VIDEO ! It's so dang hot, especially in the "paint booth", that I decided that something had to be done...so here it is..and it surely helps, but a bit humid in there... Leaving air temperature about 80 degrees, outside temperature 90/91 degrees, surface temp of the media, 76 degrees. $0.97 per filter panel. Spray nozzles left over from a "fan with sprayers" attached. Total cost less than four bucks plus tax. UPDATE: 7/11/2016 - I installed this "cooler" on only one window of the "Tent", and it works well, but the fans pull so much air that the tent is running rather "negative pressure", and the air flow pattern to one side of the tent, so today I'm installing a second system of sprayers/filters on the window on the opposite side of the tent. Air flow then will be symetrical inside and the flow through the wet filters will be cut in half, giving "air to water contact" better performance. I have to wait on the extra gallon of thinner to get here anyway. (Jimmy Edwards put that scar on my thumb/finger when we were 12 years old. Luckily my thumb still works - tendon severed, but it finally healed)
Ok, guys.. this is what I learned so far. The balance of the body, excluding the fenders, hood, and trunk lid, this single coat of primer took 64 ounces of primer/thinner. The worst thing that can happen when you are painting your car is to run out of paint/thinner/clearcoat, so you have to estimate quantities before hand. I didn't know how much primer it would take, so I mixed 64 ounces of primer/thinner (50/50) to see what it would take and I used every bit of it (three reloads of 21 ounce gun tanks). Well, it turns out that after going through the math of the 100%, 75/25%, 50/50%, 25/75% color coats, then three coats of clear, I'm SHORT of Slow Thinner. Up to this point, I have bought two gallons of color, two gallons of slow thinner, two gallons of clear, one gallon of medium thinner, and one gallon of primer. So today (7/12/2016) I just ordered another gallon of slow thinner. It will be here Monday, July 18 and I will be spraying color and clear the morning of July 19th. So check back for the latest report/pictures Tuesday afternoon! Once you start the process, according to Restoration Shop Acrylic Lacquer data sheet (and PPG's AL data sheet, too), with 15 minutes between coats, once you start the process, it must be completed in one "sitting"/day with NO sanding of any coats until after clear is finished. So if you run out, you have to sand (clear only) before another coat of clear. NEVER sand metallic/pearl color coat (see the effect on my trunk lid "redo" above. Sanding KILLS the metallic/pearl. So I reprimed the trunk lid and started completely over again. NOTE: the best way to estimate your surface area is to cut out a 12"x12" piece of cardboard or paper and just move it around the area to be measured and count the square feet.
Ok this damned well better be enough paint to finish this thing up....Come to find out, just as I suspected the new gallon of color was not exactly the same as the first gallon of color. I did a little spray out test piece and the two colors were a tad off, so the 100% (first coat) is the "new gallon" and all the rest of the coats are "original gallon" color reformulated from the 32 ounce jars that I had originally mixed. It all should turn out juuuust fine.
VIDEO - Production...hahahah
VIDEO ! ! ! - IT HAS STARTED !...But do you see the huge mistake I'm making?.... FORGOT to put on a long sleeved shirt. See the hand on the roof? Clue - sweat drop. Don't spray without a long sleeved shirt. Another thing... WATER/SWEAT drips out of those gloves, so change them every couple of coats. That's another reason to wear a long sleeved shirt so the cuffs will catch that drippin'. Never occurred to me until it happened...
VIDEO ! ! _ Everything was going just fine until BOOM a drop of sweat dripped out of my glove. (See my comment above about a long sleeved shirt) DAAAMN ! That's why I did the "cut" at the end. Had to dry it, sand a little bit, and repaint. Once I finished this coat, I only had SIX more coats to go. By 5:30, I was done, pretty much exhausted, but fairly pleased. It was 97 degrees .........
Boy it feels good to be done with spraying..... paint quantities came out as calculated. I still have about a cup each of some of the mixes and of clear coat just in case I need to do some repair... boy are my ankles aching....CAN'T WAIT to get this sanded and polished and start putting all the parts back together !!! Kinda sinister, ya think?
Half way sanded on half the body. 1500 grit is next, then 2000 then 3000 grit. Decided that if I'm going to finish the car this summer, I'd HAVE to do something about the heat (it was 101 yesterday, and 99 today), so I bought a Home Depot spot cooler, one ton (12,000 Btuh) air conditioner. In addition, I added 7 sheets of 3/4" aluminum clad foam based R-Max insulating board to the roof and "sun side" of the tent plus another layer of silver finish tarp. THAT helped a lot, and with the air conditioner, it's relatively comfortable inside as long as I'm in the path of the air flow. So progress can continue.
FINALLY... got this damned window in..... it took all afternoon. I think the guy who cut my new glass made it just a tad too large. Rubber mallet-little wooden push stick - silicon lubricant - (plus drug store lub..haha) it is/was just too "long". Finally put the screws in the inside trim piece and gradually screwed it down while tapping on the rubber with a thin wooden stick around the edge of the trim piece. UPDATE: AFTER CLOSER LOOK, IT APPEARED THAT THE WINDOW STILL WAS NOT ALL THE WAY IN. I TOOK THE GLASS BACK OUT AND COMPARED IT TO THE OTHER "OLD" GLASS AND SURE ENOUGH, THE UPPER EDGE IS ABOUT 0.135" LARGER. I CALLED THE "CERTAIN SUPPLIER" WHO INFORMED ME THAT HE KNEW THE GLASS WAS TOO LARGE, AND WHAT I SHOULD DO IS TAKE A GRINDER OR SHAVER OR SOMETHING TO MAKE THE RUBBER SMALLER SO IT WOULD FIT. THIS KIND OF "SERVICE" IRRITATES THE S#!+ OUT OF ME.
Front driver's side window trim, fuzzies, and glass in.......The damned door, however, does not line up correctly. Notice the gap at the top of the door. When I tried adding a shim on the bottom hinge to raise the rear of the door (rotate it counter-clockwise slightly), the bottom rear of the door then hit on the jamb at the bottom. Additionally, when I mounted the front fender (see pictures below), and adjusting the fender all the way back where it should be, the door gap to the fender is over 1/4". So now it's obvious that the problem rests in the fact that the new chinese hinges I got from a certain shoebox vendor has a rather loose manufacturing dimensional tolerance with respect to real Ford hinges. They are too thick, (particularly the top hinge - with no shims installed) outside face to outside face, making the door position to be too far back toward the rear of the car. I'm going to have to remove the door/hinges and have them machined down to position the door and fender gap correctly. Burns my BUTT.
Headlight buckets cleaned up, rusty adjustment screws fixed, LED parking light/turn signal (yes I got electronic flasher and hazard control) and headlight prewired, new mounting clips. Interesting weird situation on the headlight bucket mount. The buckets mount from the outside of the fender with a cork gasket. The screw clips, which were obviously mounted at the factory (gummed up and original paint under them) were installed upside down/backwards on the fender. Flipped them over. Crazy...
I should have known better.. I decided that it would be a good thing to repaint the upper part of the firewall. Just as I sprayed it ..........it was beautiful high gloss black enamel......then.... nooooo... not a good thing to do at 75 degrees (cool front and pouring down rain outside in Austin) and 100% humidity.... dumb ass will repaint as soon as things dry out around here...heat gun just made it worse.....
Getting that fender on wasn't as simple as I thought it was going to be. I knew when I modified the inner fenders to mount on the frame at the front, that clearances were kind of close to the suspension. I decided that it would be prudent to be sure that the lower part of the inner fender would not hit the upper control arm of the suspension if I happened to hit a big bump. The A-arm bumper on the lower A-arm has about 2" of travel till it hits the frame. The lower edge of the inner fender was about an inch above the upper A-arm, and to get to that area, I had to remove the power steering recirculation tank, which was right on top of the lower edge of the inner fender and move it up and back about two inches. Needless to say, there was a bunch of other stuff in the way, including brake lines, wiring harness, etc. Well, two hours later, I had the tank moved and repiped for clearance. But this is the funny part. When I finally had this all cleaned up and mounted the fender (there is no adjustment in the mounting area at the top of the inner fender where the fender bolts/screws on), I found that the front of the inner fender was mounted too low, so I positioned a floor jack on the front edge of the inner fender to raise the whole thing so that the top rear edge of the fender lined up with the firewall, and it turned out that I raised the front of the whole thing about an inch. So now I have LOTS of clearance from the upper control arm to the bottom of the inner fender.
Nice and bright ! These Hella (made in Germany) Halogen Vision Plus with 60/55 watt lamps - European beam technology but DOT approved. Cleaned out the dirt dauber nests, scrubbed down the buckets, polished the small hold down bracket, new socket assembly and new stainless ring and gaskets. The glass front isn't as curved as "stock" lamps, but that's ok. They aren't "flat".
VIDEO ! ! ! THE HOOD FITS ! ! ! Turn your speakers UP ! Refer to "Hood Hinges Retrofit" for details about getting this dang '49 hood to work with '51 hinges. Did this vid immediately after fitting the hood, You will see some "tape grunge" on the back edge of the hood that I had not cleaned off yet. Half way through the video I reached in through the windshield opening and hit the "exhaust cutout" switch. You may notice the sound is different just them. Dang camera does NOT capture the color well....Yeah, I'm barefooted and that's my brother Steve in the background...
