Looks horrible! ..just kidding with you D. What's not to like. The attention to detail is amazing. The interior is better than new . I have said it many times when you're ready my 78 is being shipped to you. Chip Foose has got nothing on you !
BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Wheel came out spiffy!
Grilles look great. It's the way they should have come from the factory. I love blacked out split grilles. 86 and 87 Salon/442 grilles look the best factory stock IMO.
And I can recall when all this started- that skull peeking out over the dashboard used to have skin and hair...no telling where the rest of the body is buried. 🙂
Grilles look great. It's the way they should have come from the factory. I love blacked out split grilles. 86 and 87 Salon/442 grilles look the best factory stock IMO.
And I can recall when all this started- that skull peeking out over the dashboard used to have skin and hair...no telling where the rest of the body is buried. 🙂
That restored wheel looks great, id say for being almost 40 years old it looks real close to show room condition when it was new
That’s a good question Jon, I wish I had a definitive answer for you. This is now the second claret sport steering wheel I’ve seen that has looked like this.
My best guess is that GM was probably just being pragmatic back in those days. They likely had a surplus of sport wheels in the brighter red color left over from the earlier ‘78-‘79 years, and rather than not being able to use them after doing away with that color for ‘80, they probably decided to just dye what they already had in the claret color.
Of course this is mere speculation, we may never know what the real reason was, or what was going on at the time.
As for your wheel, I would guess that either yours has worn exceptionally well and isn’t showing the lighter color through yet, or that it might be from a newer production run (‘81 and up) that was already the correct color to begin with.
Thanks Bruce!
Thank you Mike!
That’s really kind of you to say Mike, thanks very much brother. I know you don’t comment often, so it means all that much more when you do!
Hahaha, yep!
And I’m not about to tell either!!
😉
Thanks Josh, I appreciate it man. I’m very happy with it, it easily turned out as good as I had hoped.
Just a couple quick pictures for you guys of the front end outside in natural light.
The car in general needs a good cleaning, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s looking.
Almost starting to look like a car again!
The car in general needs a good cleaning, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s looking.
Almost starting to look like a car again!
To quote Monte Python (the fans will get it),
“And now for something completely different!”
Yep that’s right, I started on the hood tonight.
The areas that need attention got circled, the center trim got removed, and the stripping process has begun. In a little over 3 hours, I’ve already managed to strip 100% of the old paint from 3 and 3/4 sides.
I’ll have to try and find time to grab a couple more of the specialty stripping wheels I’m using to do the edges to finish the last side.
Then it’s on to a sh*t ton of DA work to remove all the old product from the surface. This hood is an acre long!!
😩
I’ll continue to plug away at this for the next foreseeable while, so that’s it for now.
D.
“And now for something completely different!”
Yep that’s right, I started on the hood tonight.
The areas that need attention got circled, the center trim got removed, and the stripping process has begun. In a little over 3 hours, I’ve already managed to strip 100% of the old paint from 3 and 3/4 sides.
I’ll have to try and find time to grab a couple more of the specialty stripping wheels I’m using to do the edges to finish the last side.
Then it’s on to a sh*t ton of DA work to remove all the old product from the surface. This hood is an acre long!!
😩
I’ll continue to plug away at this for the next foreseeable while, so that’s it for now.
D.
Can't wait to see the work on the hood. And the special wheels for stripping.
4 hours in...
To say there’s a lot of product on this thing would be a major understatement.
🥵
To say there’s a lot of product on this thing would be a major understatement.
🥵
No worries, we’re all novices at some point or another.
It’s not a great idea for several reasons. First of all, the original paint on our cars is old school lacquer. Lacquer is a non-catalyzed paint, meaning it never fully dries or cures. That’s why when you see really old lacquer paint, is often cracking and checked.
Just like building a house, you need to start with a solid foundation. Applying new product over old, unstable and uncatalyzed paint is never a great idea, epoxy barrier or not.
Plus in my instance, the car had been poorly painted once already, and without any epoxy to seal the substrate. They simply applied old school “yellow death” high build primer over top of the old lacquer. Again, not the right way to do things.
Also, there’s already a TON of product on there. If I were to get a rock chip in even what’s already on there, it would be a large and deep chip. Thinner build thickness is more desirable here.
Speaking of rock chips, I’m finding more poor repair methods as I continue to strip it down, whoever painted it previously didn’t even bother to feather out the old rock chips in the hood, they simply primed over them and relied on the primer to fill them. Again, not the proper way to do things.
So at the end of the day, as monotonous and labor intensive as it is to strip to bare metal, it’s really the only way I can guarantee that it’ll be done right and will be a long lasting, quality paint job.
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