How's everyone doing?

[Nate]

Nash here, or aka Nate. Nate is a nick of mine btw.

Starting up another project- Painting dad's car.

Check out the progress here:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/74182...ay+of+bodywork

I'll likely be posting progress here as well. That was after the first day. I spent a lot of today as well. Today:

*Finished Skim coating /sanding both doors. Ready for primer and block sanding.
*Finished Blocksanding Roof. Ready for primer and wetsanding
*Completed about 1/2 of the spot repairs (large dings - metal work)
*Began welding subframe connectors
*Finished skim coating the spoiler (Ford left this wavy)...it bugged me
*Began block sanding the 1/4 panels..will skim coat tomorrow
*Finished the topmost section of the hood

The hood is going to be the biggest pain, as with most fiberglass hoods. Going to prime the top soon, and do some more rough block sanding and filling to see what else needs to be done. When the "scoop" part is done, then im going to block the rest of the hood. I don't think anything is needed but primer and just some good blocksanding.

The sides of the car, as far as the paint goes, is very nice. I could seriously just scuff and shoot this. The problem, is 15 years of nature's wrath. (door dings, etc). I've decided to take 80 grit to the car, and block sand it down to where the stock material is thin, then skim coat it, block it, prime it, block it, then prime another coat and begin wetsanding.

Things are moving along very well for only being two days along. Ill have some picture updates tomorrow. He wants is extremely straight (as straight as my Galaxie), and that's what I'll do for it.

For materials, we are using mainly PPG, 3M, and USC & Rage fillers. All the goodies.

Dad is doing all the grunt work. I told him that he still needs to remove stuff, such as the door handles and the windows. He's done really good so far. He's got all the trim and weather stripping off. Car is just metal inside now, he cleaned all that off. He's be doing extremely well as far as getting things ready for me.

[codman]

Hey not to bad bud, we just did a 85 GT at my work headache puttin back together haha. Hey what are you finishing off your filler with before priming? Make sure theres no big scratches cause over time thos will shrink and show bad. At the shop i work for quality is everything we finish down with 320 before priming. Also have you looked at spraying a polyester primer such as transtar or Feather FIll by evercoat. On resto jobs we spray 2 coats over the body work bake it and guide coat then block in 180. Its just like sprayable filler. Then once we got the body done we prepped it in 320 and da'd with 3m hookit 2 320 grit soft back. And Used are regular Sikkens Colorbuild primer. Your doing good just take your time and have fun.

Dan

[Nate]

My last car I restored, I used 180 grit before priming, and I didn't get any shrinkage at all. Then again, the restoration took me over 12 months, so I had time to alleviate all the shrinkage (if there was any). I used Omni Primers too (cheaper). I guess there's just two ways to do things. Some people go really soft on the grit sizes because they are afraid of shrinking. Some people go really coarse on the grit sizes because they are afraid of adhesion. I know of one person who uses 180 grit before his basecoat/clear!!!

I think 180 grit is a fine grit size as far as bodywork/priming goes. It's coarse, but it's not too coarse.

Ill keep an eye out for shrinkage though. So far, so good. I'll have some more pictures up by tonight. I am working on the 1/4's and rocker panels right now.

[Dork]

Looks like your doing just fine, Only thing I'd change is a 87-93 front end and qtr. windows..