I am guessing not but not sure. I doubt he will do that till it is together but I could be wrong. When it comes to body and paint, I know almost nothing. Thanks for the comments, I am trying to make it as nice as I can but it will have some flaws that I am not fixing. At least not during the restoration. The trunk mat, driver seat, steering wheel, headliner, and a couple other things are going to not be perfect but will be the parts born with the car. Most people will not notice these things other than maybe the big crack in the steering wheel. Over time I will improve those things as I find better originals. The driver seat has some really tiny cracks in some of the seams. I know they are there but you have to look for them to see them.

 

My plans changed tonight so I made it to the body mans house! He was about ready to paint the white top and likely is right now as I type. The paint is VERY close if not perfect to the original color. It is hard to say what the original metallic level was but by the records this is the correct metallic. Can't see it in the pictures though.

 

What color is that? I really like it!

 

1962 Royal Mist. My body guy took hours to get the color correct. The old code does not cross over to modern paint correct. He said he mixed extra for me because if something happens it will not be possible to get it exactly the same again.
Thanks

 

I discovered this years ago with a different car. The old codes do not translate 100% correct to the new paints. If you want, or need it to be true to original, hand tinting is required. And then there's the metal flake issue. I'm sure some colors are worse than others. You see this all the time were a car has been repainted in the original color except the engine compartment, or trunk where the critical eye can easily see the difference. With my 1955 Ford, I was able to find two colors by scouring over hundreds of more modern paint chips that were so ridiculously close I went with then so they could more easily be reproduced. I think one of them was a Mazda color.

 

Finely got around to repainting the gloss round hood brace. I didn't take pictures but I also got the blower fan motor and wheel redone tonight.

 

He just sent me more pictures. I hope to go look tomorrow

 

Amazing!! It looks so good! It will look even more amazing out in the natural sunlight.

 

It is amazing. Way nicer than the paint jobs I do at Home.

 

It has felt good to work on this car again. It has been a while since I could devote very much time on it at one time. This morning I decided to try and attempt to clean the sun visors and headliner. I started out with goop hand cleaner like I did on the vinyl seats and other interior parts. That did not go at all well on the sun visor so decided on Bleachwhite. That worked great! Sadly, the goop had set some of the stains into the one sun visor so it is not as clean as the other one is. I don't think it is going to be noticeable in the car. I forgot to take a before picture of the headliner but it was almost as bad at the sun visors. It also cleaned up very well. It is not perfect but will have to do. I am not replacing it if it will survive being installed again. My interior friend said it will never make it through cleaning let alone installation and that I was wasting my time. I told him I was going to at least attempt it. I felt like it was still very strong. He had not looked at it in person and just going by what he usually sees. So far so good.

 

It's worth a try putting the original head liner back in, But even new ones can be a pain on the best of days.

 

I will not even attempt a new one. This one will be easy because all the screw holes and glued areas will be in the exact same place. A new one I will just let the professionals do. Sadly, they almost never look as good as the original.

 

Just got another picture. I will likely go out there tomorrow. The front fenders are just sitting on it and the doors will need aligned after it is on the ground. Now is when it gets really fun for me. I hope to make good progress for the next two months but after that I will slow down again.

 

That is going to be sweet when it is done.

 

Eric,


Congratulations! It is absolutely beautiful.

 

So excellent. Just curious, without the doors and the fenders hanging on there, how heavy do you estimate the raw chassis to be?

 

I plan to weigh it if I can. It is sure not very heavy. I have a bare body 61 Buick Special and the body is cut in half down the middle. I can lift either end up onto its side and move it around by myself. I would take a wild guess and say roughly 1000 lbs total for the body but it is really a guess.

 

Paint and visors look great, Eric. As always, nicely done. I really like the way those stamps turned out, too.

 

Stopped in with the body guy. He has most of it all done. Still has to paint the wheels and some small interior parts. He was buffing the hood when I got there. He starts installing pools really soon and don't need the space so I am leaving the body there till sometime in May. I have to gut my garage and get it cleaned up before I bring it home. I had that garage spotless when I built the W-30 but not sure I will have it as nice this time. I still have lots of stuff to restore and likely will still be doing that with the car in there. I will just have to get a good cover for it while I am building other stuff.

I knew it was not realistic to get this all done for $10K and suspected it would be closer to $13K and maybe a little more. Turns out that it is just shy of $15K for body, paint and supplies. The over budget here has already been saved in other things that were under budget. As long as the engine don't go over I will be good for the overall budget.

 

I got the heater box done over the weekend. Re-cored heater core, NOS heater control valve, and blasted and painted the box. Screws are either phosphate or zinc plated.

 

$15,000 is a bargain for all the work that was done and the level of the results. You will soon forget the amount of money over the budget when it's finished. It will be one of the nicest Jetfires in the world and the only documented, bonafide factory built 1962 4 speed Jetfire. There will be accolades, trophies and I believe also media articles about the results of your work. It will be worth it.

 

Looks top notch as usual. I'm wondering two things, do you use a spray gun for finishing these smaller parts, or rattle cans? Also, how hard are those controls to find? There was an NOS one for sale on eBay for I think $120? Are there not new ones, or aftermarket available? Do people rebuild them?

 

I use rattle cans for these small parts. This is gloss black Lacquer DupliColor. I am not at all good with a gun and try to stick to better spray cans than rustolium or the cheap walmart or hardware store stuff. I do bead blast them to bare metal and prime them and then wet sand. As far as the valves go, You can get them rebuilt for around $125 to $150. I have heard of NOS ones leaking from the rubber inside drying out. This one I can poke the rubber with a dull screwdriver and see that it is still nice and pliable.

Thanks for the comments. There are a couple things I am worried about and not sure how they will turn out. I am worried that the body color paint work under the hood will be to glossy. With under the hood being 90% of the attention for these cars I am concerned about this.

 

I realize now from looking at your pictures, that I don't even have the control valve. Somebody removed it and bypassed it. Can you just buy rebuilt ones, or do you need a core for them to rebuild?

As to the finish under the hood, I see this a lot with restorations. People put the same high gloss finish under the hood, in the engine bay and in the trunk as the exterior and the factory never did that. In these interior places the factory did the quickest and easiest way to finish them and they end up more of matte, or satin finish. If he did make those areas high gloss and you don't like that, now is the time to fix it. It's an easy fix, but it means one more coat of clear in those areas.

 

Other than getting them on eBay I am not sure who offers them without a core. It is not that big of deal to bypass them but if you want original then it needs to be there. I had a parts car it was bypassed on and they had a manual valve in it. Just turn it off in the Summer time so the hot water is not sitting under the dash.
He was not going to buff the under hood area thinking it would make it dull enough and for sure is more dull but just not sure about it yet. I am afraid it is still to glossy. I need to get my wifes car off the lift and drive it over to his place and compare.

 

These cars were originally finished in acrylic lacquer . ( The " magic mirror" finish . )
Lacquer dries quickly to a dull finish . It must be colorsanded and buffed to a high gloss finish .
Naturally , only the surfaces on the exterior of the car were buffed .

I would think that it would be almost impossible to duplicate the look of un-finished lacquer in the modern base coat / clearcoat system of paints .
Ninety nine percent of people who are going to look at this car won't know or care about the " gloss level " .
They are just going to think it is " pretty " .

 

It is possible to replicate it with today's paints. There are two methods. One is to add a dulling agent to the clear. This is how we see all the contemporary matte finish modern cars driving around. I believe that can be controlled to get the desired amount dull. The second method is to mist on a coat of clear from a distance at higher speed. It's a bit of paint gun artistry, but if you wait long enough to do it on top of the previous coat and you just dust the surface, it will come out dulled. In this particular case where he is trying to match a factory finish that is only slightly dull, I would suggest experimenting with the dulling, or flattening agent.

 

I started on this tank a year ago. The original tank was not undercoated and was really rough. It even sprung a little leak at the seam. I pulled this tank from another 62 Cutlass and was undercoated. So far, All the Jetfire cars and parts cars I have had never had undercoating on the tanks and the Cutlass’ cars did. I already had the tank dried out and safe from flames last year. I decided to finish removing the undercoat today. I use a little propane torch and heat up the undercoat and then it comes right off with a putty knife. Then the black greasy spots come right off with a little WD-40. The tank still has a really nice zinc finish to it. I will need to touch up some places but it is very nice. I am not going to repaint it and use as is other than a couple touch up spots. I am going to clean and paint the top side. The inside is as nice as the outside but sadly, I did not close off the sending unit hole and a mouse started a nest inside. I am just glad it didn’t have time to ruin the tank from mouse pee.

Also found the date code. Luckily, the date still matches my car very well. Not that anyone really would care about date codes other than me on a Jetfire...

 

More bead blasting today. Also cut out the rubber strips for the front corners of the fenders. I wanted to find staples like the originals but I will likely just get some wire and make my own. My original parts for the headlight area were not any good so luckily I have some good ones from another car.

 

Those baffle parts really nice! Where did you find those? The gas tank looks great. Was the undercoating put on at the factory, or at the dealer?

 

Almost two years ago I picked up a car that someone started restoring in the 1980's and quit on it. He had piles of NOS parts to go with the car. I did not want the car at all and offered him above retail for just the parts. He demanded I take all of it or none of it. I ended up having to by the car to get the parts I wanted. These parts were in that deal. I ended up coming out ok on the deal but had lots of time invested into selling the car. That car as I understand it, will be at SEMA in the next couple years.

I assume the factory done the undercoat but I am not sure of that.

 

Back then the factory never undercoated cars .
That was a dealer thing . I know , as that was one of my jobs at a dealership back then .
Sometimes in the winter we would get cars off the transporter that were starting to rust underneath because of all the salt spray .
We would just give it a good coat of " tar " .

 

Interesting about the undercoating. I wonder if it was dealer applied option. I've had 4 California 62 Cutlass's, all non Jetfire cars and none have been undercoated.

 

I believe that's exactly what it was. There are cars that have some and others that don't. When you look at the dealer factory order list for available options from the factory, undercoating is not one of them.

 

If you have ever tried welding on one of these cars, you find that the uni- body was heavily galvanized. Especially along the front and rear (frame rails)

 

If the car was from a rust belt state, it could have been Ziebarted, or have been done by one of many other aftermarket rust proofing business'.

 

My Jetfire was not undercoated but I suspect you are right about all the parts cars I have had with undercoat. It was for sure put on after the car was assembled completely. I am just glad it worked so well for this gas tank. Preserved it really well.

 

Had a little time tonight so started polishing the chrome interior screws. Polished them and then blew out the polish from the heads and wiped them down again. This is just a small sample of the interior screws. Man do these have lots of chrome screws on the interior.

 

I have not welded on these cars yet... but I will be. I have just finished inspecting my car that I bought on my lift and yes, There are galvanized beam components for sure. I'm glad they did. Too bad they couldn't have gone further. There is still plenty of plain ol' marginally protected steel.

 

Are these original screws, or new ones you bought?