Wednesday, March 30, 2016

After pulling the part from the mold it turned out to be pretty good but the mold was too leaky so I trimmed up the piece and the mold an made another bathtub for the mold using angled aluminum taped to the base and hot glue to seal the corners.
After that I poured some more blue goo into the area surrounding the original mold and created a confinement for my subsequent pulls.



Since the mold was pretty flexible I used some angle aluminum double face taped to some plastic to confine it.
Next I got some two part casting resin at the Hobby Lobby.
Due to the way the part was molded the sides of the mold were open and I built a temporary dam on the perimeter with some silicone caulk and rubber electrical tape. I intended the first pull to be an experiment.




After mixing the two components I poured the material into the scoop opening.
The next day I pulled the silicone out of the scoop.



This is what I came up with on the fender scoops as an alternative to the gutter screen. I had the plastic insert that was in the SRT-8 hood scoop and since I could not find a comparable grill mesh at that scale I decided to try my hand at replicating what I had with some mold making materials and some casting resin. 
The first thing I did was to tape off the back side and spray some mold release agent.
I then purchased some two part silicone mold making material.



Sunday, March 27, 2016

Finally here are some pictures of the doors attached to the car for the final time.


Before installing the door catch I applied a little low tac 3m welding spatter paper to the jamb. I did this to prevent marring the door jamb while moving the catch around to set it in the proper position.
Once it was properly set I carefully trimmed around it with a new exacto knife. I then removed the catch and peeled the paper out from under it so as to create a register for re-installation



I put the new door seals on the back side of the door while I had it laying down. I had to make a couple of modifications to the seal due to the difference in the latch mechanisms and in the front where the vent window would normally go.
Also while I had it laying flat I glued in some sound deadener in the area of the door skin across from the door speaker to dampen vibrations on the skin.
I also took the time to run my wiring harness in the door while I had good lighting and could see all my attachment points.
After that I proceeded to hang the doors for the final time on the car. The last picture here shows the rubber boot for the door wiring harness installed for the last time.




 So while it might look like a bit of overkill papered over the outsides of the front fenders so as to not create more work for myself getting rid of the over spray onto the out side surface while I worked the insides.

I then went ahead and sealed , base coated and cleared the insides of the doors and the relevant parts of the front fenders.

I had also painted the door hinges and hardware and attached them for the final time. Again here I had used cleco's to relocate the hinges as to save me time re aligning them. And again not a good tip for restoration jobs but for my project it worked fine.



Monday, March 14, 2016

Finally another piece of the car back on for good. I mounted the hood for the final time.


I was kind of stuck as to what to do about the opening treatment for the fender scoops. I had tried different things but nothing looked good so I had resigned myself to just putting in a solid closure of black aluminum. I took one more stab at it and got some expanded metal. Actually it is one of those screens you put over your rain gutters to keep the leaves out. The mesh was just tight enough and it will give the scoop some function venting the under hood area if not the actual fender. I will secure it to the bottom of the fender with some Fusor T-21 epoxy .

Well I hauled the doors and fenders into the spray room to start work on painting the insides and edges on these components. Hopefully it won't take forever but there are tons of nooks and crannies to attend to so who knows.


Sunday, March 6, 2016

So that I would not have to go through all of the alignment issues again before I had removed the hood catch I had drilled 2  1/8" holes so that I could easily relocate the latch with some cleco's. Obviously not a tip you could use on a restoration but it worked for my purposes. I then permanently installed the aluminum rear hood closure. Here you can see that the color for the top of the car is not really black against the pre-painted black aluminum.

I had used the trunk seal to do the body work but I had taped it in rather than glue it in .  The only problem with this was removing some of the masking tape glue residue. I used some acetone for that and was able to use the seal .This is a picture of the final install of the modified trunk seal. It had to be shorted because of the size of the Daytona deck but it worked out good.
 It felt good to finally be putting something back on the car to stay when I re-installed the trunk lid for the final time.


Well the back is about 70% so I have been trying to get back out and get this project moving forward again.  We all know how fun it is to try and sand and prep the underside of the the hood and trunk lid but it is a necessary evil that seemed to take forever but I finally got them sanded, sealed base coated and cleared.