Ok,a little touchup on 69 Chevelle SS
 

I'm going to be posting the process of doing some repairwork I'm doing on a 69 SS for another Chevelle nut in the crowd :D, Dave is his name and this is a "very" nice car but needs a little help..I will give him a link too this page so I don't have to send e-mails of progress :D

What has happened is that someone had redone the car in the past and put a vinyl top on it (which it did not have originally) and they used an "aftermarket" molding on the 1/4 panel that was attached to the panel below the original OEM molding. He's putting a new top on it and wants too use the original OEM moldings this time around so I need to weld some holes and do some work here.... It's also a good thing we're doing this as there is some rust to deal with because of the aftermarket moldings poor installation in the past.

I'll try to keep up with the photo's as I post them.....:)

I started the photo's after I had already began work, but it's still pretty much at the beginning. I first started by covering the car with sheet plastic and only leaving the work areas exposed.This car is extremely clean and it will stay that way ! (You can pretty much eat off the bottom of the car :ntwrthy:)
I first ground all the crappy area's up and got ready too weld holes up.Got it as clean as I could with fiber disk and welded,, then I ground the welds flush and cleaned with fiber disk again, then gave it a quick breeze with a sandblaster. Directly after that I gave it a quik blow with air and hit the bare steal with "self etch" primer as too seal the bottom of rust pits before any moisture could set back in.I spray it somewhat wet and then smear it too the bottom of the pits with my finger....Just the humidy in the air will start the oxidation process so I "prime it and then feather the paint" after this has dried.

Allright, after it's primed I go ahead and feather the paint first with some 80 grit, then 180 before applying filler. I'm trying too keep the work area as "small" as possible cause we are only planning on some "blend" work here, not full on panel painting so I'm going to keep it as tight as possible to the roof section..

After its feathered I use some Duraglass on the deeper pits and then regular filler over the length of the repair area,once again keeping it as high off the stripe as possible. I knock down the first coat of filler wich is pretty close to the shape we want and then prep the surface again for a plastic/polyester mix which hopefully get me very close too where I want to be before primer. After the Polyester mix is applied it will sit overnite to "fully" set/shrink before being sanded again..I use a different color hardener for the 2nd application to show how the material is coming off as I sand which helps from taking too much off :) This is where the car is at right now

Looking good so far. Good luck!

wow good job man! where do you live so i can have you do my fender for me :)

Looking good.

I still need to shoot you off a few pics of what I need fixed.

Well the next step will be a 2K primer on the 1/4 panels.

When I got home from work I sanded what was left from yesterday and needed to apply one last coat of filler for the pinholes and "finetuning". Once again I switched up color on the hardener back to blue and this last coat is straight polyester glaze.It's a very dense material and has good holdout qualities when topcoated with primers and urethanes :). I used 150 grit for starting off blocksanding on the last coat and when I got close to being complete I used 240 grit to finish the blocking.Once the blocking is finished I breeze over it with 320 grit on the DA and it's ready for primer..

The trick is to get all this repair area to a fine grit before priming so it has minimal shrinking when your color and clear are applied. If you prime over say, 80 or 150 grit a couple of weeks or so after you've completed the job those coarse sanding scratches will become visible in the finish due too shrinking. It will look good at first but they will come back so fine grit it is.

I ran out of some material so hopefully tomorrow I can stock back up. This is how they look now in 320 grit.

Class "A" work. Looking good. Keep us posted on your progress.

Ray

Hey thanks you guy's for the comp's. I was thinking I would put down some of the process of this type of work incase someone wanted to take a stab at it themselves.. If nothing else,too show what it takes to do this type of work in your own garage.....It's good stuff for "Father / Son" projects too,good bonding time. My Dad learned me when I was growing up !!! ;) (Now it's my trade)


Well, we're in prime now. I tried too keep the material in as tight as I could covering the filler while still getting a few nice coats over the feathered paint also......Many people will use the tape as a border and flow the primer right over the taped off area...This is a NO NO !!! If you apply this material over a sharply edged tapeline the solvents in the primer will swell up the old paint next to the tape,but not under the tape (you see what I mean ??) and that will create a line you can never get rid of unless you go back and "strip" all the material back to bare metal...not very efficient money or time wise...So here's some more photo's

I did end up taking off the decklid because there is some flaking off paint in the gutter that Dave wants me to take care of while I'm here,hopefuly you can see it in the shots.

Ok, the primer I put on can be sanded in an hour or so but I prefer to let it set at least 24 hrs so It can get nice and hard for better holdout when topcoated.... Believe it or not optimum wait time on this would be about 6 months or so !!!

So during the wait after I primed this evening I started to tape up some things that will remain till the job is completed... Can't sit around waiting for primer too dry !!!! :D

Nice work, I'm getting in line with the other guys that need some paint work.