When his finger prints grow back, I'm going to send him my 85 442 for paint with a stack of paper in the trunk. No rust. Should be easy. Black (19) on top, silver (12) on the bottom. Little bit of rock guard...how hard would that project be?
BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Close, but not quite Mike.
I know exactly the stuff you speak of having worked under many many of those trucks over the years, we always called it “frame wax” and it is indeed horrible stuff. It has this unnatural ability to always end up underneath your fingernails no matter what you do.
But no, this stuff isn’t really like that at all.
I was going to cover it in one of my write-ups when I got to the point of using it, but since there’s already so much discussion on it here already I’ll just address it now. The cavity wax is a little something that would’ve gone a long, long ways to helping preserve and prevent these cars from rusting out especially in the doors.
It’s basically just a heavy duty thick sprayable wax in aerosol form. Used in conjunction with the “insertion probes” as you so eloquently put it, you can direct it into every little nook and cranny that might see water pooling. The first and foremost area that comes to mind is very obviously the bottoms of the doors where the outer door skin meets the inner shell. Old original dew sweeps that are hard and don’t seal well to the door glass will let water pass into the inside of the door. Likewise with aftermarket ones that generally fit, but usually not all that well.
This is nothing new, and back then was probably engineered to allow a certain amount of it to happen. That’s part of the reason we have vapour barriers in our doors as well. The issue arises when the drain holes in the bottoms of the doors become plugged up with dirt and debris and then the water has no where to go. Couple that with the poor job GM did of adequately protecting the insides of the doors with any sort of corrosion protective coating, and it’s not hard to see why the bottoms rotted out so badly.
Where the cavity wax will really shine is in this area. You apply it to the joint between the inner door shell and outer skin inside the door in a nice thick coat, and now you have an effective water barrier. Any water that ends up inside the door will bead up and sit on top of the wax, flowing out to the drain holes as intended rather than sitting static between two pieces of unprotected metal. Pretty simple really, so much so that it makes you wonder why they never bothered to do it to begin with.
It can have literally hundreds of not thousands of uses in other areas, anywhere you need protection from water on uncoated or poorly protected surfaces. Lining the insides of rocker panels would be another smart use of it, the only issue being that you’d need a decent sized hole to get the applicator wand into, and the fact that you wouldn’t be able to tell where you had coverage and where you didn’t.
I also plan to use it inside the trunk, in the areas where the trunk floor dropoffs meet the outer quarter panel skins. Again, this is another area that could see water, and generally isn’t well protected on the inside.
The only caveat to the cavity wax is that it obviously contains silicones, which don’t play well with paint or primers, so using this stuff either has to be done on an original finish car or post paint like on Olds Cool. That’s why I didn’t apply it after the door repairs were made, and were still off the car.
It’s definitely tedious and encompassing work Jared, you can’t have a lot of distractions or anything to break your concentration. I’m not so sure I’d be quick to use the word “fun” though.
One split second not paying attention and you can burn through on an edge when polishing or worse. You’ve also got to be mindful of the heat that you’re generating when polishing. Most clearcoats like and actually need a certain amount of heat to help them “flow” a bit, but too much on a sensitive panel like a hood or roof will result in warpage and oil canning.
Likewise with the wet sanding. Equal movements with your sanding motions will result in a better and more uniform surface, I’ve even heard of guys counting their sanding strokes so that they’re equal in both numbers and length in either direction of their crosshatch pattern.
So yeah, it’s a bit of a balancing act for sure.
Truth is, I usually am so involved in working a certain area and watching what it’s doing, that I don’t get that sense of satisfaction until I’m 100% done that entire panel, have wiped the whole area down, and finally step back to inspect it from a bit of a distance.
Only then do I see if it’ll make me smile or not.
But yeah, If I’ve done everything right it almost always does!
😃
Sure, yeah! Nooo problem. It won’t take much, only 3 or so years of every spare minute I can muster, 300 pages of documentation on a build thread, hundreds upon hundreds of man hours, thousands of dollars in bodyshop supplies, an undying attitude to getting it done no matter what, and a complete strip of all the trim and shitty old lacquer paint. Oh, and an absolutely filthy garage that you’ll never get all the dust out of.
But yeah, how hard can it be??
🤣🤣🤣
Better make sure that stack of paper in the trunk is all hundreds, and several layers deep!
😉
Pfft. I beg to differ. Only about 90 pages of a build thread. No sunroof to fight, no vinyl top already, no rusted panels to replace, it would come pre-stripped, no custom work and I'd do all the decals and trim re-assembly. Any body work would likely just be getting rid of factory waves/defects. Probably can do all the bodywork in 3 days of fill primer/sanding without even firing up the welder (which would take me about 400 days). And if you took out all the idiotic comments I would make along the way you might get it down to 60 pages. 🙂
Easy peasy. haha
Finally got the hood completely finish sanded and cut polished last night, significant milestone for sure.
The left side fought me tooth and nail for whatever reason, I bet I went back and forth wet sanding and polishing on it 4 or 5 times before I finally had all the corrections made. Thankfully the right side went a lot quicker and easier.
Full cut polish with 3M heavy duty rubbing compound and a compounding pad, followed up with a thorough once over with 3M machine glaze and a black waffle pad. Turned out very well:
To be honest, the pictures don’t do it justice. It looks a bit lacklustre and hazy in the pictures, but in person it looks much much better.
The hood is an especially tough panel to get just right. Because it’s so flat and straight plus highly visible, you see absolutely everything no matter how minor it might be. But compared to what I started with I’m satisfied with this result.
Currently working on the chrome hood spear so that I can install it and the matching one on the header panel, it needs the brushed finish put on it and all the nasty pits sanded out. Very time consuming, but it’s needed to finish off the hood completely.
Sharp eyes may have noticed the driver’s fender is also wet sanded and ready for polishing, the goal for finished progress by the end of today is to have the hood spears sanded and installed, the entire driver fender polished, the top of the passenger fender wet sanded and polished, and hopefully the fender mounted signal indicators assembled and installed.
That would nearly finish off the entire front of the car minus the rest of the passenger fender and bumper/bumper filler panels. Might be a bit optimistic to try and get done all today, but it’s something to shoot for!
D.
The left side fought me tooth and nail for whatever reason, I bet I went back and forth wet sanding and polishing on it 4 or 5 times before I finally had all the corrections made. Thankfully the right side went a lot quicker and easier.
Full cut polish with 3M heavy duty rubbing compound and a compounding pad, followed up with a thorough once over with 3M machine glaze and a black waffle pad. Turned out very well:
To be honest, the pictures don’t do it justice. It looks a bit lacklustre and hazy in the pictures, but in person it looks much much better.
The hood is an especially tough panel to get just right. Because it’s so flat and straight plus highly visible, you see absolutely everything no matter how minor it might be. But compared to what I started with I’m satisfied with this result.
Currently working on the chrome hood spear so that I can install it and the matching one on the header panel, it needs the brushed finish put on it and all the nasty pits sanded out. Very time consuming, but it’s needed to finish off the hood completely.
Sharp eyes may have noticed the driver’s fender is also wet sanded and ready for polishing, the goal for finished progress by the end of today is to have the hood spears sanded and installed, the entire driver fender polished, the top of the passenger fender wet sanded and polished, and hopefully the fender mounted signal indicators assembled and installed.
That would nearly finish off the entire front of the car minus the rest of the passenger fender and bumper/bumper filler panels. Might be a bit optimistic to try and get done all today, but it’s something to shoot for!
D.
Gonna do a photo write up on the hood and header panel spears install here. As with most things car related, this little project took about 3 times longer than it should’ve, but that’s the way it usually goes.
Hood and header panel spears, pretty simple right? Well yes, but there’s a few things that should be taken into account and here’s the (mostly) right way to do it. According to me at least.
First off, let’s talk about the header panel spear. The car originally came with a hood ornament, but if you recall I eliminated the rather large hole in the header for the spring that sits underneath the ornament, and instead made my own sleeker low profile spear that matches up with the hood one. This was done by cutting off the front of another hood spear found at the junkyard, turning it around so that the heights matched up, and creating a sculpted profile in the front of it that I felt was something like what the factory would’ve offered.
Once that was done, I filled in the void with JB Weld and sanded it to match my “new” profile. Then it was strip off all the old chrome plating and sand out the deep pitting that 40 years of age had left behind. Once that was completed, it was sanded with 180 to give it the brushed finish to match the rest of the trim:
With that outta the way for now, next I turned my attention to the hood spear. I sanded down the side and top profiles first with 80 grit, then used a Clean n Strip wheel on a die grinder to remove the old chrome and nickle plating and the pitting from this piece too. I found that a couple of cut down 2x4’s in the vise made a great impromptu holding jig to keep it from moving around without crushing the mounting studs:
Next I sanded the trim piece with 80, 180 and finally red ScotchBrite to get the final finish. Here it is in 180:
And after a little more refining in red ScotchBrite:
Back to the header panel spear real quick, because this is now a custom piece, there are no studs to attach it. A simple bit of thin 3M double sided tape on the backside takes care of that:
Returning to the hood spear, I dug out the black butyl strip caulk I had leftover from the quarter windows install:
This stuff is going to go around the mounting studs to seal out any water that might make its way inside the hood and into the engine compartment. When Olds Cool was poorly repainted in its past, whoever did the work didn’t do this waterproofing step when they reinstalled it. Every time I washed the car, it would constantly drip water from the stud above the carb into the recess in the air filter lid. Not the end of the world, but annoying to say the least.
Here’s a look at the spear mounting studs:
I took very small sections of the butyl and rolled them between my fingers to thin them out, then made them into little “donuts” to fit around the studs. All of the holes in the hood for the spear are oval with the exception of the very front one, so the excess butyl I tried to work to fit inside the trim in an oblong shape to seal off the oval shaped holes:
This is only half of the water proofing measures. I bought some new thread cutting nuts...
...then made some more butyl “donuts” and filled the void inside them next:
Time for the actual install. Placing the spear onto the hood and holding it, I started all 5 of the nuts then began snugging them up. The hardest one to access is this little bish here, the stud is directly behind the crossbar for the hood latch:
You’re not able to get any sort of socket or ratchet on it, the only way to tighten it down is with a ratcheting wrench held INSIDE the opening, inside the hood. Don’t let go of the wrench or you’ll be spending the rest of the day going fishing!
Thankfully I didn’t let it slip out of my fingers.
Slowly and carefully run the nuts up to the underside of the hood, but DO NOT over tighten them. You WILL distort the hood skin on the topside and create pinch points that will be visible. Just gently snugged down is all they need to be.
On the topside, you’ll see that some of the butyl will have squished out the sides of the trim, don’t panic, this is good and what we want:
Pro tip: To remove this excess butyl, take a sharp razor knife and carefully score just the butyl. You’re not trying to cut right through it and possibly into the paint underneath, just partway through the butyl. Butyl loves to stick to itself even more than to your fingers, so take a very small piece of scrap butyl and roll it along over and next to the excess.
The excess will stick to the scrap piece and separate along your score line. Easy peasy, no mess, no cleanup, and no more excess:
Almost done. Next we need to install the header panel spear, just take some masking tape, and with the hood closed, align it to either side of the hood piece:
I like to use wide 2” tape for this, the wider it is the less deflection and stretching you can get with it, so the straighter it’ll be.
Peel and stick the header panel spear staying within the tape lines and matching the distance from the edge that the hood spear has, and press it down. The double sided tape that holds automotive trim on is pressure sensitive, so apply with firm pressure for several seconds.
Remove the tape, and voilà, the completed install!
I’m extremely pleased with the results, it breaks up the expanse of the hood nicely while still looking fairly stock. The contrast between the brushed finish trim against the dark metallic grey looks sharp in my opinion.
Another piece done and crossed off the list, onto the next!
D.
Hood and header panel spears, pretty simple right? Well yes, but there’s a few things that should be taken into account and here’s the (mostly) right way to do it. According to me at least.
First off, let’s talk about the header panel spear. The car originally came with a hood ornament, but if you recall I eliminated the rather large hole in the header for the spring that sits underneath the ornament, and instead made my own sleeker low profile spear that matches up with the hood one. This was done by cutting off the front of another hood spear found at the junkyard, turning it around so that the heights matched up, and creating a sculpted profile in the front of it that I felt was something like what the factory would’ve offered.
Once that was done, I filled in the void with JB Weld and sanded it to match my “new” profile. Then it was strip off all the old chrome plating and sand out the deep pitting that 40 years of age had left behind. Once that was completed, it was sanded with 180 to give it the brushed finish to match the rest of the trim:
With that outta the way for now, next I turned my attention to the hood spear. I sanded down the side and top profiles first with 80 grit, then used a Clean n Strip wheel on a die grinder to remove the old chrome and nickle plating and the pitting from this piece too. I found that a couple of cut down 2x4’s in the vise made a great impromptu holding jig to keep it from moving around without crushing the mounting studs:
Next I sanded the trim piece with 80, 180 and finally red ScotchBrite to get the final finish. Here it is in 180:
And after a little more refining in red ScotchBrite:
Back to the header panel spear real quick, because this is now a custom piece, there are no studs to attach it. A simple bit of thin 3M double sided tape on the backside takes care of that:
Returning to the hood spear, I dug out the black butyl strip caulk I had leftover from the quarter windows install:
This stuff is going to go around the mounting studs to seal out any water that might make its way inside the hood and into the engine compartment. When Olds Cool was poorly repainted in its past, whoever did the work didn’t do this waterproofing step when they reinstalled it. Every time I washed the car, it would constantly drip water from the stud above the carb into the recess in the air filter lid. Not the end of the world, but annoying to say the least.
Here’s a look at the spear mounting studs:
I took very small sections of the butyl and rolled them between my fingers to thin them out, then made them into little “donuts” to fit around the studs. All of the holes in the hood for the spear are oval with the exception of the very front one, so the excess butyl I tried to work to fit inside the trim in an oblong shape to seal off the oval shaped holes:
This is only half of the water proofing measures. I bought some new thread cutting nuts...
...then made some more butyl “donuts” and filled the void inside them next:
Time for the actual install. Placing the spear onto the hood and holding it, I started all 5 of the nuts then began snugging them up. The hardest one to access is this little bish here, the stud is directly behind the crossbar for the hood latch:
You’re not able to get any sort of socket or ratchet on it, the only way to tighten it down is with a ratcheting wrench held INSIDE the opening, inside the hood. Don’t let go of the wrench or you’ll be spending the rest of the day going fishing!
Thankfully I didn’t let it slip out of my fingers.
Slowly and carefully run the nuts up to the underside of the hood, but DO NOT over tighten them. You WILL distort the hood skin on the topside and create pinch points that will be visible. Just gently snugged down is all they need to be.
On the topside, you’ll see that some of the butyl will have squished out the sides of the trim, don’t panic, this is good and what we want:
Pro tip: To remove this excess butyl, take a sharp razor knife and carefully score just the butyl. You’re not trying to cut right through it and possibly into the paint underneath, just partway through the butyl. Butyl loves to stick to itself even more than to your fingers, so take a very small piece of scrap butyl and roll it along over and next to the excess.
The excess will stick to the scrap piece and separate along your score line. Easy peasy, no mess, no cleanup, and no more excess:
Almost done. Next we need to install the header panel spear, just take some masking tape, and with the hood closed, align it to either side of the hood piece:
I like to use wide 2” tape for this, the wider it is the less deflection and stretching you can get with it, so the straighter it’ll be.
Peel and stick the header panel spear staying within the tape lines and matching the distance from the edge that the hood spear has, and press it down. The double sided tape that holds automotive trim on is pressure sensitive, so apply with firm pressure for several seconds.
Remove the tape, and voilà, the completed install!
I’m extremely pleased with the results, it breaks up the expanse of the hood nicely while still looking fairly stock. The contrast between the brushed finish trim against the dark metallic grey looks sharp in my opinion.
Another piece done and crossed off the list, onto the next!
D.
Did I miss it? Did you put clearcoat over the brushed finish on the trim pieces?
Nope, you didn’t miss anything Quinn. The hood and header panel spears were installed “as is”, raw finish. I’m taking a bit of a gamble here by not clear coating them, consider me a guinea pig of sorts. The spears are pot metal same as the window trims and they haven’t oxidized any. So I’ma roll the dice and see if these hold up just as nicely.
If not, it’s not too big a deal to remove and scuff them for clear coating down the road.
I am usually not a hood trim fan, it actually makes the car look better. Canada day is almost here, one more day to help finish it off, get er done.
Alternate ideas- you can either use the rubber washers that go under the hood beneath the nuts for mounting the hood spear like the 83-84 H/O's used, p/n 3771494 (also used in earlier Chevies, etc.). Or you can fill the hollow trim nuts with the butyl stuff and seal the hole up on the bottom side, tighten them down and remove excess sealer. Probably won't ever have to remove the spear again, though. Then you don't have to risk the paint.
The method shown above is similar to what I did to my 84 H/O spoiler when I redid that car. I made little O-rings out of plumber's putty for sealing the holes. Rolled up the putty and wrapped them around the spoiler studs after placing the spacer and clear plastic spacer gasket on it and installed it that way. Stays flexible and excess squished through the top and the nut trapped the squished part and no cleanup was needed. Leak proof to this day.
They even make some of those speed nuts with sealer in them.
The method shown above is similar to what I did to my 84 H/O spoiler when I redid that car. I made little O-rings out of plumber's putty for sealing the holes. Rolled up the putty and wrapped them around the spoiler studs after placing the spacer and clear plastic spacer gasket on it and installed it that way. Stays flexible and excess squished through the top and the nut trapped the squished part and no cleanup was needed. Leak proof to this day.
They even make some of those speed nuts with sealer in them.
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