Sealing under the dash area so that nothing
bleeds through to the already painted firewall.
Epoxy primer was sprayed over the powder coating.
Epoxy primer on the whole car to seal the metal.
After so much effort and hours of work, seeing
the car all one color again is excellent.
Now that the car
was in epoxy, we knew what was coming next, the body work. Fortunately,
there doesn't seem to be much, but what does need to be done is mostly
in the worst spots to reach. After a survey of every piece, we found
that we had to touch every piece.
One color, but not the right colors.
Dead center of the front roof line was a large
shallow area.
Dead center of the dash was a shallow area.
The driver cowl section had some minor rust
pitting that had to be filled.
Ok, reshaping and
body work is a talent of mine, but I'm not fond of doing this work.
Kurt mixed the filler and spread it. I had to tackle the most difficult
areas, reshaping back to original lines. I had the patience and the
sensitive finger tips to detect even the slightest change. Yes, there
are some women who don't mind getting dusty and dirty.
Since the front of this rocker was good, Kurt
decided to keep the original lip. So the weld here was back from
the front edge and had to be dressed out.
Minor rust pits and a shallow area above the driver
front door.
Minor areas on the driver doors. Note: the date is wrong. The original
digital camera was broke and we didn't get the date set correctly
before we started using the new camera. This was actually taken in
Aug 2004.
Driver rear door had some minor rust pitting as well. These all seemed
to be where the clips for the stainless rested against the body.
Dead center of the roof above the rear window.
After closer inspection this appeared to be a factory joint that wasn't
fixed right.
Dressing out the driver rear quarter panel
proved more difficult than this picture shows. We had a considerably
larger area of putty trying to level this warped fender out.
Only a little filler was used to smooth the seams
on the driver dogleg.
Most of this putty was removed by the time the final dressing out of
these welds was done.
Rust pits around the emblems for the front
and a few minor dings.
Possibly the hardest area to dress out and
one of the most visible was the passenger side cowl area. I lost
count of the hours Kurt and I spent on this area.
One more shallow area in the roof, above both rear doors.
The little bit of putty in the passenger dogleg.
Ok, the problem area, that crease in the passenger rear door. Hindsight
being 20/20, we probably should have skinned or replaced the door entirely.
The stainless area is actually flattened, as is the lower area where
the crease was. It took too much putty to reshape the door to the gradual
curve that it should have.
A small shallow spot in the passenger rear quarter panel.
Dressing out the passenger rear quarter panel welds.
Dressing out and reshaping the mangled passenger taillight.We weren't sure
if the taillight area should have a slight peak, a sharp peak, or a gentle
curve so we looked at other '56s and we found all sorts of answers. So
we decided on a slight peak. That took a little building. There wasn't
anything original here to base off of.
Dressing out the welds and a large low spot in the deck lid.
After many hours of sanding, filling, priming, (repeat) we were finally ready for the final colors. During the body work, so many areas were touched and sanded back to bare steel around the worked area that we had to shoot a second coat of epoxy to seal the steel again. Then we noticed a wavyness to both rear quarter panels and after much discussion, decided to use the Featherfill to straighten those out. Featherfill sands great and gives a smooth finish, but it will soak in the first coat of whatever you spray next. We choose to spray a base primer and it was a good thing.
