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Well, I just realized how much extra work a club coupe door is over a Holiday coupe. Lots of extra window channel to strip for sure.
I really thought the spare door I had was in primo shape, but as you can see there’s lotsa high and low spots.
Also, the leading edge had a bit of rust so I cut a piece out of my 4 door parts car.
Happy that they share a similar frame with the 2 door.
It’s been slow going…work has been busy.
I finally lined up a painter who will complete all the body work and shoot it.
Unfortunately it work be for months.
SOOoooooo….I’m just cleaning up what I can for now.
Roof and rear deck this weekend, floor and firewall next weekend.
Well it’s been slow moving, this Florida heat has been kicking my ***.
My AC in the garage can’t keep up.
I scored a correct 65 Club coupe hood from a buddy and it was time to get to work.
Some mice built a little nest in the corners but I have some spares to patch with.
Its a northern hood so it needed a bunch of sand and wire wheeling.
A little Ospho should get the deeper pits neutralized.
That’s exactly what it’s starting to feel like!
And I loved building models.
Thanks for all the encouragement, it definitely keeps me going.
Added the fenders and the tires were rubbing bad. Realized I never adjusted the camber since I dropped the body back down…
So between that and an inch of adjustment in the coil overs it’s sitting nicely.
First time it’s had fenders in 3 years!
Wanted to get the hood mounted today but got a late start.
Seeing as the lacquer was holding on tight, I switched to a stripper.
When the paint came off it was like there was surface rust UNDER the paint.
After soaking it in some Fast Etch and scrubbing with a 3M pad most of it came off but it does have some tiny pits.
Im afraid to sand blast as I don’t want to warp ANOTHER hood.
Any ideas?
I’m afraid each one of those tiny black dots in the last pick will come back as a paint bubble in the future.
Any tips?
You might try some of the low strength muriatic acid. It will kill the rust for sure but you can't leave it on for long. You can do small areas at a time. The low strength is the green kind and you will need to do it outside using gloves. I use it to strip parts that I phosphate plate like the linkage parts on the tri carb setup.. You can mix up the epoxy primer ahead of time,do a section and dry it quickly and spray the primer. The key is to remove ALL of the acid before spraying. Just try a junk part to gauge how much time you have.
You need to use a small hand held blaster. Turn down the pressure and use an aggregate that is softer than glass are sand. Baking soda, black oxide or walnut. Do research on hardness scale.
Give these guys a call or stop in. Looks like they have a warehouse up near you. I use them, they have everything and pricing is cheap.
I started mocking up the Vintage Air unit…jeez it’s big. Hangs down a lot further than I wished it did.
The 2nd disappointment was finding out the lines for the heater exit in the complete opposite direction than the factory hoses.
I wanted to keep the heater hoses in the factory location.
May play around with some copper tubing to get the hoses from the silver tubes on the left to the factory location on the right by running them under the unit behind the firewall.
Looks good, I wonder if you could source a flare fitting to go straight to the copper and eliminate the silver pieces...less joints to possibly leak in the future. Maybe use some rubber isolators and anchor it well to minimize vibration. To attach to the firewall, you could make a couple "U" shaped brackets to go around the tubing where it is parallel with the firewall and finish it off with a couple very tight fitting grommets.
Gearhead, Here's what I sketched up to hold it in place from behind.
The kit came with a block off plate so I'll use that to tack on a few tubes with nuts welded on...then use some rubber to line the holes and screws to keep it relatively tight.
My design works pretty well I think. it’s very rigid now and I can get the hoses on without risk of pushing the tubes back in.
The metal for the collars wasn’t great to weld on and left lots of white powder residue. I could not get a pool. But it ultimately held well.
Painted the Sanden compressor black to feel a little more at home in a largely stock looking engine bay.
Now I just need some Frigidaire decals.
From the pictures it looks like the sleeves have a galvanized coating. Did you grind that off before trying to weld? That could've been the problem. Nasty stuff to breathe.
