Body work completed, painting started

 

In my last post, back in July, I finished by showing the bottom and inside of the car with one coat of Epoxy primer.  In this post I will show that the body work and priming is basically done for the entire car.  This is a long post but represents a lot of work that has been done during the last four months

A few posts back, when I was describing the cleaning and preparation of all the removable interior pieces that would receive upholstery, I regretted that I had no photo of the dashboard top.  Here is that missing photo showing the bead blasted, primed, and painted dashboard top with the defroster diffusers never removed.  I wish I could say that I had fitted the new vinyl cover to the top but that has not happened yet.  Should be in the next post along with the painted car.

Finished dashboard top, upside down, ready to fit new cover

With the car still on the rotisserie it was a good opportunity to turn the car upside down and spray a rock-chip resistant paint inside the rear wheel wells.  This paint is clear and goes on rather thick and never fully hardens so that it resists chipping by dirt and rocks being thrown up against it by the rear tires.  Some restorers spray a similar product over the entire bottom of the car to help prevent chipping paint, and that appears to be the way they came from the factory.  Mine was completely covered with a tar-like product over the entire bottom of the car and most of the bottom of the bonnet. 

It is possible that this coating was applied by the dealer who sold the car, in my case, in New York.  But whether original from the factory or not I consider the stuff so messy and difficult to work around that I am spraying only the inside of the rear wheel wells, and not with black tar goo but with tough, clear coating that can be painted over with body color.  Paint chips will just be a natural result of driving a real car on real roads.

Unfortunately I have no photos of the sprayed rear wheel wells.  Since the material is clear it doesn’t really show up visually, you have to feel it.  It might show up better when it is painted over with color.

At this point I decided to check the fit of the front marker lights and rear tail lights against the repaired body.   They fit fine, and while I was working with them I decided to clean them up and get them ready for final assembly.   They just needed some cleaning, the reflectors needed a little polishing, some small steel parts needed re-plating with Zinc, and one two-piece lense had come apart and needed re-gluing with anaerobic adhesive.   

The 12-volt lamps, after cleaning up, actually still lit, but I will get new ones to avoid early problems.  My real desire is to replace the lamps with LED lights, which are available but cost several hundred dollars per light, so I think I will wait on those.   I did install LED tail lights on my ’61 VW sedan and they are much more visible in those small-format rear lights than the old incandescents.  They are a significant safety factor on that car. 

 

The rear light housings before cleaning

The four lenses before cleaning

Left front turn signal light cleaned and fitted to the upside-down wing to check the fit.

Right tail light cleaned and fitted to the body to check the fit.

It’s hard to tell in the above photos but the lights fit fine and with their rubber seals will look as nice as new.  The LED versions will have to wait.

At the end of the previous post I showed the cart that I welded up.  It is a rolling cart to put the body on for upper body work and painting and later for final assembly.  With the body on the cart and the front rotisserie mount removed the firewall is accessible for assembly of the space frames and front mounts.  With these pieces in place the bonnet could be mounted on the car and aligned and made to fit correctly.  This fitting mostly involves getting the bonnet leveled front-to-back, centered on the car left- to-right, and making all the gaps uniform and smooth. 

 

Body with bonnet mounted on rolling cart.

When I first mounted the bonnet it fit terribly.  Additional mounting shims were required on both left and right sides (these I made from scrap aluminum) and the gaps were uneven and inconsistent.  The back edge of the right wing had to be extended an eighth of an inch by welding steel rods along the edge.  The curvatures of the body and bonnet then had to be matched using plastic body filler. 

Bonnet hinge with shims, as removed.  Additional shims had to be fabricated.

 

Bonnet-to-body gap is too wide.  Only possible repair was to weld metal onto back edge of wing.

 

Wire ready to weld to bonnet edge.

Back edge of bonnet with metal added.

The bottom edges of both wings had to be pulled in by elongating the holes in the bulkheads which hold the in-and-out position of the wings.  This wing alignment, together with the curve matching between the “Scuttle” and the back edge of the bonnet center section, took several weeks of work to get everything matched.

Body and bonnet ready for first full coat of Epoxy primer, the first of three primer coats.

After first primer coat, dents in the top of the bonnet became evident.

With the first full coat of primer dents in the flat upper surfaces of the bonnet became evident.  I realized that I created those dents by setting the bonnet upside-down on saw horses with the horses under the flat surfaces.  I will never do this again as the weight of the bonnet itself dented in the smooth, flat surfaces on both sides of the power dome just in front of the louvers.  This involved a lengthy and tedious repair with many applications of filler and primer to make these surfaces flat again. 

 

Block sanding right wing with 21-inch flat block

 

Block sanding the power dome with 21-inch block.  This block was used to renew surfaces all over the car.

After finally getting the bonnet straight, and spraying more primer, it became obvious that both rear fenders were not straight.   These were fixed with several more applications of body filler followed by block sanding.   They eventually came out nice.

 

Straightening the rear fenders.  Both needed the same treatment.  There had been no damage to the car in these areas so the trouble must have originated at the factory in Coventry.

Near the end of all this work I tried fitting the fuel-filler cover to the left rear fender.  It didn’t fit well at all; more trouble from the factory.  The angle of the upper edge of the cover did not match the angle of the opening.  To fix this I had to file the front edge of the cover and fill the upper edge of the opening with body filler to get the edges to match.  Glad I checked before painting everything.

 

Fixing the angle of the fuel-fill opening with plastic filler.

Another problem from the factory was the fit of the boot lid in its opening.  I had to temporarily assemble the boot-lid hinges and the latch mechanism and try to fit the lid.  But the edge of the lid along the hinge side was not straight and did not match the opening well.  To fix this I hammered and filed on the hemmed edge to try and get the correct profile for the opening.  This eventually came out pretty good, but when I sprayed more primer I discovered that I had filed though the hem creating an opening in the edge.  This probably should have been repaired by welding but I was afraid of warping the edge and making it even worse so I fixed it by pushing “JB Weld” epoxy filler into the crack.  This, I think, made an adequate repair that will never be seen.

 

Filed too far – JB Weld repair.

This was not the first body repair I had done with JB Weld.  This material has proven to be strong, sandable, durable, and paintable and allows clean repairs in difficult spots. 

Another interesting thing about the boot lid that I found is that someone at Coventry had scrawled the body number on the painted inside surface of the lid, designating it uniquely for this car as can be seen by the matching body number in the next photo.  The lids must have been selectively fit to the bodies, like pistons to cylinders, to minimize the amount of fitting required at each assembly before painting.

 

Body number 7476 hand written inside boot lid.

Body number tag riveted inside rear fender.

Another detail that my son, Josh, pointed out to me (he is good at pointing out details that I might overlook) was that the edges of some of the louvers in the bonnet were not straight.  I did the best I could to straighten these with a little bending and hammering.  They will be OK now.

 

Straightening the louver edges.

There were many other small repairs made all over the car, too numerous to mention, but these are examples of the kinds of repairs that have to be made to prepare a car for painting.   Eventually the entire car received a final coat of primer which will be left to cure for several weeks before sanding.  The purpose for the wait is to let the primer shrink before sanding, because if it shrinks after sanding the courser sanding scratches below the final coat show through the primer and even become visible in the paint.  The longer you can wait before final sanding of the primer, the better.

  

All the external parts in final prime.  They will be allowed to dry for a month or so while the inside of the bonnet and body are painted. 

There will be no problem waiting a month for the primer to cure as now the bonnet has to be completely disassembled and each piece primed and painted final green and then reassembled before painting the outside.  Also the firewall and entire inside of the car need sanding and painting.

 

Firewall in final primer, ready for sanding

Before all this can be done the body needs to be put back on the rotisserie so the bottom can be painted and the foot wells welded in.  All of this will take well into November.

At this point the bonnet was completely disassembled and each piece primed and sanded for painting.  The front space frames and forward frame parts were also sanded and painted.  Also a number of small parts, the door hinges, boot-lid hinges, heater vent doors, fuel cover and hinge, and a few other parts that needed to be green, were ready now to be painted. 

 All the fasteners removed from the forward frame assembly, sorted for easy return to their original positions.

It was a mile-stone day when I first mixed up some Opalescent Dark Green paint and sprayed these parts in final color, base coat and clear.  It will be a beautiful, dark metallic green that will certainly be an eye full when all assembled.  I can’t wait to see it!

 

 All bonnet pieces primed and ready for final sanding and green paint on their inside surfaces.  Also the doors and boot lid.

 

Front space frames, picture frame, and bonnet mount ready for green paint.  Never mind the fall leaves, they did not get on the paint!

Here are the front space frames painted final green

 

Small parts just painted green.  The photos don’t show it but they look great.

 

The first assembled green parts; left and right heater vent doors.

Besides being among the first parts painted green, the heater vent doors are the first green parts to be assembled to other parts.  The knobs have been attached to the doors!

I am posting this update in the middle of final sanding and painting.  The body work is basically done, except for some small repairs needed on the bottom and the foot wells still need to be welded in.  The final priming is done except for the footwells and those bottom repairs.  

Unfortunately the warm painting weather is gone so I am moving the painting into the garage with a portable booth set up with fans to control overspray and heat from my garage heater.  I will do all of the remaining painting in this booth except for the final body and bonnet, which will be done in the BYU paint booth in Provo, a professional automotive booth with fans, filters, and heaters.

 Finished bonnet parts in temporary paint booth, and fuel fill cover

The next post will feature the finish-painted body and all parts.  With the painting completed the winter will be spent in the heated garage putting the car together including the engine and transmission.  Each of these will probably receive a blog post all to itself.  I am still hoping to have the project done by April ‘21, making it an even three-year exercise.  Anybody want to do another?