Colin’s Projects

I spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon with some aircraft paint remover and a power washer trying to get the old paint off the wheels. This was a pretty futile exercise. The stripper lifted the clear pretty easily, but it is just USELESS on the paint. I think I will have to take them in to get sandblasted.

I was able to get most of the gouges out of the lips of the wheels with some 320 grit paper and an DA sander. I still think I will paint over the lips, however, and just go full silver for the wheels.

I also fitted up one wheel on the front of the car. I think 7″ is really as wide as you can go without hitting the steering linkage. ET25 really is just about right, too. I think I will have to run 195/50s for tires and roll the fenders as well, just to be safe.

I picked up some 15×7 ET24 BBS RZs today. These basically look like the 14s that everyone sees but they came off a Euro 323. The rims need some straightening and obviously to be refinished, but I’m very excited to get them on the car. I can finally get my brakes fixed up after they go on, too.

I picked up a pretty decent looking chrome rear bumper finally. Its certainly not perfect but its straight and looks good from 2 feet away. I still need to finish drilling out some of the mounting holes, but its looking much better than no bumper at all. I’m just waiting for someone to hit it!

I also got a Getrag 240 5 speed transmission. This is less common than the usual Getrag 245, but its much more compact and also a few pounds lighter so that makes it more attractive to me. I’m not building any sort of high horse power engine so the aluminum selector forks should be plenty strong.

I still need to find someone to shorten my driveshaft since I don’t have access to a lathe, but that seems to be the only major hurdle. I’ll use the shift platform that I already have since I already rebuilt the shifter.

Next up are some new BBS wheels!

Here is the 5 speed after I picked it up.

I got some “Purple Power” cleaner and went to work with a brush and the power washer and everything cleaned up nicely.

Here are the photos of where my nose was hit. I believe it happened in a shopping mall parking lot. It was heart breaking. In the second photo, you can see where I pounded out the bottom dent already. I still need to smooth it and repaint it, but structurally, its fine now.

Well I’ve started working on the interior, finally. Here are the armrests before and after dye. I used some of the cheap Duplicolor $6 spray dye. I just wiped the pieces down with some mineral spirits and soapy water.

I realized I haven’t really posted any pics. I’ve been driving the car for several weeks now. There are still a few small things to wrap up on the exterior, including the rear bumper, but its mostly done.

Here’s the obligatory “before and after” set.

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.

Last week I got some epoxy primer onto the new driver’s side door. I was able to pull the big dents most of the way out by welding some nails to it and pulling with vice grips and all the rust holes are now nicely patched.

I started up on what I knew was going to be the biggest part of this whole project and that was replacing the rear panel. The pictures don’t show it, but my rear panel was rusted through in many places and was pretty bent out of shape.

I just cut carefully along the seams of the panel with a big cut off wheel. The spot welds on the vertical support had to be drilled out. You can also see the battery in its new spot in the trunk.

Here is the area where the fuel tank sits. It was pretty awful looking, but, fortunately, there was no serious rust. The tank sits on some closed cell foam rubber so I went to Home Depot to find some stuff to replace it with. The rust I cleaned up with a wire wheel.

Here is the new panel partially welded in. I opted to fill the seams for a cleaner look.

It looks terrible because of the paint, but the new panel is very solid and straight and makes me feel much better about the back end of the car. Everything lined up perfectly and the trunk closes better than ever.

I am also converting the car to the earlier style small bumpers, so I am filling all the holes left from the “big bumpers.” I’ll be using a fiberglass reproduction of the original bumper more for practical purposes than anything. I like the look of the small bumpers much better but I don’t want to pay the absurd prices that the chrome ones command.

Finally, I painted the inside of the trunk with some flat black Rustoleum enamel. It looks so much better in there now that I can hardly recognize it.