

I don't have an internal filter in my blast cabinet. The media falls through the grate and down into a funnel shaped storage bin. This bin has a threaded fitting on the bottom that allows the media to be drained. I have done this a couple of times and I drain it into a 5 gallon bucket. I do have a media filter that I sit in top of the bucket and that is when the filtering takes place. Also allows me to find an occasion screw or small clip I lost in the media.

Oh, yes the seat track was toast. There is a lot of wear on the tracks themselves and I think the roller is a little smaller in diameter than what it was originally. The roller is not supposed to come out and there are dimples in the track to retain them. My first thought was that I could fix this by adding a little weld to the work areas of the track but them I regained control of my senses and ordered a replacement repop set.

 

Hi Brian . I noticed my media has a lot of dust in it now . I was going to get a fine screen to try and get some of that out of there before I choke to death ! Even with a mask I still get dust in my nose , and I'm outside ! I can't wait till I can dismantle this car someday , and SLOWLY start a restoration , so the car looks somewhat new again . You guys are giving me some inspiration .

 

Ya know Brian I have a small hobby metal lathe and milling machine your welcome to use them if you feel the need to start reproducing them parts yourself lol.... wow I was wondering if I could make those delran bushings for the top frame lol but I will see if they are dropped first lol interior is looking great, I need to find out where you sent the console cover, I have my 4 speed plate that could use a little sprucing when I get that far....

 

Btw how often do you change the media? I know glass beads get duller and duller as you use it, I also bought 50" lbs of aluminum oxide media that is absolutely beasty on tough rust, need to be carefully as it will even etch and cut stone......

 

I wanted to jump in while you were talking media for blast cabinets and ask where everyone (in the states) purchased their media?

 

tractor supply sells cabinets and media(s)

 

But I think you are using sand which will be dusty. I don't think you can filter that out of there prior to using it. I know when I sandblasted the wheels it was very dusty.

 

Thanks Eddie and don't tease me about that equipment... Actually, maybe some day when I retire if I have time I'll give thought to making some parts but more than likely it will be just a thought. Some of the repop stuff I have bought is not what it should be and could be much better. More on that when I update about the interior.

I took my chrome work to LiBrandi's in Harrisburg, PA.

My media is self changing....because the shop vacuum sucks some out when I use the blast cabinet. So I end up replacing it because it runs low. With the amount of time I use the cabinet, I usually put in new media once a year. And I have not noticed a drop in performance from my media but then again I'm usually not tackling parts with significant surface rust. Anything really rusted will be blasted with the portable sand blast equipment first.

I order my media from Eastwood company and have been pleased with their service and product.