Colin’s Projects

I spent almost 4 hours last night waiting in the emergency room at Kaiser with Colin. He’d gotten a speck of something in his eye on Monday while working on the car and I was finally able to convince him that it was worth a trip to the emergency room! He’d been reluctant to go (despite my constant nagging, I might add) because it didn’t hurt at all and wasn’t affecting his vision… but it turned out to be a small piece of metal, which apparently rusts very quickly in the eye and should thus be taken care of as soon as possible!

The doctor in the emergency room, who we saw after about 2 and a half hours of waiting, ended up not being able to do anything for him as the speck didn’t come away easily with a swab, so after another hour and a half of waiting we were finally referred to a specialist in the morning. We woke up bright and early at around 7am to see him and within minutes he quickly removed the speck (pictured above) with some kind of plastic toothpick. We thought all was well, but then he took a closer look at what appeared to be rust rings… and realized that it was another more deeply embedded piece of metal, requiring slightly more invasive digging to remove!!! DOH!

The good news is that the piece, though fairly deeply embedded, hasn’t actually pierced the eye and Colin’s vision is still perfect (without glasses even). Also even this more invasive type of removal procedure isn’t that uncommon. The bad news is that we need to make another trip to the emergency room on Monday morning so another specialist can do the removing, with other staff on duty in case things get a bit complicated (we sure hope not).

Anyway, Colin’s very lucky as this could have been much much worse! The lesson to learn is that you should ALWAYS wear your safety goggles when working with power tools!

Monday night I finally got a chance to spray on some base coat and clear. The color is “machinery gray” from “Restoration Shop.” Its just a run of the mill urethane paint system. Their color selection is limited, but the quality seems quite good and I liked the color (and the price).

Everything went on pretty smooth. I had too small runs, which were actually from a blob of paint dripping off the gun (totally my fault). The clear coat was a bit more difficult. I sprayed too heavy on the final coat and ended up with some runs and “dieback” on the roof. This is when the clear doesn’t cure properly and loses it’s gloss. Rather than try to just buff it all out, I hand sanded the entire car with 400 grit paper and took it down quite a bit. I sanded through the clear, unfortunately, in several spots. Fortunately, I have a small Iwata airbrush that I use to paint model cars, so I used it touch up the basecoat. This worked great, thankfully, and you can’t even notice the spots. Wednesday, I went back and sprayed 3 more coats of clear, this time with higher air pressure (to lessen the orange peel) and in much thinner coats. Thankfully, it cured properly this time. Currently, I’m sanding out the clear now and will be polishing it in the coming days.

Here is the “new fender” which I am quite proud off. Putting it on properly is quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. The front piece, that fits around the lip, is tricky to get aligned nicely. I MIG welded the top seam and then smoothed it with bondo. This should joint should out last me and never crack. The driver’s side fender has been dented since I bought the car so it was a great feeling to finally see it this way.

I test fitted the rear tail lights, and everything fits as it should now.

My “seamless” corner.

I haven’t had time to post lately, mostly because, other than work, I’ve been spending all my time laboring over the car. I finally got all the welding and bondo done, which was a huge relief, until I made a horrible discovery. The passenger side tailight frame was broken when I bought the car and I didn’t have a replacement until AFTER I finished putting in the rear panel. I had the seams already smoothed to perfection and primed when I placed my replacement taillight frame on, only to realize that it sat about 1″ away from the body! After a bit of stress, I realized I just had to start over. I cut the weld at the seam and banged the panel back into shape. I had to re-bondo the seam, re-epoxy it, and then re-prime it, but all in all, it really only took about an hour and a half. It did, however, screw up my spraying schedule for the weekend (I have to maximize my fair weather working time). I have been carefully working around the weather inorder to spray paint at the time of day when the weather gets closest to 70 degrees. With the surprise repair, I had to put off spraying until the next evening, after work.

The above photos show the car after the epoxy primer and some 2k high build urethane primer surfacer. The primer surfacer goes on super thick and is pretty great stuff. Its very easy to block sound out all the little blemishes. I could have easily spent 3 weeks at this stage, but I am on a tight schedule, so instead, I spent 2 days.

Ann took this shot of this brilliantly restored Fiat 500 which we spotted parked outside the temple in Japantown. We’ve since seen it there, again, so it must belong to someone in the kendo club or something. We’ve also seen a nice dark gray one in the area, as well. I think it would be a really fun car to restore, but I can’t really think about that right now.