Not a build thread, but a REFURB thread.....

[youther]

Well it's been almost two years now since I have had my car on the road (officially) and after losing about 10 years off of my life, I finally can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I have went through two paint jobs (ggggrrrrrrr) and a new interior. So I thought I would show some pics and tell a little bit about my trials and tribulations.....LOL!

Here's a teaser of my firewall before and after.............

[38project]

Great before and after!

[mopar34]

Nice work! So where were your trials and tribulations??

[youther]

Ok here goes. Here's what my car looked like when I first bought it almost 4 years ago. I drove it for two years, not doing much at all to it. The paint was dull and beat up pretty bad. So I thought any paint would be an inprovement. So I decide to try and get it painted, which my budget limited, a friend refers me to the instructor of the local vo-tech center. He is highly respected in the auto body community according to many people.

So I go and meet with him and tell him that I'm just looking fo a basic paint job with some shine. He decides to take my car and paint it. He also tells me about this kid that he has that has some major talent and already had painted some other hotrods. He also tells me that his specialty is flames. I respond that I wasn't really a big flames fan because a lot of people already have them. So I tell him to let me think about it.

I come home and do some searhing here and around the net. That's when I find a picture of Mike's "Wet" Willy car that has red, white, and blue flames on it. So I print off the picture and take it to the vo-tech and let the instructor and the young painter look at it. They say that they can do something like it. So I say ok, let's do it. So I take the car to them on January 17th, 2007

[youther]

So your'e thinking........."what in the world am I thinking letting a youngin doing work on my car" LOL! Trust me, I asked myself that 1 million times.

So they get started on my car doing some basic work on minor dings and such. There was only one place on the car that needed some extra attention, and it was on the roof where it had been chopped. And it was a crack. The rest of the car was solid, no rust.

[youther]

So comes along my first semi-problem.

I would go by the shop once a week or so to check on progress. So I go by one day to find out that the young painter had failed an exam and would have to take the class over the second semester, which meant that he would not be able to take autobody.

The instructor who we will call "Mr S" assured me that everything would be ok. They would continue to prep the car for paint and Mr S would shoot the base and the young guy who we will call "steve" would come over in the evenings and do the flames.

[flh4speed]

lookin good man!

[38project]

Man I love silver!

[youther]

Man I love silver!

Yeah I love the silver also.

[youther]

So all taped and ready the first layer of flames are painted on the car. There are some mistakes/bleed throughs and steve says that they will be fixed when he puts the next layer of flames on and he can cover the mistakes with the next set of flames.

[youther]

The same process goes for each layer. A lot of tape and a lot of time to do each set. With the second set steve covers up mistakes on the first set of flames, but there are mistakes with the second set also and steve says that he will cover them with the third and final set. I'm thinking to myself, how are you going to fix the third and final set of flame's mistakes.

I'm really disapointed because it has taken much longer than I expected and there is no way that it is going to be done in time for my son's senior prom.

This is how the car ends up looking. The flames look good from a distance, but up close they are an absolute mess. Very thick, tons of mistakes. Steve says that when he clears the car, it will blend the falmes and you will not be able to see the thickness of the flames.

Also there are still several problems with the silver that has been sanded back to primer. Steve says that he can spot paint those and the clear coat will blend those also.

[youther]

So the flames are on the car at this point. There are many other things that have occurred at this point. The principal has given me a key to the vo-tech so that we can come and go as we please. School is ending in just a few days, but we can still work on the car.

Now steve is going to try and "blend" the silver in areas that have been sanded to the primer. He covers them and it is very obvious that it's not going to matchup. I ask him about it and he says that the clear will cover it. At this point I'm thinking, "I don't know much about painting, but there is now way in this workd that a clear coat is going to make those spots blend."

Here is what one of the several spots lloked like. You can see to the right of the spot where it has already been covered once, and you can see the different color that it makes. You can also see in the door jam the type of other mistakes that were made with bleed throughs.

[38project]

If he can have clear hide that, I would be amazed!
I guess anything is possible.

[bluestang67]

Youther reading this i see you went thru alot getting it done . Spot repair is ok specially if you still have the same mix of paint . If you had to get new that could show up a little different or some tinting would be needed.

[youther]

Well to make an even longer story short, steve sprayed the spots and then cleared them. Low and behold they stuck out like a sore thumb and there were several on the car. So now comes plan B. He has me go to the local decal shop and buy a roll of decal tape. You know, the white tape that they place on decals so that you can place them on things then pull it off after the sticker is smoothed on. It's semi-transparent.

It's vacation time for me and my family At this point I am at my whitts end and had already made my mind up that I was calling it quits with the paint if this didn't work. So I leave for Forida while he agrees to work on the car while I'm gone.


He takes semi-transparent tape and covers the flames and cuts around the flames wth a razor. When he was done all of the flames were covered. He sanded the entire silver part of the car and repainted the silver.

When he took off the tape he had left a gap between the flames and the silver and it was obvious. What was left was a line of the old silver around all of the flames and the new silver. Also not to mention that in several areas he cut too deep with the razor and it cut al the way to the metal in areas.

So I come back from Florida two weeks later and go and look at the car. And for above reasons I decide to put the brakes on the project. I have spent almost $3,000 in paint and supplies and have nothing worthy of showing. I figure cut my loses now because everytime he does something he needs more supplies to fix problems.

So I take the car home and put it in the garage for a few weeks and weigh my options and try to regain the 10 years or so that I have lost off of my life over this whole ordeal.

Below is what it looked like. It's a 20/20 car.....LOL! It doesn't look too bad from a distance. I even post a pic of it on here just to see what people think about. People post that they like it but I figure everyone is just being nice as usual......LOL!