BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)

[O. D. Showtime]

Very nice Donovan! Attention to detail is outstanding! Thanks for the update.

 

[pagrunt]

So when & where do I ship my Monte body to so it can look as good? Giving some cool ideas I'd like to try after I get back to work.

 

[Turbo Zach]

Very awesome! The door handle still looks a little funky to me. I can't wait to see what you have planned for them. I enjoyed the update. Keep up the good work!

 

[Clutch]

I very nearly had a major disaster on my hands just before this point. I had gone to my local bodyshop supplier before the holidays to ensure I had enough paint to do this while they were closed, because I knew I was getting low on the white paint.

It was around midnight on a Sunday when I was shooting this, and after applying the epoxy, I opened the partial can of white I had left. “Hmmm, not sure I’ve got enough left here to spray everything”, so I cracked open the new quart I bought. Imagine my surprise when I removed the lid and found I had a quart of Aztec Gold Pearl Metallic!

WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?

I found out after the fact that apparently someone had a dyslexic moment when mixing my paint, and had inadvertently mixed up the last two digits in the paint code.
At the time however, I was between a rock and a very hard place, I had fresh epoxy on that was ready to be topcoated over, and hardly any paint. I rolled the dice, mixed up what I had left, and got to spraying. I figured if nothing else I could at least get either the door or the jamb sprayed, but I doubted I’d be able to do both.

At the end of the first coat on the door, I popped the lid on the gun and took stock of how much I had used. Again, I rolled the dice and took a chance and sprayed a coat on the jamb. Evaluating the remaining paint after that revealed that I might, JUST MIGHT, have just enough to get all 3 coats on everything out of it.


The gun sputtered out the last drop of paint at the very end of the third coat, and as they say, the rest is history. Feeling more than lucky, I cleaned the gun and pressed on. I mixed up a small batch of the grey to shoot the tops of the panels where the two-tone break would be, and sprayed that as well. Here’s all the stuff finally in color:

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I made one small error in applying the grey inside the jamb, I ended up with it being a little lower below the two-tone break than it should’ve been. You can see it pretty clearly in this pic with everything unmasked:

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I’d have to go back and correct this later.
The fuzzy “overspray” look inside the edges is actually fully intentional, the factory never bothered to mask a hard line inside the edges, and I wanted to duplicate that, so there it is.

Knowing that reassembly was in the very near future, I placed an order to RockAuto and got some new door weatherstripping and outer door handles coming. In the meantime, I began by reassembling with what I had. It was finally starting to look like a car again with parts going back on instead of coming off:

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After digging through my stash of mostly useless crap, I even managed to find three of the missing plastic plugs to go in the bottom of the door!

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With a little cleanup, I managed to get the wiring boot looking like new and reinstalled as well.

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Another thing that had bothered me was the gross primer overspray that was on the end of the AstroRoof drain hose from the previous paint job. It took a little doing, but even that came back nicely:

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By this point, the holiday break was over and I was back to work. After work one evening, I had Mike swing by and give me a hand hanging the door back on again. For a preliminary hanging with no fender in place yet, it aligned pretty good.

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The first of my RockAuto orders showed up, the weatherstrip seals are Metro SuperSoft to match the roof rail seals and fit very well. No complaints other than the door is quite a bit harder to shut due to the thickness, and them not being 39 year old compressed ones anymore. To be expected.

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Continued >>>

Would you like a picture of the two tone brake on Lauren's Hurst/Olds? The passenger side of her car is original paint.

 

[TURNA]

FOOKING AWESOME!!!!!!!

Wow I can't believe those handle came like that.

The ones I have are mint. But they were also about 10+ years old sitting in the box on my shelf.

I like how u improvised and adapted the handle with the brushed looked!!!

 

[JAMCAR223]

FOOKING AWESOME!!!!!!!

Wow I can't believe those handle came like that.

The ones I have are mint. But they were also about 10+ years old sitting in the box on my shelf.

I like how u improvised and adapted the handle with the brushed looked!!!

I COULDN'T AGREE MORE!! VERY nice work D.

 

[olds307 and 403]

Holy sh*t, amazing as usual. Sucks about the door handles but that looks unique. I see a painted car in the near future.

 

[dr78442]

Wow !!!!!!! No words ...just Wow

 

[Texas82GP]

Donovan,

Your work is just outstanding! That is going to be a very special car. It already is. Thanks for the awesome update. I really enjoyed it. I love following along with your progress. I know that update took a real time commitment so thanks again.

Best,

Jared

 

[Longroof79]

Everything looks great as usual, D.
I ended up doing the same, or similar treatment to my door handles, only that I painted them body color.
I saw it done on an El Camino years back and thought it looked pretty trick.
Thumbs up as usual, my friend. 👍👍