Finish coating with Eastwood Extreme Black and how to remove hood springs...

Got a day to work on the car and nice weather to boot, so I put a coat of Eastwood's Extreme chassis Black on the radiator support and DS inner wheel house. It brushed on smooth and the top side of the wheelhouse got sprayed from the rattle can and it went down well also.  They are now ready to go!

I also cleaned up the horns ...

And, I wanted to include a quick tip on removing the springs from the hood hinges. I always heard to use nails in between the coils of the springs. Basically you open the spring by "closing" the hinge. It takes a bit of muscle. Once you have it compressed, you drop in the nails (or hex wrenches in my case) to take up the space and then open the hinge back up.

 

 I blasted the entire assembly before removal of the spring. One the spring was removed, I painted the ends of the spring. I painted the rest of the hinge, and then reinstalled the spring. Last step was to mask the hinge and paint the spring in place. With this spring, it is always under tension and there is always room between the coils, so that was the best way to paint the springs. This won't be  a show car, but it will still look great when it is done!

More Paint Work and Minor Assembly!

Well, I'm finally getting to see the fruits of my labors on a few things. I have completed the hood hinge for one side of the car and it looks awesome! See the picture showing the un-restored passenger's side hinge vs. the restored driver's side.

I can now take do the passenger's side. When I get ready to paint that one I will show a trick on how to remove and paint the spring. I also have finished up rebuilding one of the upper control arms. I had to straighten out where one of the bushings go, but 10 minutes in the garage with a sledge, a section of a 4x4 and 2x4 did the trick!

New bushings and a new ball joint were installed. The bushings went in easily thanks to the addition of my new bushing removal/installation tool. It's really just an over-glorified C-clamp with some fittings, and an open end, but it works great. It wasn't cheap, but I'm glad I got it.

I still need to break out the welder for a couple of very small repairs. One to the frame, one to a weld nut on the inner wheelhouse on the passenger's side under the battery tray. Tomorrow I will be painting the A/C condensor. I cleaned it up today and hit it with Rust Fix, so it should be ready for a top coat of gloss black lacquer tomorrow afternoon. I'll try to get some additional pics of completed work as I go. So far the front end is looking like it will very nice!

More work on clean up...

Well, I finished the clean up on the fasteners and they turned out great. I decided to let them sit a couple of days in the solution and they were spotless after they came out of the solution.

I also worked on the one spring assembly. It is painted and I got the spring painted up as well. There is a trick to it which I will share when I do the opposite side.

The pics above are in process.

I finished up the Rust Encapsulator on the one wheel house. I decided to spray the top side so there would be no brush marks. It turned out very nice, so I will do the same with the other side as well which is now half way stripped. I will been to do a little metal work on this side, however since it is the battery side and they is a little damage to repair. The firewall with be sprayed as well when it is ready, but the rest of the underside will be brushed wherever possible.

In other news, I found a serpentine belt set up off of a later model 460 that I picked up and will give a try at using. I think it will make for a different look.

I am also going to get the bucket seats and floor shifter going. The shifter hump needs a small amount of repair, but is very minor. The tough part will be repairing the shifter arm. The lower section is gone, and I had to buy a floor shifter from a Mustang so I can cut off the bottom and repair it.

More pictures to follow.

Front End Clean Up, Part 2...

I was able to get the first coat of Rust Encapsulator on the underside of the wheelhouse yesterday. It was much cooler than the other day when I did the radiator support, but the dry time was still crazy fast. The net result is you really don't have much work time at all to smooth out your brush marks or should you get get any extra build up on a corner or a drip.

Work fast. Work neat. Accept that you will have some brush marks, or you can spray it. It is also available as an aerosol can, but it would be VERY expensive to cover large areas that way. I picked up a can to help get into areas that I might not otherwise reach with a brush.

Tonight I need to spend some time on fasteners. I have 5 groups soaking in my rust treatment solution and most of them should be ready to come out. I also hope to get the top side of the wheelhouse painted with Rust Encapsulator this afternoon. After that, it will be a coat of Eastwood's Extreme Chassis Black! Hope to never see rust again on this thing when it is done.

Front End Clean Up

Another busy week last week working on the front end of the car. I wire-wheeled the radiator support to get it cleaned up. There was quite a bit of surface rust, some of which I just couldn't get at. If this was going to be a show car I would have spent the $60-$70 to have it blasted clean or dipped, but it's a driver with a budget so that wasn't going to happen. After roughly 90 minutes or so with the angle grinder and then the drill with a smaller diameter wire wheel, I called it done.

Next step, a good washing which removed a ton of debris and dust. We once again had unseasonably warm weather, so the support dried thoroughly on driveway in very short order after which I applied a heavy coat of Rust Fix to the entire assembly. It was a bit of work to get in all of the seams and crevices, but I don't plan on doing this again.

The next day I foam brushed on a coat of Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator. It was a bit tricky to work with because it dried so fast, but the final results look good. Next step will be a coat of Extreme Chassis Black.

I also fired up the sand blast cabinet and did the bellcrank assembly for the brakes and one of the hood hinge assemblies. When I get the pictures downloaded I will add some pictures, including one showing how to remove the spring from the hinge.

The last thing I got done was to wire-wheel the driver's side front wheel house. It was a bunch of work to get the surfaces stripped (nearly 3 hours) but I should have a really nice surface for coating. After stripping it down I gave it a good wash, let it dry and then applied a coat of Rust Fix to the complete underside, and the areas that had rust on the top side. Hopefully I can get a coat of Rust Encapsulator on in the next day or so, but tonight will be a listing night for eBay. I have a bunch of Fairlane/Torino/Cobra stuff to sell, so I probably won't get much else done for a couple of days.