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Part 10: Bodywork
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It took about a week of stripping, sanding, slicking bondo and more sanding to get to this point. The primer is Clausens ZChrome epoxy primer sealer and I have started the final wet sanding. When I started shooting the final color, the compressor decided to puke oil at a rate that overloaded our filters/driers and I had to sand everything off the exterior of the cab and start over. We re-plumbed our paint booth and put in a much more elaborate filter system, cleaned the lines and installed a final inline filter at the gun. Shot it again but was not happy with it. Final sanded it again and then sprayed with RM sealer just before the first base coat. This time it was good enough to suit me. Needless to say, I was beginning to doubt my ability to do a good paint job. By the way, the basecoat and clear are RM Diamont. It really is a nice product to work with. I was just having a few bad spray days!




Next on the agenda was to sand blast the rock chipped grille shell. It needed some welding on the bottom from catching too many parking bumpers over the years. Had to do a little slicking down with bondo, but overall it was an easy job. The vertical bars were painted black and that was no picnic, but there were no runs!




Now it is time to start prepping and painting the little pieces such as steering wheel, column, glove box lid, upholstery trim molding, spare tire carrier, bumper arms, horns, head light stands and assorted cover plates. The secret to painting these little pains in the butt was to figure out how to hold them. I wish I had some pics of these set up in the paint room, but did not take any. Basically, I used scraps of plywood on sawhorses and work stands with holes drilled for pegs, pins, wire, etc. which were used in combination to hold the little parts while shooting.




Click here for Part 11: Assembling the Body Parts


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