First Paint

I'm going on vacation to Jamaica tomorrow so we decided to pull out all the stops and try to lay down some final colour paint on the undercarriage, engine compartment, door jambs and interior. Getting to this stage has been frantic since there is always another patch to weld or more undercoat to chisel away but now that the paint has been applied there's no going back. (like we ever would) We prepped the shop as best we could with poly and buckets of water to soak down the floor in an attempt to minimize the dust. The in-floor heat just evaporated it in about ten minutes though. Regrettably, my poor exhaust fan was just not up to the task of keeping the fumes at bay so it was a fairly toxic environment to say the least.

 Chris laid down  the epoxy primer on Tues night and it pretty much went on like tarry undercoat. This morning I woke up with the birds and spent a good five hour shift spraying on two heavy coats of Chrysler Ivory off-white for some fairly descent coverage. Having the rotisserie is a real bonus for this kind of work and really allows access to every angle.

When I get back everything will be nice and cured so we can start plumbing in the fuel system and all of the brake lines. There is still a ton of body work in our future but being able to start putting new parts on the freshly painted carcass is awesome.

Cheater Slicks

We just got our brand new cheater slicks from Hurst racing and they look killer!! Hurst racing is owned by a father/son team out of Oregon City that reproduce nostalgia racing rubber for hyper-enthusiasts like us. They are a small operation that treat every customer individually with professionalism and pride of craftsmanship. I spoke with the son Cody on the phone for nearly an hour and he turns out to also be a hard core Mopar dude. He comes by it honestly and told me the tale of how he was actually conceived in the back of a '64 nine passenger Polara wagon. We have no choice but to like him. Cody set us up with a set of pie crust 30x10x15 radial slicks, he threw in the cheater grooves and double buffed the sidewalls so you can't see the lettering from the donor carcasses.

We went ahead and painted up out 15x8 cop wheels with a twist on the traditional pie slice paint on black or half black and half body colour. The decision was made to do two opposing  pie slices to look something like an hour glass. I think the effect is achieved, now I can't wait to mount them on the car. It's little milestones like this that really help to push the motivation factor up. Seeing all of the pieces come together and eventually go to their respective homes on the car will be really gratifying.

Door Mod

As mentioned before, the two door conversion that we executed was made possible from a '63 Plymouth B-body donor. The problem is that the vent widow angle is different than the '64/'65 cars so we needed to remedy this.

Here's the original angle issue.

 After hanging the door in it's new habitat with reasonable door gaps so it doesn't look completely cobbled together we began the surgery. First plan of attack was to remove all of the guts from the door including the vent widow assy. It was decided that a straight up door frame graft was our best option since the spot welds attaching the frame to the door is quite complicated and in depth. The cut on the lower portion could be made about 3"-4" up from the main body of the door and still maintain the new angle that we will introduce.

The pieces to be fused in were graciously donated to us by our old 4dr doors. Lining up the new corresponding pieces was fairly easy with the door in place and gave us a good reference point with the top of the door frame. With the new section  tacked in place we could remove the door and finish welding it on the bench.