|
|
| | Shown to the left is the Cutlass as it appears now. This picture was taken at the Oldsmobile Club of America 2003 National Show in Cincinatti, OH.
|
|
THE INITIAL TEAR DOWN:
| |
| | Here's the car in it's initial tear-down stage back in 2000, getting the frame and engine bay detailed, as well as properly converting the car from V6 to V8 standards. Once the undercoating was removed, we were rewarded with beautiful bare steel! We painted the chassis with PPG PP-90 epoxy primer.
|
| | Click on the image of the roof before the paint work. The paint is not dirty - thats' good old GM laquer crazing. The grey areas are surface rust. The sides of the car were in great shape and did not need repainting.
|
|
THE WINTER'S BODYWORK:
| |
| | You can see here the patch panel I formed to replace the rusted trunk filler area. It was really not as bad as the pic shows as some of the dammage was from air chiselling & drilling the panels apart and the mounting bracket off. Leaves and dirt had collected under the trunk extension panel.
|
| | After MIG-ing the patch panel in and grinding the welds down, the repair is almost invisible. I took great effort to keep the factory spot welded seam, and drilled holes in the new panel and used a technique called "plug welding" to recreate the look of the factory spot welds. An easy way to spot a poorly replaced quarter panel is to look for this missing seam.
|
| | The roof was stripped to bare metal with Strip-X stripper (from Home Depot), 80 grit on a D/A sander, and some sand blasting. I used PPG metal prep on the bare metal. This is a phosphoric acid formula that chemically converts the top layer of steel to iron phosphate, which has some corrosion resistant properties. The seams were then smoothed as they are always lumpy from the factory. 2 coats of PPG DP-50 epoxy primer, and 3 coats of PPG DZ3 primer were next. The final step before painting was block sanding the primer with 400 then 600 grit.
|
| | Here is the car prmered with the PPG DZ3 primer-surfacer. This primer was applied after the initial corosion resistant coating of DP-50 epoxy primer.Notice how the masking paper is folded over itself at the blend line on the quarter panel. This is to help blend the new paint into the old paint without a harsh line. Also visible is my, *ahem*, "paint booth" constructed from sheet plastic purchased at Home Depot. Click to enlarge.
|
| | Ta-da! Here's the result! There actually was a bit of contamination in the PPG paint (sand from sand blasting) that I wet sanded out with a Meguiars Unigrit sanding stone and then 2000 grit sand paper. I was amazed how much crap can successfully be wet sanded out. I buffed the 2000 grit blocked surface with a $ 50 Vector Mfg buffer and foam pads and 3M compound (about $ 90).
|
| | Here is another picture showing the paint surface quality. Not perfect, but pretty darn good for a garage job!
|
