About your under side of the hood, I want to do the same(clean it) I was thinking of meadea blasting ? If you already did clean your hood , how did you do it?

 

Hey Henry, Media blasting would be the best bet if you ask me, but you have to make sure the guy doing it really knows what he is doing (and yet i did my own lol). The last thing you want to do is wreck the hood. I got mine all cleaned up and primed, and now on the car. I masked off all the fiberglass sections underneath the hood with cardboard and masking tape, and actually sandblasted the steel. I can't believe i didn't take any pics of the hood all masked off lol, but here is the steel frame all blasted.



After sand blasting, it took me like 3 hours to get all the sand out of the hood! All i seemed to do was chase the sand from one side of the hood to the other. I was using an air wand and a shop vac, blowing all the sand to one side, vacuum, blow all the sand to the other side, vacuum. You get the idea lol. I then sanded the fiberglass with sand paper and some scotch brite pads.



After sanding to the fiberglass was done, i again vacuumed the hood, and did a final clean with some alcohol wipes. I the taped off the edges and primed it with aproxy primer. I will get pics of the primed hood soon, as it is bolted to the car, and headed to the body shop tomorrow.

 

Looks good , how did you get the screen off?

 

i just used a hammer and chisel on the spot welds, and it popped off fairly easily. It probably went well because i have a new screen so i didn't care what happened to the old one. If i was trying to save the old screen, knowing my luck i would have destroyed it!

 

Not the best pic, but here's the underside of the hood.



Just before heading to the body shop

 

So is this the big day, off to the body shop ? Which shop is getting the honor ?

 

It went in yesterday, the shop is a local shop here in London. The owner does contract work for a few companies ( Canada Post is one ), and does older cars for friends and family. His painter also painted Rob Atchison's Alcohol Funny Car. He also did my friends 72 Rallye Charger, and when ever he goes to a car show he always gets asked who did the body and paint.

 

Wow,thats nice. I'm sure your Olds will turn out as good or better.

 

The car looks great!!!! Noticed in one of your pictures a Princess Auto sand blast cabinet. Is that what you are using to clean all the parts? How do you like it? Thinking about getting one. What have you equipment your shop with for this project. keep up the good work.

 

Thnx, as for the sandblast cabinet, it's pretty good considering the price, but if i end up doing another car someday i will buy a bigger one. Same with the compressor. It's a 60 gallon campbell hausfeld from Crappy Tire, but with running the sandblast cabinet, and sandblaster, i would look for a 2 stage compressor. Other than that and borrowing a friends rotisserie, all the rest of the stuff is just regular tools that i can think of. Oh yeah if you do any snadblasting or painting, this a must have to trap the moisture. http://www.princessauto.com/pal/prod...cant-Air-Dryer

 

I had the luxury of knowing that i wasn't going to have much to do at work yesterday so, i took my tail lights to work to sand, mask off, and paint. Let me tell you, and i am sure the ones that have done it know, but what a pain it is to mask the these things! Once i had them sanded and masked i painted them and i think they turned out pretty good. I still have to do the aluminum colour on the lens itself, but i will use a paint marker for that.







I also decided to try and save the rear license plate light housing. I wish i had taken a pic of it before, but i honestly didn't think i was going to use it. It was rusted and pitted like crazy, so i sandblasted it shot it with some primer and paint and much to my surprise it didn't turn out to bad. I still have to get a new lens for it cuz the old one can't be saved. I also cleaned up the wire and the connector as well with a little paint thinner.

 

I hope you used a paint designed for electrical conductivity on the license plate light assembly, otherwise it's not going to work.

Nice job on the cleanup though.

 

How is it not going to work? i didn't paint inside where the bulb goes. That got masked off.

 

The bulb housing uses one wire for the positive and it's grounded through the housing to the car. The painted surface will act as an insulator and cut off the ground path.

 

what color (name, brand and sheen) silver or grey did you use on the tailights it looks great.

I gotta do that to mine the grey is faded and red is showing thru in spots makes it look like a 40 year old car

 

Lookin good , I did the same thing years ago on my 1970 W30 . (sold it 20 years ago)

 

Just curious, did you have to remove your painted surface and redo with electro-conductive paint when you did yours?

 

The paint is called Industrial Choice made by Rust-Oleum. The colour is Dull Aluminum, and the part # is 1614830. To bad you didn't live close to i would give you a couple cans. My work has to buy "bundles of paint" and there are some colours that we don't use, so we have a ton of Dull Aluminum that just sits in the cabinet.

 

thanks In your opinion does it look close/similar to the original color and sheen ??? in the pics they look very good

 

Hey ,I was looking at your pics again, I was wondering where you got the temporary fasteners for the floor pan?

 

I am no pro, but it looks really close to the original colour and sheen. I should have taken some before and after pics. Okay i just went and took a pic of an original grille with the new painted tail light. It's kinda hard because of the curve on the grille with the light but it looks close to me.

 

A friend had them lying around, so i used them. The only problem was that they didn't leave a big enough hole for the plug welding after i took them out, so i had to redrill each and everyone of them bigger before plug welding. I still have them, and your more than welcome to use them if you want.

 

That would be very helpful, can you PM me with your phone#? Thanks.

 

Finally got the tail light housings done. The bulb sockets looked like they were in great shape, just full of grease. I cleaned out the sockets with varsol, and then used a rag and compressed air to get the varsol out. Someone painted them at some point so i sand blasted them. I turned the air pressure down in the cabinet so i wouldn't do any damage to the housings. Once they were blasted and then cleaned, i painted the bulb side of the housings with an aluminum paint, and did the backside of the housings with a dull aluminum. I didn't like the gold paint i had for the bulb housings as i thought it was to gold, so i pulled out the dremmel and polished the housings. Once they were polished i then put a satin clear on the sockets to help protect them from the elements. Finally i cleaned up the wires, and connectors.

 

Starting to see some progress at the body shop. The hood, trunk lid, and drivers door are ready for final block sanding. The hood needed some fiberglass work on the front nose as it was cracked. Now that they fixed it the hood tooth lines up perfect!

 

Lookin good!!

 

When i was at the body shop, they told me they were going to be needing my door latches soon so..... I might be getting a little carried away, but i just can't seem to put something dirty on the car, even when you won't see it!

Door latch before


Cleaned door latch


Now i will take the latches, along with the bolts to work to phos coat them for future protection from rust.

 

Nice ,, sounds like its coming along nicely.

 

Thnx Henry. Slowly but surely.

 

Wow... I'm impressed with the attention to detail and craftsmanship going into your restoration. Thanks for sharing your progress!

 

Thanks for taking the time to look through my build and comment! I am getting excited as the car is getting closer to getting painted. It's always nice to go to the shop and see that a lot of work is being done.

 

I found out a couple weeks ago that after i sandblasted my hinges and had them phos coated, that they were wore out. I bought a new pair and picked them up a couple days ago. They were a black colour so instead of blasting them, and putting a phos coating on them, i decided to sand them, and paint them a cast colour.





I also replaced the sand in my cabinet to glass to see what it was like. I was amazed at home nice of a job the glass does. There's a lot less dust which makes it easier to see the parts your blasting. I figured i would give the glass a try and did the front parking light housings, and reverse light housings. These pics are just showing the difference between blasted and not blasted

 

Shane, don't throw away your original hinges. Willie can rebuild them for cheap, and he does great work with quick turn around times.

http://www.hoodhingerepair.com/

Also, you can do your own phosphate plating at home with below chemical (easy to do!).

http://www.palmettoenterprises.net/P...-Welcome-.html

 

Thnx for the info on the hinges and the coatings. I can do the zinc phos at work, but the manganese coating looks cool.

 

Great Work ! How in the world did you mask the inside off so perfectly , seems like a tideous job !

 

The taping did suck lol. I just layed the tape on the lens, made sure it was pushed tight into all the corners and then trimmed off any extra tape with an exacto knife.

 

You must have a steady hand , I would be afraid of hitting the lens with the knife . I'm gonna have to replace my lenses , two are cracked so I was get some replacements when I can afford a rear bumper .

 

Looks good Shane, I see a pile of goodies in the back .

 

Most of the goodies are left overs from the Tillsonburg flea market. Sorry i didn't get to talk to you more at the flea market, but i ended up making a sale on my hood.

 

The car is coming up for parole soon, hopefully it will make parole and get out of paint shop jail soon! Some of the parts were supposed to be getting painted today, and he is going to block sand the body a couple more times this week. Hopefully it will be ready for some paint by the end of the week, and painted before he leaves for work for a month.