Friday, May 27, 2016

And even though it must come off again for paint here is some wing.



I re bolted the wing down to flatten out the silicone. The excess that oozed out came out on to the paper and it was then easily cleaned up with Denatured Alcohol. I then pealed off the paper.

I had purchased a piece of  1/16th inch thick EDPM rubber gasket material from McMaster-Carr out of Georgia. For those unfamiliar with EDPM it is used in exterior glazing applications because it is UV resistant.
I laid the wing base pattern ,which I had trimmed out 1/16th of an inch larger than the wing base itself, on to the gasket material and trimmed out the gasket.
Then using the mounting holes and the paper pattern on the quarter panel I glued the gasket down to the quarter with black silicone.



I re stuck the paper pattern down to a piece of soft black plastic so that I could cut the pattern out with an exacto knife.
After cutting the perimeter of the pattern I cut the pattern of the wing base out including the mounting holes.
I then re applied the paper pattern to the top of the quarter panel.



So I needed to make some gaskets for the base of the wing. (I know they sell them but this was cheaper) I first laid some 3M spark protection paper over the quarter panel. The glue on this paper is similar to post-it notes so you can re stick it a few times and the paper does not stretch. Once down I bolted the still unpainted wing in place.

I then traced around the base of the wing and the edge of the quarter panel near the side and at the deck seam.



Monday, May 23, 2016

Still more...

More..



Well bear with me. I am a little giddy at finally being to this point so I took a lot of pictures in a walk around both when I first got the car out of the booth and also when I put it down on the floor.



Saturday, May 21, 2016

Well I pulled it out of the booth this evening so I thought I would share this photo with all of you who have suffered through this long process with me. It feels like I have turned the corner but too early for celebrations. I made a "to do" list and got tired of writing after 5 pages. I will post more pictures of it on the ground before I put it back up on jack stands and remove the nose one last time.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Here are two shots of the the hood buffed out. You can see the two tone pretty good in the second shot. The last is a close up of the front of the roof awaiting it's first shot of bird poo



Well it looks like this will be a 3 weekend project at best as the roof and hood area took me a day and a half and I had to stop because my arm fell off. After it is re-attached I will get back after it.
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While it the car looks great in pictures and from a distance there is a good bit of orange peel and some trash in the clear so thank goodness for the buffing compounds. The first picture is a close up of and area on the top of the nose before buffing and the second is after the process. I was warned not to remove all of the orange peel as it helps to refract the light and enhances the color. I was afraid of burning through the clear so I went with this advice.  The last two pictures are of the how the roof came out and the "C" pillar. You can see the top of the quarter panel is dull as it is just sanded and not yet buffed out.


So time for some wet sanding and some polishing. I asked everyone I knew who has done this and got plenty of conflicting advice but I boiled it down to this. I bought the Meguires 1500 grit wet sand paper because I had read that the difference between it and lower cost papers was that it had garnet or abrasive on it that was uniform in height. Seems that on some of the cheaper papers the abrasive can have peaks and valleys and the peaks can cause some deep scratches. The stuff is great though and cut pretty nicely. Some people told me to go right into buffing from the 1500 but I was also advised to get the 3000 hook it pads for the DA. The thinking is that after the hand sanding the random orbital would even out the surface and act almost as a first buff. It did cut down on the buffing time for sure. It was pricey at $8.00 a pad but definitely worth it. Next there were a number of finishing buffing compounds to choose from but the one that came the most highly recommended was the 3M Perfect It system which came with three compounds and three dedicated buffing pads. I can say it was worth the money. Finally I gave in and bought a decent buffer as the one I had was a little jinky.



Sunday, May 1, 2016

Finally here is a view of the right side of the car and the front.


I wanted the hood insets to be an alternate color so I taped and papered them as well.


 know it might be hard to tell from the pictures but this is a two tone paint job. The sides are an 04 Dodge color. I tried to find a Dodge color for the top and thought I had found one on a 2014 Challenger but it turned out to have too much red in it and looked almost
in the sun so the top color is a Toyota color. After spraying the side color and letting it sit for a day I masked it off with some 1/2" fine line tape, then papered it and applied the top color. After removing the paper and tape I clear coated the entire car.