You know I'm just busting your balls!
Sincerely.
King Send It
Sincerely.
King Send It
BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
But will you subsidize the necessary shop expansion?😃
Twice! But would have to be a lot more careful on trip 2. 🙂
Guys, I’ve been absolutely crushing it on the ole “things to get done” list lately, so y’all are gonna get another update again from The Skunkworks already.
I’ve been working on the rear bumper redo/upgrade from before I redid the console, some of you may have noticed the bumper in the background of some of the pictures. Well I’m happy to report that it’s officially finished up and back on the car.
Just a brief recap.
I had removed the original bumper and given it the brushed finish back in the summer and topped it off with a nicer impact strip I scored at the junkyard. It was ok, but because the chrome finish on it was original and in poor shape, there was lots of pitting and some peeling apparent in the high visibility areas. It looked ok from 20’ away, but any closer it was quite noticeable how rough it was.
Less than a month after spending all those hours giving it the brushed finish, I managed to make a once in a lifetime score of two better condition bumpers for the car, front and rear. Doesn’t that just figure.
This is the rear bumper from that acquisition.
Looking at the backside, someone had decided to put it on a weight reduction program and had cut out the center section of the steel reinforcement with a torch. Good intent, but poor execution. Plus it was extremely dirty and rusty as all get out:
In with the acquisition of the bumpers, the seller had also thrown in a rare aluminum rear reinforcement for free:
Free, because it unfortunately was in very poor condition, and we were unsure if I was even going to be able to do anything with it. As you can see in the following pictures, the aluminum had suffered from accelerated oxidation and delamination from the incompatibility of the dissimilar metals. (Anytime aluminum and steel are in direct contact with each other, they’re supposed to be separated with a non-conductive buffer, such as a gasket or isolator, or this happens).
Looks ok here...
...but on closer inspection it was REALLY rough:
At first, I was tempted to trim off the delaminating sections and just send it, but the deciding factor came when I removed the shock mounting plates. The aluminum was so heavily oxidized underneath, the mounting surfaces were extremely uneven and even had holes corroded right through!
This thing was junk, unusable even for my wonder-working skills.
So I then made the executive decision to reuse the original steel reinforcement that came on the car. Yes, it’s extremely heavy, but it’s weight in the right area: behind the back tires. It will help with not only weight transfer under acceleration, but also in the weight distribution over the car. Our cars are almost always nose heavy, no matter what’s under the hood.
Before the reinforcement could be installed, I had to do some damage control and rust inhibiting on the inside of the new bumper. The existing rust was hit with the Clean N Strip wheel, then treated with some rust converter:
After a couple of applications and rinsing of the areas, I shot the entire backside with VHT Cast Aluminum paint, just as I did with the front bumper:
Then it was on to giving the outside of it the brushed nickel finish, hours and hours and hours of repetitive hand and finger killing sanding (again!):
Now if I’m to be perfectly honest here, I’m a little disappointed with this newer bumper. It appears to have been rechromed at some point in it’s life, and has obviously had many many miles put on it since. Still a fair amount of pitting in it, TONS of scratches up by the gas tank filler neck, thin chrome in areas, the list goes on. I did the best I could with it, short of having it completely and professionally stripped and re-plated, which probably ain’t gonna happen.
My pockets aren’t that deep.
Anyways, once the outside finished getting the brushed finish, I removed the original bumper from the car and proceeded to blow it apart to get at the inner reinforcement. Rather than screw around with all the rusty- assed fasteners, I spent a few minutes with the angle grinder and just ground all the heads off everything. It made a pretty good mess, but it sped things up significantly.
Take a look at the amount of crap that came out from in between the two halves!!
That’s a solid 10lb weight savings right there!
As expected, the inner reinforcement was pretty scabby, so after a bit of “de-rustification”, it got a couple decent coats of VHT Satin Black.
Ok, all the dirty nasty work done now. It was time to assemble it with some new Stainless carriage bolts and washers, and NyLoc nuts again just as I did with the front bumper:
With the two halves now married together, I installed the impact strip, and the freshly painted filler panels that were done when I painted the front ones.
Looks like a bumper again!
The assembled bumper was now so heavy that I had to enlist the step son to give me a hand getting it off the table and onto the car, but once it was slid in the framerails, I was able to finish it off from there.
Last night I got him to lend a hand one last time, and we got the quarter to bumper filler panels installed and aligned.
Done deal, I’m tired of sanding chrome!!
Just don’t look too close, it’s definitely not perfect. For what I wanted to accomplish for this car though, it’s good enough for now.
Sorry for the poor camera angles, but I couldn’t get any further away from it for a better view.
That’s it for now guys, I’m off to tackle finally rocker-guarding the passenger side pinch weld and rocker. (It’s only been like 6 months since I did the driver’s side, so I really wanna knock it off the “to-do” list too).
Hope y’all enjoyed this update, and the significant progress I’m making now on the Olds girl.
D.
I’ve been working on the rear bumper redo/upgrade from before I redid the console, some of you may have noticed the bumper in the background of some of the pictures. Well I’m happy to report that it’s officially finished up and back on the car.
Just a brief recap.
I had removed the original bumper and given it the brushed finish back in the summer and topped it off with a nicer impact strip I scored at the junkyard. It was ok, but because the chrome finish on it was original and in poor shape, there was lots of pitting and some peeling apparent in the high visibility areas. It looked ok from 20’ away, but any closer it was quite noticeable how rough it was.
Less than a month after spending all those hours giving it the brushed finish, I managed to make a once in a lifetime score of two better condition bumpers for the car, front and rear. Doesn’t that just figure.
This is the rear bumper from that acquisition.
Looking at the backside, someone had decided to put it on a weight reduction program and had cut out the center section of the steel reinforcement with a torch. Good intent, but poor execution. Plus it was extremely dirty and rusty as all get out:
In with the acquisition of the bumpers, the seller had also thrown in a rare aluminum rear reinforcement for free:
Free, because it unfortunately was in very poor condition, and we were unsure if I was even going to be able to do anything with it. As you can see in the following pictures, the aluminum had suffered from accelerated oxidation and delamination from the incompatibility of the dissimilar metals. (Anytime aluminum and steel are in direct contact with each other, they’re supposed to be separated with a non-conductive buffer, such as a gasket or isolator, or this happens).
Looks ok here...
...but on closer inspection it was REALLY rough:
At first, I was tempted to trim off the delaminating sections and just send it, but the deciding factor came when I removed the shock mounting plates. The aluminum was so heavily oxidized underneath, the mounting surfaces were extremely uneven and even had holes corroded right through!
This thing was junk, unusable even for my wonder-working skills.
So I then made the executive decision to reuse the original steel reinforcement that came on the car. Yes, it’s extremely heavy, but it’s weight in the right area: behind the back tires. It will help with not only weight transfer under acceleration, but also in the weight distribution over the car. Our cars are almost always nose heavy, no matter what’s under the hood.
Before the reinforcement could be installed, I had to do some damage control and rust inhibiting on the inside of the new bumper. The existing rust was hit with the Clean N Strip wheel, then treated with some rust converter:
After a couple of applications and rinsing of the areas, I shot the entire backside with VHT Cast Aluminum paint, just as I did with the front bumper:
Then it was on to giving the outside of it the brushed nickel finish, hours and hours and hours of repetitive hand and finger killing sanding (again!):
Now if I’m to be perfectly honest here, I’m a little disappointed with this newer bumper. It appears to have been rechromed at some point in it’s life, and has obviously had many many miles put on it since. Still a fair amount of pitting in it, TONS of scratches up by the gas tank filler neck, thin chrome in areas, the list goes on. I did the best I could with it, short of having it completely and professionally stripped and re-plated, which probably ain’t gonna happen.
My pockets aren’t that deep.
Anyways, once the outside finished getting the brushed finish, I removed the original bumper from the car and proceeded to blow it apart to get at the inner reinforcement. Rather than screw around with all the rusty- assed fasteners, I spent a few minutes with the angle grinder and just ground all the heads off everything. It made a pretty good mess, but it sped things up significantly.
Take a look at the amount of crap that came out from in between the two halves!!
That’s a solid 10lb weight savings right there!
As expected, the inner reinforcement was pretty scabby, so after a bit of “de-rustification”, it got a couple decent coats of VHT Satin Black.
Ok, all the dirty nasty work done now. It was time to assemble it with some new Stainless carriage bolts and washers, and NyLoc nuts again just as I did with the front bumper:
With the two halves now married together, I installed the impact strip, and the freshly painted filler panels that were done when I painted the front ones.
Looks like a bumper again!
The assembled bumper was now so heavy that I had to enlist the step son to give me a hand getting it off the table and onto the car, but once it was slid in the framerails, I was able to finish it off from there.
Last night I got him to lend a hand one last time, and we got the quarter to bumper filler panels installed and aligned.
Done deal, I’m tired of sanding chrome!!
Just don’t look too close, it’s definitely not perfect. For what I wanted to accomplish for this car though, it’s good enough for now.
Sorry for the poor camera angles, but I couldn’t get any further away from it for a better view.
That’s it for now guys, I’m off to tackle finally rocker-guarding the passenger side pinch weld and rocker. (It’s only been like 6 months since I did the driver’s side, so I really wanna knock it off the “to-do” list too).
Hope y’all enjoyed this update, and the significant progress I’m making now on the Olds girl.
D.
Last edited:
Jesus. You do amazing work, then go back and redo, your redo!
It wasn’t really so much a “redo of a redo”, but more like a “redo of a did”. Twice. On each bumper, front and rear.
😝
I hate doing shjt twice, but in this case the juice was (mostly) worth the squeeze or I wouldn’t have bothered. Needless to say, I’m pretty done with bumpers for a good long while!
Nice Azz! 😆
OldsCool is really a beautiful car Donovan you've done an amazing job bringing her back from the brink, so many details and improvements. 👍
OldsCool is really a beautiful car Donovan you've done an amazing job bringing her back from the brink, so many details and improvements. 👍
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