Dick's Dash

A short delay in the body work.........

This is a reproduction 1930 "A" dash that I layed out for Dick's expertise on his CNC mill.

After milling, I sent it to Superior Plating in Pomona to be stripped and replated. The Taiwan plating peeled badly during the machining.

All electric Autometer antique gauges are going to match the Model A vintage interior well and no speedo cable to deal with.

Serious cutting and grinding required to fit this into the original dash (gas tank no longer used).

Thank you, Dick !!

 

 

 

Garage cleanup

If you have ever had a car completely disassembled in your garage then you know.......... hard to walk in the mess. If I had Tom's garage, there would be no problemo. I could do two!!

Where to put it all??? on the frame and then roll it outside. The 9" rear axle was easy, but carefully assembling the freshly painted front assembly took a day and a half.


Now if I could get rid of the engine on the stand and the turbo 350 I would be ready to work on the main body.

Working on this Jewel is not all that much fun. I'm a clutz and I cannot scratch it now. I'm much better with single seat off-road cars and snow plows. Scratches are not an issue there.

Things are much better now, I have room to shove the paint materials and filler up against the cabinets.

The main body starts now, I hope to have paint on it by the last half of April.






  

Finally blasted

Nothing hidden now.

I was finally able to pick up the media blasted body today. It doesn't take them long to do it, he was simply backed up. The entire body has been garnet blasted, and the doors, trunk lid, and small parts are all epoxied and primed and ready for blocking. This is such nice work and saves many hours of stripping, cleaning, and trying to get rid of surface rust.

Be aware that this cleaning process is great preparation but will expose hidden damage.

The blasting was all done by Snail Motorsports here in Vegas.

Many hours in this already and now the final fun begins.

My Middle Name is Earl ??

Schei.........?? that is!! Tom remembers for sure.

I have zero experience in automobile painting. Acrylic single stage, basecoat/ clearcoat, reducers (fast-slow??), activators, epoxy primers, building primers, Aaahhhh!!
Then we get to guns, pressure feed, cup guns, HVLP guns, base coat guns, primer guns, finish guns. This is getting complex. That's why I retained a painter for the important stuff.

The front end was a combo of black paint, zinc coated parts, and raw steel spindles. What to do??

Paint it red to match the car!!!

I can do this, read the instructions....

Now we get out my genuine Devilbiss
2 gun set.......Which Gun??
Nick came by and looked at them and
said "use the small gun for small parts".

Disassemble the front assembly, clean, sandblast and sand, then wipe them down with wax and grease remover TWICE (ask me why I know to do this) and we be ready!!

The red basecoat seemed awfully thin, the tech sheet indicated multiple coats until
hiding is achieved. It took five coats to cover. Its now all satin red.
As instructed, I waited 1 1/2 hours and then sprayed the first coat of SPI universal clear. WOW, nice product. A second coat 30 min later and I was done.
Tack free in 1 hour and I'm impressed with myself. Click on the picture.

 You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

Progress

The powder coated frame looked pretty good in the pictures right? WRONG!!
I knew it had some issues but until one gets to the finishing.........

There is probably 60 hours in repairing the frame and the rear axle issues caused by the original owner.

Things are looking up. Persistence and determination and this came back from the painter yesterday.

ARREST ME RED is as true a red as I could find and is actually Honda R513 Rallye Red. The main focus here was a basecoat-clearcoat red without the orange tint. I think its nice.

I provided the materials and did the prep and a friend sprayed it for me. Personally I think painting the frame with all the nooks and crannys would be worse than painting the car.


Is this nice or what??? Thanks Nick