looks like its commin along pretty good. that SEM stripper is some serious stuff, i use it at work alot. feels real good when u get it on ur arm. keep up the good work.
matt

 

Got a couple more cans of the SEM stripper, whew! I'll be doing the rest of the bumper when it cools off a bit more outside.

It was, just replaced all the pushrods. Really didn't feel like working on anything after it happened but it's running again.

Yeah the SEM stuff you can pretty much just take a puddy knife and the paint just falls off. The other stuff didn't get into the paint hardly at all. I did do the gas door off the car and the mirrors will be next. I'll be taking those off probably after this weekend when the car can be down for a long time.

 

i helped my ex bf with all the prep work when we were restorting his 82 trans am. the car was the original black with gold gfx, tan interior etc. its had about 5-6 owners. the owner before him painted it purple, then black again. my ex's fav. colour was purple, so he left it black, but theres alot of purple accents all over the car. his fan he painted purple, the defroster and other buttons on the dash have purple glitter on top of them (from the prev. owner...it looks gay), and the interior light bulb is purple...

since we've broken up, hes installed one of those fake NOS tanks thats a sub and its....PURPLE!

i feel bad for this car...but since we did alot of work on it, it looks better. he installed charcoal seats from a 4th gen in the front...cloth though. and put in a black carpet and interior panels from a parts car...painted his door panels black...the thing has a VERY odd teddy bear material headliner...very furry...but tan...along with the seat belts still being tan...so its still a little funny looking, but i respect the car still.

i cant wait to start doing the body work on my 84 bird...i wanna get the engine work done first though, and money is an issue...so this project is moving VERY slowly. but this is inspiration, so keep it up! keep up posted!

 

Hehehe I can see why he's an ex Doing the mechanical side of things first, like the engine, is a smart thing to do. You may have a crappy looking car but it'll run damn good. Then after it's painted, you wont have to worry about having a nice looking car that belches out blue smoke on start up lol.

Just a quick update while taking a break from sanding. Here's the difference in how the SEM stripper and the other brand work.

Here's what the other brand left behind,


Here's the SEM stripper after maybe 3 min on the same section,


That paint wrinkled up a lot faster than the other stuff which sometimes wouldn't even bubble up. Using the SEM brand on large flat sections you can take the putty knife and it scrapes off in sheets. So much nicer and faster.

 

yeap...thank god hes all in the past...yet he doesnt give me any credit for the car these days. hes got the bragging rights all right. but i made him keep the car, since he was tempted to sell it when i came into the picture, but made him keep it. and i found the parts car that he replaced his qaurter panel with and most of the interior. but do i get any credit, nope. oh well. lol.

wow, the SEM stripper stuff is awesome...i wanna go buy some and play lol. but im no where near body work stuff yet. how much does it cost? do u just spray it on and wait, then scrape it off? seems to simple...maybe thats just me...

 

It was $18 a can I think, might be some extra charges on it since I'm ordering it through the local Napa and they're getting it from a paint shop out of town. Pretty much just spray it on, wait about 10-15 min, scrape it off, hose it down with water to neutralize it then just give it a quick once over with some sand paper. At least that's what I've been doing, so far so good. Didn't get much done after posting the pics, friend of mine stopped by and we got to working on his truck. Going to be a mad dash to get things primered and back on the car for Saturday night's night at the track.

 

Use the DBU PPG it mixed 1 to 1 and covers very well. I use it on higher end car jobs and OMNI on cars people just want a shine on. The Omni clear is awesome, so if you are sticking to PPG I would not use anything than the OMNI Clear.


What headlights are you using? I really like that look.


Brian Felts
www.geocites.com/southernohioauto

 

ive used the OMNI clear before, i like it alot. give a good shine and hardens up pretty quick with a lil rocket accelorator.
matt

 

They're out of a chevy celebrity, they're also in the monte carlo LS cars. I'll have to get a pic of the car today, looks so much better all one color again

 

Not the greatest pic but I just took this a few min ago. Now all the real work begins, getting everything straight.

 

lookin good...love the #'s from the track on the pass. side window lol.

 

hehehe I had just rolled it off the trailer and decided to take a pic. Friday night it had the front and rear bumper off, tail lights out, no side ground fx, no door handle or lock and the inside door panel was off. Spent about 8 hours on it friday night to get it ready for Saturday's track day. The dragstrip's site finally updated with some pics from last month when I was there. Here's one they took of the car, eww.

 

looking better and better!

 

Thanks Haven't done anything to the car, body wise, in the past week Going to do a bit tonight though. Here's another pic from the dragstrip website showing a blury pic of the back of the car. Looked much better this time around mostly one color

 

Went around the car tonight finding and marking all the dings and spots that need body filler, 35 of them. Most are due to the removal of the door moulding, 3 are from shaving the rear wiper, rear squirter and antenna and the rest are just regular dings. 3 of the spots are done so far and went pretty quick. I'll get some pictures within the next couple days when more has been done.

 

Your making good progress! Thats the only way i can get anything done is to really stay on it.

Love the shots coming out of the hole! The car is really straight,nice to see it in all one color uh?

I have my car running so good right now wish i could do that. I need a set of drag radials still. IM dying to get it back on the dyno and get some track times. Taken me 4 years to work the bugs out, and get a good combo of parts.

 

Yeah it's real nice to have it one color, doesn't look so crappy now. That's changing slowly though with all the bare spots that are showing up hehe.

So here's another little update, no more ugly antenna hole! here's a series of pics closing it up.

Placed a bit of tape over the hole and cut around the inside to make a template. Placed the round bit of tape on some metal and cut to shape. To make it easy to place in there I took the unispotter and tacked on a stud.


The hole was a bit deformed so I got it back into better shape


With that done, the filler piece fit right in.


Yay for ugly spot welds!


Good thing you just grind it all off


Another thing I did was weld in the hole a while back for the rear wiper. Got that smoothed out last night with some filler. Should come out great after some high build primer and blocking. I was really surprised about how big of a low spot there was, didn't seem that bad before.

 

i shaved my antenna too....looks much cleaner that way.

 

My arms are dead from all the sanding on the side. Still need to do a bit more but took a nice sized chunk out of the work tonight.

 

Very nice! I like how you closed off the antenna hole, perfect!

 

Car is coming along great...Keep it up.

I love the way you are still keeping it on the road while doing the work too.

I may be undertaking a similar project soon myself and will be watching this thread closely.

 

when you broke the motor did it make noise all the time or just under acelleration?

 

Looks awesome. Wish I had the time and energy for that

 

All the time. Sounded like it was missing and someone was tapping on the valve cover with a small hammer. Couldn't hear anything till I took my helmet off on the return road. Basicly it was like having a loose rocker because that was what it was, with a pushrod missing an end.


Taking another break from the car after doing the side work, have had company from England here but they're leaving in a couple days.

Edit, well forget the break. I tried my hand at aligning the rear hatch decklid again and finally got it really close. Bottomed out the adjustment there was without taking out the plastic isolators and it looks a ton better. Probably moved in about 3/8ths going by where the old sealer was. What a job if you're doing it alone, the torques bit in the impact gun worked really well. Didn't have to stand there holding the glass up with my sholder for more than a couple seconds on each side.

 

That hatch is a pain. seems like a common problem with our cars.

 

Finally got down to the paint store Friday and picked up 2 quarts of PPG K36 high build primer. They dinged me 132 bucks for that and the 2 little bottles of catalyst. But hey, at least I got more free strainers and mixing sticks! Work continues on the car Sunday since today I'm heading to the hills for some off-roading in the Toyota

 

Car looks nice, though I wouldn't have shaved the rear wiper. I wish my car had one. The antenna on the other hand, I would like to shave that, or at least get a power antenna.

 

I have sinced undertaken the same type of job. I took the car almost entirely apart and began the process of prepping it for paint.

Any updates on this project?

 

Not really Work has really picked up and I haven't had much time to do body work. Thinking about taking a few days off work just to get something done on it. I have picked up some high build primer though hehe. Me being a night owl, I'm going to be working on it a bit tonight starting onto the driver's side door which is pretty bad.

 

Cool...I understand as I'm finding out it can be extremely tedious and time consuming work.

I'm still undecided on who is actually going to paint the car. I was planning on doing it myself but I'm kinda leery of undertaking such a task. I really have no controlled enviroment to do it in either, although I guess I could setup some kinda of temp room in the garage. I figured I would do all the disassembly prep work and prime the car, send it out for the paint and I would put it back together. I'm starting to change my mind though....

Are you painting in an ordinary garage?

Would you recommend a first timer doing the paint too? I really would like to learn how to do a complete paint job...Thanks...

 

You gotta start somewhere if you want to paint it yourself. I was nervous as could be painting my first vehicle but it turned out great. Of course it helped that I was taking a class and had the instructor in there with me. I'm looking to rent a paint booth at a local body shop but I might spray some at home just to save time. Were you thinking of single stage or base coat clear coat? Metallic or solid color?

 

Yay for dead arms again. Got all the spots filled where I welded up the trim holes. Also got 2 other dents on the driver's fender taken care of and a couple small ones on the door. Tomorrow, err later today, I'll take care of the one by the gas door and the big wavy area by the door handle. Next weekend I should be able to start laying down some K36 and start blocking the car out.

 

I was planning on something like a silver or platinum, base coat/clear coat.

I'm out there sanding away myself today, just came in for a little break.

 

Metallics I kinda wouldn't recommend for a first timer since you're likely to get "tiger stripes" light and dark stripes in the paint. If it's a solid color, go for it and don't run the color. You can run the clear all you want and just sand all the spots out but that's a lot of extra work. A guy did that with a Chevy truck once, had clear coat hanging from the rocker panel down to the ground lol.

 

Great job man!
I'm impressed with the effort.
Lookin' fwd to seein' it in person.
Think you'll come down to Sac in the spring?

 

I'll go down again if I'm not busy playing in the snow Past couple years it's lasted till the end of June in spots. But yeah, I'd like to go back down there and see what the car can do. Shouldn't have the problem with breaking pushrods anymore.

 

any more recent updates?

 

Dont leave me hangin,very nice work..

 

it didn't turn out like i hoped it would but definatly an improvement. good luck on yours

 

Sorry, no updates. Weather has turned too cold to do any work on the car Probably wont get back into working on it again till spring time. Sucks I have a heated shop to do all kinds of work in but I'd rather not spray or sand inside the shop due to the mess it makes. That boost in work at my job really killed the time I had this year to get some color on the car. Oh well, I'll be doing a couple of little projects on it over the winter, just nothing paint wise.

 

So the work begins again after a long break. Said I was going to wait till it warms up again well, it hit 100 yesterday and will be hotter today lol. Been really busy with work so the car's paint job has been on the back burner

Anyway, starting out slow I decided to take the side ground fx off and the side mirrors. This is in preperation of sanding the car down, spraying K36 high build primer and then blocking the car out. Hope I get a lot done in the next few days (taking time off work) so I can finally get some color on this thing.

Here's some pics of the mirrors.

Never been off the car before so here's the factory silver paint showing.


Yucky white paint which has turned more into a cream color over the years because of the crappy clear I used.


The guts of the mirror taken out.


Out of the bead blaster, nice clean metal.


Both sides, could use a bit more done on the one.


I'll get these in primer later today and maybe start on blocking the hood. Lots and lots of sanding ahead of me and I'm not looking forward to it.

 

Its lookin good. I am planning on repainting mine sometime in the near future. It definitely makes a huge difference in how the car looks. Nice work so far

 

ya man, back at it!

 

progress looks like its coming along great..cant wait to see some color on this car

 

your my hero!