Are we having fun yet?

After scurrying around trying to beat a temperature drop and daylight wasting to prime the passenger side fender again and put a full coat on the driver's side look what I did...





Dufus me happened to knock the paint gun out of its stand and although it did not fall far the tit on the bottom of the red bulb filter broke off in the fitting... aaaarrrrgggghhhh! Tonight was like one of those stupid reality TV shows where idiots play around like they can put a car together in a week.

Ridiculous.

I did use the following glaze to prep my pinholes and what have you. This Evercoat brand is not cheap but I like its characteristics so far. It is super smooth and easy to sand. It set up quickly. However, I did not get the chance to paint until this afternoon so it did sit for quite some time.



I don't know what everybody uses for a primer gun, but I do like what I am using. It is a cheap HF unit but it sprays very well and lays the primer really good. It has a 1.8 tip - the primer surfacer goes on pretty good and since this is a primer gun, not rebuildable (at least I don't think so), and it's cheap, once I get done with this project it can be tossed if need be. I have a Devilbiss Finishline gun to spray the SSU topcoats.



Before applying the glaze and next coat of primer surfacer I did some block sanding on the passenger side fender. Basically I sprayed the hi build primer on the low spots where I put in patches, used Rage Ultra, etc, trying to meet the red that was already on the fender. Things looked pretty good. I did wet sand as you can see. It's messy, I know, but when the water runs down the panel it is easy to see the high's and low's. Plus it keeps the sandpaper from filling up so much.





After everything was dry the next coat of primer surfacer was put on and then after a couple of days the glaze was applied.





So.... to fast forward back to tonight if you are still following, the passenger side fender looks really good with the wet primer and looking down the panel as you can see.





However, if you look at this photo here...



you can see that my Evercoat Metal Glaze is showing through. This is after two good coats of primer surfacer. I did reduce the surfacer a little more than normal, but not that much, so my build is not as much as the other coat of primer I put on this fender.

what gives? Anyone else use this glaze? I followed the manufacturer's instructions pretty closely. Maybe I should have put less reducer in the primer surfacer? :confused:

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

The passenger side work went much, much better. You can tell from the photos - very little warpage, and the body filler went on smooth and set up well.





After the welding and body filler work it was time to remove the old layers underneath the white of the two-tone back on the driver's side. Whoever suggested that I take the white sections down to the bare metal was right on the money. There was various places where the metal had rusty pits and that had come up through the paint layers. At first I just used a plastic wheel to remove everything, but then after checking up on the pitting I decided to break out the sand blaster.



The passenger side fender was coated once in the areas where it was bare and then also in the places where the body filler was located. Upon sanding the entire exterior of the sheet metal, the whole fender was primed with two more coats of DTM primer surfacer. Time will tell on final sanding and how much goes to the floor, but I am happy with my initial look on the surface of the areas where the patches were welded in and the body filler work was done.





I haven't taken any pictures of the backside of the fenders, but they were cleaned up a little bit and painted with black rustoleum. I did thin the first coat pretty good to get behind the brace at the rear of each fender, and then gave it a good coat. Thankfully things are pretty stout with fenders - very little body work outside of the patches that were welded in.

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

Took some time off on Friday afternoon to get on with the work on Driver's side fender. First up was the welding...



I also filled these small holes by using that copper spoon behind the panel.





I admit I was pretty agressive here. I guess because I thought I had the copper spoon it was time to just pull the trigger and feed the wire into the thing... Of course that just meant more grinding - I am not an official welder, just a "trigger puller" who puts more metal into things than needed. It really showed up when I was stitching the panels in. I got carried away with the deal and let the panel get too hot. Take a look at the concave "warped" area.





After grinding it all down and checking with a straight edge, it was time to get some filler on the thing and bring it back. Unfortunately that warped area could not be adressed from the back side because of the bracing. I reckon if I was not so lazy I would have removed the spot welds for the full length of the bracing, did some hammer and dolly work, welded the brace back on, etc, etc. Everything is a compromise between the time you have to do the work and what you plan to get out of it. Since the amount of filler needed would be less than 1/4" deep anywhere on the fender patch area I decided to get out the gallon jug and go for it.



This stuff is worth the price! Thanks to Frank of Long Island for the tip. It has been years since I used any body filler and for this repair I thought I would need quite a bit. I didn't even use half of what I originally mixed. The depth of what I needed to fill was more shallow than it looked.

As I went along I did check things with a straight edge.




You can see I had some low spots yet to fill in, but that did not take too much. I used a DA with 120 grit to knock it all back down and smooth it all out. As you guys know, most of the filler ends up on the floor.

I did have a couple of pinholes that needed some spot glaze but with this Evercoat product called Rage, the pinholes were few and far between.



There were some other spots on the fender that got some attention too, a small spot I welded up underneath the headlight housing, a place under the stainless steel molding back towards the door, and another place up near the front under the stainless steel molding.



I do need to finish removing the white paint so that I can prime this thing. I am thinking that with some primer surfacer this fender should come out pretty smooth.


Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

Late night work...





I decided to patch it up as you can see. No one makes a patch panel tall enough to reach up to that place almost in the middle of the height where the rot needs to be cut out. So I figured if I have to make a patch, what's one more?

I basically tried to square things up as much as possible to make my patches easier to cut and fit. For the smaller hole I made above the original "bondo basket" I found, it was pretty easy to take the rectangle piece I cut out and use that as a template to cut a new piece. The lower hole was a little more difficult as it was not completely square and there was not a good way to get thin cardboard behind it to trace it out. I had to use poster board above it, cut, fit, cut, fit, repeat and there we go.





The patches were just cut from some left over stock I had that is the same gauge as the original fender. I was probably too cautious to cut it exactly true because I did have to do quite a bit of dressing and grinding to get each one to fit the hole with very little gap. I do believe for a butt weld with the mig it is best to get the metal edges to be pretty close to each other.

You can imagine how long the fitment took! :eek:

Hopefully I can blast soon, weld them up, grind them down, and get to spreading some body filler.

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

Yep, ahead of you on that one, I wear a 3M dual cartridge respirator for that work!

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

Be aware, bondo dust is carcinogenic.

Time for a "bondoscopy" of both the fenders, and the diagnosis/discovery ain't good. :mad: But it could be worse!

When you notice some signs of cancer we just know how we can be.... keep digging until you find all traces. But little did I know I would have to grind away about 3 gallons of body filler and other "imitation metal" products that a would be body man used to form 55 Ford body panels. Oh my... check it out.



Both areas showed some sign of problems, so time to grind away...





what this gray stuff is I do not know, but it was a different texture than the body filler like the Bondo brand and this stuff was very porous. Maybe it was a part of a kit to "build your own backyard body panel" from the 1980's - I have no idea. You can see this shot of the stuff getting chipped away...



and then...



Yes my friends, at least a 1/2" thick in places. On top of this repair was about 1/4" of the regular Bondo brand filler and then primer surfacer, then primer, then base coat. Anybody know what this is? It is still "pliable" - in other words it was not really brittle and was still flexible. It did grind away with a lot of dust like regular body filler.

So we did the driver's side fender too, and wouldn't you know it, the same guy did the work!



Only the passenger side had some body filler up front near the "V-8" insignia. No rot issues or anything, but it will have to be addressed to make it look it good. How much hammer and dolly I can use because of restricted access may make this one a little difficult. That lip may get in the way more than I want it to.





Next session I will cut out the rotted portions, blast the metal underneath as clean as possible, use some weld thru primer, weld in new patches, straighten, epoxy, apply some body filler and get ready for primer. Easy breezy right?

Learning as I go...

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

We had some time on Monday night to get in the garage and do a little bit... and lo and behold a good lesson learned!!! :eek:

Check out these photos:





Yep, I was pretty dumb after I blasted this fender - got my sweaty hands all over the freshly cleaned metal and after a few days surface rust began to show. :mad: Just a couple quick shots with the grinder though and it's gone. I've got to get this thing primed soon. And of course, it always go to show - keep that metal clean and dry. Hopefully next time I will remember.

This passenger fender has a small problem with it's lip up front.



The original spot welds had come apart. This lip does carry some significance since it is in a place where the front part of the fender bolts to the air dam so the pieces have to be welded together to proceed. I drilled 3/16" holes in the overlapping sheet metal and got things lined up with a couple of my handy-dandy vise grips... these things are just the ticket. I probably have 8 or 9 different sizes, shapes, and ends with these things.





Aaaaaaaaaaand if you check the following photo you will see another lesson learned.



TURN UP THE HEAT! you can see in the photo above that my "welds" did not penetrate, and off popped my lip. So we ground down the proud welds, redrilled holes, and then ended up with this strong repair.



Next, it was on to the horns. What a fun way to wake up the neighborhood. First we did a simple test of each unit to make sure they were working. I broke out the battery charger and hooked up each horn. BBBWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHH away we went. No problems there. Just a couple of neighbor's lights came on in the bedroom next door! :p



By they way, if you are putting together a basket case, make sure you have a set of Hi and Lo horns. You can find the "Hi" or "Lo" stamped somewhere on the horn itself. Of course, you can also listen to each horn and see what you have too. Note the "Hi" stamped on this horn here...



Next would be to disassemble each one. Basically the bracket just unbolts from the side. I like to either zip tie the hardware to the bracket as shown before blasting, or I use a cricket tube like the one in the picture. That way, nothing gets lost and it is easy to hold in the cabinet!





After you remove the bracket, go ahead and remove the cover. You should have a place on the cover where you can insert a flat blade screwdriver and simply pop it off.



When I removed the covers, I had one horn that looked to be in really clean shape, and the other one had a little corrosion.



The difference? This small seal that goes in the slot in the cover where the "hot" side of things hooks to each horn. One seal was intact... the other was disintegrated. :confused:



I took the cover and the bracket/hardware and blasted them. But the horn assembly I basically took a wire wheel and other hand-powered instruments to clean so that no debris got into the contacts and what have you. We will paint these horns with Rustoleum Semi Gloss Black, make new seals and affix, and reinstall soon.

Another small detail down, many more to go!

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

I decided last night to rub down the SS headlight trim rings with Acetone and buff them a little bit. The PO had this car painted a long time ago, and you can see from the one headlight ring how shoddy the masking work was. Red paint was all over these things. The rings are in good shape though, and do not show any dents or other problems. I decided to put some elbow grease into it and reuse them.





Before it got dark I decided to drag out that passenger fender and the sandblaster(s) to the yard and get some of that white paint removed. This was an excercise in futility. I had replaced the pressure blaster nozzle with the largest nozzle that TSC had (that is where I got the sandblaster from a few years back) and did not recognize the fact that the black diamond I had in the pot from before was 2040 - way too coarse. It kept clogging up obviously.

So, I whipped out the siphon blaster that has regular sand in it since it is only a spot blaster kind of thing and that was pretty slow, although there was no worry about heating up a panel lol!

I am going to have to buy the finer grain Black Diamond to get things going on the sandblaster, but whoever had the idea that the white part of the body needed to be taken down to bare metal was right on the money. It looks like there is a thin layer of surface rust underneath the paint layer in places. The sandblaster cleans that up nicely.





"On with the show..."

Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com

That is what I hear about the improvement... would like to go that route, thanks.



Daniel Jessup

Lancaster, California

aka "The Hot Rod Reverend"
check out the 1955 Ford Fairlane build at www.hotrodreverend.com