What did you do to your G-Body today 2024

Ran up to the Gbody classic car show in Medina Ohio
284 miles, 16.8 gallons used, 16.9mpg avg between 2 tanks...running 65-70.
Pretty darn good start for a Fresh 482BBC that hasn't been fully sorted out with a carburator
 

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I was able to paint the Driver side today. . Again, and again there was a spray problem with the gun but I got it sorted out with Lacquer Thinner. However we are still under a Heat Warning and I may not be able to start clear coating again until Tuesday Morning possibly.

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you use a semi-gloss/flat clear it'll show less imperfections and still provide the protection you're after..
At one point, when I was over at the Paint Supply shop, I did enquire about semi-gloss/flat clear, and they did have it in stock. Only issue was that it was Catalysed system, meaning that I would have to go with the clear, the reducer, and the catalyst, and do the mix in order to use the product. Again, not that much of issue, except for the cost of the components and the fact that the minimum materials I would have had to buy for what was, essentially, a jamb gun shot, would have been enough to shoot the whole car. I honestly couldn't see purchasing such expensive materials only to have most of it subsequently end up sitting on a shelf for the balance of its useable life. My budget and wallet considered the cha-ching sounds of the cash register as it waited to swallow my meager pennies and put the kibosh on the acquisition. Hence the gloss version.

I have been told that old school painters actually had a technique where they could flatten a gloss finish by adding either talcum or baby powder to the formula and shooting that. I have never seen any instructions or video on how that would work and the article appeared in a 70 year old Car magazine so time and chemistry have arguably moved on. That said though, anyone here on the board ever seen or encountered this method in action???? Curious/Interested.



Nick
 
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I was able to paint the Driver side today. . Again, and again there was a spray problem with the gun but I got it sorted out with Lacquer Thinner. However we are still under a Heat Warning and I may not be able to start clear coating again until Tuesday Morning possibly.

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You really want a shooter who pushes paint for a living to comment on this, but I do seem to recall that there is a "window" or maximum amount of time that can occur between a first shot and the second pass. Outside of that time limit, the second shot can be taken but you have to do something like a color sand to set the surface up to accept the followup coat. Again, gotta point out here that this is paint chemistry way beyond my skill set and you need a wiser head to weigh in on this.



Nick
 
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Did yet another color sand on that pestiferous cover to see how well the first coats had laid down. A few bumps and humps rose out of the background but that was to be expected. This panel is far from "factory flat" and go get it this far has been something of a serious exercise in patience and perseverance. Shot the, hopefully, last coats last night, athough I think I might have picked up a wandering bit of lint that just happened to find a freshly shot coat of paint attractive for some reason. No plans to be in the shop this evening, The current outside temperature is 84 F., with a humidity level of 53% adding a few more degrees on top of that. Not supposed to come down any over night either. The WeatherHeads are yodelling about Heat Alerts and staying cool, with the periodic burble about thunder and lightning and possibly gerbils and weavils and lemurs, OH MY.

Non Sequitur but sort of related to the heat thing is that I have the A/C repair dude schedule for early AM tomorrow as my house A/C is having issues. Nothing terminal, just not blowing cold as it should or shutting off without help. There is a valve or something along that line in one of the delivery lines that seems to have a very short life span. This same thing happened about this time for the last two years and both so-called fixes seemed to come with very short life spans.


Nick
Post Script of sorts: Turns out that this time it is the A/C compressor that is the culprit. The unit is 15 years old which is the lower limit for its operating life span. So now I have to decide whether to buy, or rent, or maybe rent to own if they do that kind of arrangement. For now it got a shot of refrigerant to get it to actually cool the house down and I am counting pennies for that instead of for project parts. BOTHER!!!!!


Nick
 
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Post Script of sorts: Turns out that this time it is the A/C compressor that is the culprit. The unit is 15 years old which is the lower limit for its operating life span. So now I have to decide whether to buy, or rent, or maybe rent to own if they do that kind of arrangement. For now it got a shot of refrigerant to get it to actually cool the house down and I am counting pennies for that instead of for project parts. BOTHER!!!!!


Nick
I'm in the process of getting estimates for my house now. our downstairs unit decided to crap out 3 days before we left for Europe last month. that unit is currently 25 yrs old and you can't get R-22 cheaply enough for even a temporary leak fix.
 
Learned the hard way to never paint over E-coat again.
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Had just enough epoxy primer left to mix for one coat. Anywhere there was black E-coat left on, rust was starting to poke through.
Stripped down to bare metal and primed in 3 hours. I’ve officially had enough for one weekend.
that's a tough one,you did the rite thing though.i've seen that myself and justifying stripping it off to managment was even worse.they would ask "can we return it for another one"..(they're so far removed from it all..)there's a bit of marketing to be had with ecoat,i remember way back seeing the uber cheap aftermarket parts with claims on the packaging "900 hours of salt spray tested"..
 
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Just before a Vay-Kay, ya say? Sounds like perfect timing from a mechanical perspective. Our toys do so love to fail and betray us when we least expect it and even lesser desire it.

In my own case, while I happen to own the unit outright, I also happen to have a service and maintenance contract with the vendor because it also covers my furnace and tankless hot water heater. For that I pay a monthly fee but the work gets done with no charge to me. The only exception was a heat exchanger that rusted out two years ago. At the time the furnace was only 13 years old and the exchanger had a 20 year warranty on it so I went out and bought another one, turned the corpse for the old one in for the warranty, which was honored so no hit to my wallet and then paid the labor to get the new one installed. About 200 bucks +/-.

The technician managed to pump enough refrigerant back into the system that it is now both cycling properly and back to short cycles with rest time in between. Right now outside it is around middle 80's with a humidex somewhere around 80%; supposed to rain again tonight, had a nice hour or so of Flashing Lights and Cannon Boomers last night.

So the immediate concern has been met and temporarily resolved. Still waiting on the Heating/A-C rep to get back to me with the quotes I asked for. He might be a minute because this is the absolutely busy season for him and I am in no hurry to shell a couple of large for another unit. Yeah, I could rent and it seems more and more people are taking that route but it adds more to my basic overhead costs and it never ends. I buy a unit and it goes on the service list. No rental, just the monthly service fee but because the A/C is part of the furnace the total charge shouldn't change. Something to ask about.


Nick
 
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Got some more engraving back. B pillars, windshield trim and cowl. B pillars went super smooth and I fully see the explanation you guys shared with changing them.
Windshield trim, tried not to snap the clips . They were super old so broke a couple. Got brand new clips removed all the old ones and cleaned everything up and installed all new clips. Then realized that my engraver sent me the wrong top windshield trim lol. It's 2" too short. Lol. The valance, went easy peezy. I think it looks pretty good. Can't wait to get the windshield trim back together vs mocked up here lol.
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Made an attempt at a mount to get the bigger screen up top, I ended up just deciding to steal the screen off the GTO to put on for the time being. After more debating thinking of moving the bigger screen down below and the other one up cause it looks like it would fit in there. Then cleaned it up late Friday night and took it to the G Body Classic, relatively worry free driving except for the hot start issue still persisting. On the way home ended up getting the wire to smoke going to the distribution block after a good bit of cranking and annoyance, so gonna look into that some more before I truly burn the car down
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