Truck Resto Rant

Quote: Face

I haven't messed with paint enough. Seeing what some things do (gas, grease, sweat, water) makes me unwilling to do anything but an acetone strip before painting.

If I'm confused and you're talking that "air in a can" stuff similar to what's used to dust out a computer, then that doesn't work. Even hitting it with 150psi out of the air dust tool doesn't remove it.

No, talking like "Enddust" or something. As we both know, just blowing it off will not work because of the car having a negative charge attracting the positive charged dust (or the other way around?) Even air from the compressor will leave moisture. My other thought is the paint shop has to have some kind of product to take care of this.

Good days =)

As predicted, I banged in and went fishing all day yesterday. I suppose it could've been better, but Ash, Jonny L, and I came home with 35 perch and tossed back close to 10 white bass, one of which was the biggest I've ever seen (And guess who caught it? =p). Jon came by today to drop off some filets so I had him help me get the bed out while he was here.

It went easy peasy. If not for the enormous size, I could move it myself. And for the minimal moving I have to do from here on, Ash will be enough. The game's back on =)

I suspected my power washer could assist me in stripping paint and rust. I found it cranks out 1,500psi at full chat, and boy, did it do wonders. Even the heavy scale that I couldn't get out by chiseling was lopped clean off. Any little bubble of paint I missed was blasted bare. I accomplished more in 15 minutes than I had with 3 hours of intense labor. One of these days I'll figure out the whole "work smarter not harder" thing for good.

The bed blasted clean and back in the garage to dry, I moved on to the bumper, bumper brackets, and tailgate. The bumper and brackets got water blasted and are mostly done. 10 minutes with some paper to rough up the clean parts of the bumper and it'll be ready to go. The brackets are ready to be shot. The tailgate was a little more in depth as I had to remove some guards that were double side taped. A screwdriver and a blade got them off, the sonic spatula of Dynomat fame took care of the glue strip, and the rest was just sanding. I banged the whole thing out in an hour and blasted it clean with the power washer. I just have to tape up the handle and latches and it's ready to shoot as well.

I moved on to the grille, scuffing it rough so I can shoot that too. So much of it's already black I though leaving the grille and bumper a mix of chrome and ashy grey would've looked stupid. It wasn't the original plan, but it looks like this thing is going to be murdered out.

So... I got maybe 20-30 minutes of sanding left to do on the bed. I've then got to finish the body work on that dent, which is mostly a case of just smoothing out what I've already done. And there's four braces connecting the bed structure to the outer fender area for support, and those need to come off. All that is maybe 90-120 minutes of labor, I need to run for another quart of sealer, and all of this will then be ready to shoot. If I felt up to it (I don't, and the weather isn't gonna help), I could easily bang this out tomorrow. More likely I'll get playing with Jax tomorrow, be too sore on post-hockey Sunday, and not get back on it until Monday. I guess we'll see.

But that's it, I could easily be done with this at any time. Of course, the more I look, the more I want to do, and I know I'm at least gonna add all of the front bumper to the list of things to shoot. Fortunately, it doesn't have a a single ding or one mote of rust on it, so taking it off should be the hardest part. Unfortunately it's chrome, so I'll probably spend 20 hours trying to find something strong enough to scour it. God, I hate chrome.

Very happy so far. Whatever I was worried about last I wrote failed to materialize. Close up you can clearly see it needs a good buff. But from even 5 feet away, the only thing it looks is "real damn good" =D

Paint removal, sand blasting, Bondo, buffing....
What happened to good old low pressure Baking Soda to take the paint off?
Or Dry Ice pellets that sublimate from solid to gas as they impinge on the painted surface and lift off the paint with tiny little sonic booms?
Or driving the truck to a shady tree and leaving a few painting tools lying around as passersby give advice?

Pan-fried freshwater perch. Yum yum yum! Lots of bones to avoid, but sweet and flaky filets. Hope you had a huge fish fry!

Quote: Fleastiff

Paint removal, sand blasting, Bondo, buffing....
What happened to good old low pressure Baking Soda to take the paint off?
Or Dry Ice pellets that sublimate from solid to gas as they impinge on the painted surface and lift off the paint with tiny little sonic booms?
Or driving the truck to a shady tree and leaving a few painting tools lying around as passersby give advice?

I have never heard of soda or CO2. And here I thought I had a good pile of redneck cheats.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Pan-fried freshwater perch. Yum yum yum! Lots of bones to avoid, but sweet and flaky filets. Hope you had a huge fish fry!

Not yet, but we will =)

The weather was a mess as predicted, and I felt like melting into the floor and sleeping all day, just as I said. But I figured I wanted this done sooner than later, so I thought I'd do a little tidying up.

I went and pulled those four fender braces off. That went so fast I decided to sand the rest of the bed. That worked up a sweat and put some heat in the garage, and not wanting to waste it, I kept going. Sanding done I figured I should clean it up, so I gave the whole thing its acetone wipe down. Almost ready for paint, so I swept and vacuumed the garage in preparation. And since that made it officially ready for sealer, I went and did the sealer.

I figured I'd do the bottom and inside first as I don't give a hell what either looks like. One is on the bottom and not visible, the other is covered by a bed liner. If I do those first, I can spray the visible outside portion last and not worry about over spray, instead focusing on the good job.

Start to finish I don't even think it was 3 hours. The longest single portion of the job was cleaning the gun after use. Ain't no complaints about that =)





Looking good. Might have to immediately put this thing up for sale once it's done ;)

Back to work and not much to say.

My little schedule I've got going deemed the paint portion of what's been sealed needed to be done today. I cleaned up the body braces and hung them because I needed them done today. Since the body is going to support itself and does so right where those braces support it, they needed to be done before this thing get's tipped for the final stage. Cleaning them up only took a half hour and I strung them up in front of the bed.

The rest was all ready to shoot. Get the cups and pots ready, mix it up, and we were off.

Even with the prep on the braces and the maddeningly involved clean up that the gun requires, I was done well shy of three hours later. I even managed to mix the paint to give me one, long session to get the big areas and a small session to tie up the loose ends with no waste. I'm getting better =)

The only issue this time is that my shoulder has put a chink in my weekly hair cutting routine. I've actually got hair now, about enough for a Caeser. And lemme tell ya, Just For Men ain't got nothing on acrylic automotive enamel. All cooped up in the "booth" formed by the inside of the bed? Hair ain't never been this silky black XD And crunchy =/

Quote: Face

Back to work and not much to say.

My little schedule I've got going deemed the paint portion of what's been sealed needed to be done today. I cleaned up the body braces and hung them because I needed them done today. Since the body is going to support itself and does so right where those braces support it, they needed to be done before this thing get's tipped for the final stage. Cleaning them up only took a half hour and I strung them up in front of the bed.

The rest was all ready to shoot. Get the cups and pots ready, mix it up, and we were off.

Even with the prep on the braces and the maddeningly involved clean up that the gun requires, I was done well shy of three hours later. I even managed to mix the paint to give me one, long session to get the big areas and a small session to tie up the loose ends with no waste. I'm getting better =)

The only issue this time is that my shoulder has put a chink in my weekly hair cutting routine. I've actually got hair now, about enough for a Caeser. And lemme tell ya, Just For Men ain't got nothing on acrylic automotive enamel. All cooped up in the "booth" formed by the inside of the bed? Hair ain't never been this silky black XD And crunchy =/

Help me, what for is the unpainted area?

Quote: AZDuffman

Help me, what for is the unpainted area?

Lol, it's the heat shield, running along the length of muffler and exhaust pipe.

It's attached by those blasted Torx bolts, and they're rusted enough that I've already twisted one bit into a clean spiral. Only way I can get em off is to drill them, and then I'll need new bolts and have to tap threads... no thanks.

That's the one area I conceded to do half assed. I can't reach what's behind it, but with the pile I already had to do, doing that bit was too much.

I dunno how hot it gets to determine whether it was safe to paint, so I left it bare. If the factory didn't paint it, I suppose I shouldn't, either.

Quote: Face

Lol, it's the heat shield, running along the length of muffler and exhaust pipe.

It's attached by those blasted Torx bolts, and they're rusted enough that I've already twisted one bit into a clean spiral. Only way I can get em off is to drill them, and then I'll need new bolts and have to tap threads... no thanks.

That's the one area I conceded to do half assed. I can't reach what's behind it, but with the pile I already had to do, doing that bit was too much.

I dunno how hot it gets to determine whether it was safe to paint, so I left it bare. If the factory didn't paint it, I suppose I shouldn't, either.

The excess heat is just caused by the catalytic isn't it?

We won't need that where we're going.

Quote: petroglyph

The excess heat is just caused by the catalytic isn't it?

We won't need that where we're going.

Lol..."Where we're going, we don't need roads"...Doc Brown.