So Close

This weekend was to be it. The weekend Victoria and I finished working on Glinda. Obviously, by the title of today’s posting, we didn’t make it. By the way, some in-process pictures are in a Flickr set here.

Friday evening we finished masking the car. My approach to this partial paintjob is each coat covers a slightly larger area than the previously applied one. The epoxy primer barely covered all the exposed metal. The urethane primer extends about a half-inch outside that, and the paint layer another half-inch out. That lets me sand off the ridge of the newly applied coating to blend it with the surrounding surfaces. This photo was taken after I’d sanded the Urethane primer and it shows where the edge of tape had been. With that scheme in mind, we laid down two overlapping strips of masking tape followed by the paper. That meant we didn’t have to re-mask the entire car, just tear off the top layer of tape. By the time we’d completed that task, it was too late to prime.

Saturday morning I shot three coats of urethane primer finishing around noon. The data sheet on the primer states I could wet sand four hours later, so I busied myself with watching college football while the coating cured. After dragging myself away from an exciting game, I pulled off the first run of masking tape and attacked the primer with 400 grit sandpaper. I removed the slight ridge and scuffed the small strip of paint. Repeated rinsing in buckets filled with slightly soapy water kept the paper clean. With all the ridges blended, I moved to 600 grit and smoothed out the primer. Once that was completed, several passes with a sponge and clean water removed a majority of the sanding dust from the car body.

Sunday morning I had planned on going to church, but a funny thing happened. The lovely Loriann and Mikhaila were off Girl Scout camping in Delaware with one of the keys to the PT Cruiser in its official parking spot - clipped to Loriann’s purse. When Victoria and her friend left for church before I was ready to go, I had no idea she had the second key on her key ring since she’s been driving this car so frequently. As soon as I was aware I had no key to the Cruiser and was keyless and Lucy was blocked in, I called her. She was already at church, so I told her to stay there. Her mom would be arriving back at church at noon so she had a ride home then.

I still had three hours to kill before the primer would be fully cured, so I busied myself with a couple home projects and two episodes of Top Gear off Netflix streaming video. By the way, I highly recommend Series 10, Episode 1 where the hosts drive incredibly wonderful cars through incredibly beautiful parts of Europe.

But I digress. With lunch out of the way and the family home, I headed out to the garage for the last phase in the bodywork project – painting. As I stated in a previous update post, the lovely Loriann rejected the first batch of paint the store mixed up so he mixed a second quart per the GM paint code and gave her the first can for free. I opened the can that was labeled GM Code K and carefully laid down four coats on the car. Not wanting a replay of the sags Heidi ended up with, I used my paint gun with the smaller opening and started off with a very light coat. By the last coat it was impossible to detect where the primer ended and the scuffed paint began. Not wanting to use up all the Code K paint, and since the mis-mixed paint was close, I pulled out the can that was marked with the paint formula and used it to shoot four heavy coats on the anniversary present engine lid. I got some sags, but they’ll just add to the artsy-ness of the finished product.

After waiting an hour for the paint to cure enough to open up the garage, Victoria and I proceeded to remove the sheets from the unpainted portions of the body. We immediately saw that the new paint did not match the old – it was too blue. My eyes then fell to the engine lid I’d painted with the supposed mis-mixed paint. It matched perfectly. With plenty of that color left and enough hardener and reducer for more painting, Victoria and I decided to put the sheets back on and I would shoot the right paint. I shot two coats and then set the engine lid next to the newly coated surfaces and they matched. Job done, and it was only 5 PM. Plenty of time for the paint to harden enough for us to pull the sheets off and finish the last few items on the to-do list.

After dinner she and I headed back to the garage and carefully removed the sheets and masking paper from Glinda. We then removed the front seat belts and bench seat along with the bottom portion of the back seat. After marking the position of the accelerator pedal, we popped that off its shaft and we were ready, we thought, to install the carpet. As she vacuumed up the dust off the painted metal floor, bits of the coating flaked off the passenger foot well exposing quite a bit of rust and a dozen or so holes. She was not happy when I handed her gloves, a paintbrush, and a cat food can half full of POR-15. She applied a liberal coat and then embedded fiberglass cloth over the holes with more of the magical stuff. With a trouble light shining up from the floor, I identified where more POR-15 was needed and she filled in all the pin-pricks of light.

Needing to let the floor paint dry, we moved on to reinstalling parts that had been removed prior to the bodywork. We carefully mounted the fresh air grill in front of the windshield, the windshield wipers, the left headlight bezel, and the license plates. We adjusted the engine lid latch, lubricated the glovebox latch, greased the front suspension, and popped on the hubcaps before calling it a day.

Tonight we’ll install the carpet, reinstall the seats, seatbelts, and the two side marker lights. Then she’ll be ready to be pushed into position, lowered off the wheel dollies, and driven out of the garage.