The rear door was much more difficult than the front, as there was extensive rust. Also the quarterlight rubbers aren't available, so I had to tip-toe around those.
The area around the lock needed a tricky repair. After cutting out, the first little section went in.
No point trying to make that section in one piece.
Keep adding sections.
Fully welded, and just needing dressing back.
There were many other repairs, but that one is the most photogenic.
Again this door wasn't original to the car, and needed tugging around to get the fit closer. Do anything that is necessary.
Shutlines were too tight on this door.
Nothing to do except cut the edge off, weld up the edge, and grind the gap to size.
The bottom edge was a little crusty, so easier just to chop it off, and get the correct gap as part of the repair.
Painting the door was the same process as the front, except the hinges are steel, and therefore body coloured. I ended up with this.
Do you have any trouble with the filler shrinking with the cellulose on top?
Sorry - but I'm not sure I know what shrinking filler looks like - so tricky to say.
You'd know if you came across it - essentially its down to poor preparation - you have bare metaled most of your painted areas so you wont get the problem - shrinkage occurs when filler is placed over the top of a painted surface - then if you apply a solvent based paint over the top of that repair the chances are that the fresh paint around the edge of the repair will shrink leaving a witness mark in the paint - sometimes you can polish these out but quite often not
First step after doing some test pieces, to get the spacing right was to mark out the bonnet.
Fire up the grinder and slitting disc, and do the cuts, to give the louvre tool an easier time.
I've had to chop out the bracing to get the bonnet into my bead roller, so added a piece of angle iron to try and keep it all straight. For those that say you can't bead roll large panels single handed - I beg to differ.
Then the bonnet went off to Ribble for dipping on the grumpynorthener express. It came back, but it wasn't pretty.
Took me a long time, but I got the repairs done in a few sections.
Lots of grinding, and some priming. Then the underside could be painted. The thing about louvres is masking them - what a pain.
Raptor bedliner tinted to match the car, but with added metalflake for fun. I didn't want the Raptor getting on the outer panel - hence the masking.
The only place I have to paint the bonnet, is in situ. But blocks of wood screwed to the hinges raised it up, and kept it level for painted. That allowed me to get to the edges.
Worth the effort, as it came out pretty well.
I did bully my son, into helping me get the bonnet back onto the hinges properly. It is a big heavy panel, and with lots of fresh paint around, the second pair of hands was essential. With that ticked off, it was time to sort some of the details.
The bonnet prop was only on one side, which I didn't like. So, I made up some brackets for some gas struts. Those are the 2nd set of brackets, they need to be pretty strong, and the first pair weren't up to it. It took three attempts to get the right strength of struts to suit. Stainless fittings, and a bit of powder-coating finishes it off nicely.
My car didn't have an internal bonnet release cable. Some do, mine didn't. I didn't want to use the stock one, as I wanted to route the cable out of sight. The lever needed a hole to take the cable fitting. Turns out that piece is hardened steel, and would not drill. I ended up using a carbide burr and a Dremel to carve out the hole !!
The interior handle isn't particularly retro. It is a VW Beetle part I believe. But some days you have to pick your battles, and this piece will be hidden in the footwell under the parcelshelf. A couple of rivnuts hold it into place.
Again, loads of pictures - but I know that is what you like. A little bit of my waffling to break them up.
My short garage forces me to work in stages, but here I am fed up with filler and ready to spray the etch primer.
The etch is black !! But that was kind of a design choice. If I started to block through the primer filler, it would be obvious when to stop, before hitting bare metal.
The drivers side wing I'd painted before. But it needed a little re-profiling and a repaint. So I sprayed etch over the existing cellulose - this was a move I would learn to regret. The valence and front panel area got sprayed in Gravitex stonechip. It was a decent solution and would save me lots of prep time on areas nobody would see.
Covered the etch with primer filler, and the Gravitex with Maroon top-coat. Damn two-tone cars are a PITA.
The grey primer filler revealed a few areas that needed a rework. These weren't obvious when the car was in a coat of many colours. Here is just one of them. Masking tape to keep the Dolphin glaze within the boundaries I set.
...and this is where it goes wrong. The primer filler is splitting But it is only happening on the areas I'd previously painted - the drivers wing and the scuttle.
I tried rubbing down, and re-priming, ensuring everything was squeaky clean.
But it wasn't having it.
The primer/filler was reacting with the black etch primer.
I was running out of painting season, as it was already mid-September by this point.
I didn't have the time or inclination to strip the affected areas back.
So I grabbed at straws and bought a couple of cans of magic aerosol paint, Sunox paint isolator.
The paint isolator did the trick. I was able to spray that, then primer filler, to get me back on track. Finish off the Maroon on the back half of the car, after the garage had been turned into Dexter's crime scene
Pretty happy with the finish straight out of the gun to be honest.
Especially happy considering this is what I started with. Mind you - there are 3 very hard years between those two pictures.
Enough of the maroon. Time for Dove Grey. I also refreshed the paint on the roof. It was fine, but it was the free paint I got when I bought the car, and it is a shade or two lighter than I'm buying from the paint factors now. So the roof needed nothing more than a sand/de-grease/spray.
A couple of repairs to previously painted items. The heater vent had got chipped in storage, so that got blown over. The top of the tailgate - I polished through the paint - doh. So this was the perfect time to lay down some more.
With all the masking off, this is what the front looks like.
and from the side.
I gave myself until the end of September to finish the painting. Before the British autumnal weather bought cold and damp to the garage. Just made it, that side picture was taken on September 29th.
Now I can start refitting all the bits that are clogging up the house and garage.
Post by grumpynorthener on Nov 24, 2020 21:33:34 GMT
Excellent progress & results - so a few top tips then - normal primers are ok with etching primers but the majority of primer fillers or polyester filler primers are not that compatible with etching primers - to overcome this the better quality branded primers of this nature are formulated to adhere very well directly to bare metal - and as demonstrated used correctly a 'Isolating primer' can often can get you out of a corner with paint reaction problems
One of the jobs that needed to be sorted, was the window stop in the rear door. The original had stripped threads, and was heavily rusted. So I made another, and as it'll never be seen again - I painted it black.
It fits in the door here.
With that in place, I could slather the freshly painted panels in Dinitrol. Messy - especially when the hose kinks, and 1/2 a can gets emptied into the front door !! Cat litter cleaned up the mess.
Door trim was screwed into place.
Trim applied to the front door too. Previously I'd done the ashtrays in crackle black. That was too much of a contrast. So this time around, I repainted them in the Raptor bedliner I used under the bonnet. I still might do something with the black Bakelite ashtray handles, but that can wait.
Bolting on all this stuff was very satisfying. Previously there was nothing in this space. but it is great for holding all the junk that normally clutters up the engine bay.
New headlights went in. These ones have side-lamps built in. The trim was bolted back onto the bonnet too.
I'm not doing much with the original chrome/stainless trim. It is largely in passable condition, and I'm not trying to do a show winner, so for once I can save myself a bunch of money, and use what I've got.
Love the door panels. Did you bead roller them yourself?
Thanks - yeah all home grown.
Coming up with a design that works around the handles etc, and doesn't have any tight curves is the hard bit.
Marking out all the panels takes forever.
As I've got a steering wheel for a Massey Ferguson tractor on my bead roller - it isn't too hard to control. Remember to breath is quite tricky though.
