rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_5beedad5-6db5-5424-95ae-f5847fb309fe.jpg" alt="It may be typical of do-it-yourselfers..."/>
It may be typical of do-it-yourselfers, but I’m a slow learner. This was my lesson in “paint cars only for yourself.” I bought this ’40 Ford sedan, with a non-running Olds engine and blown (out the bottom) early Ford trans, at a swap meet for $1,200. I figured I’d do the bodywork, get it running, paint it black lacquer, and sell it for a tidy profit. Being a California car, it was sounder than it looked, with no body rot and only minor dents. The part I didn’t figure was that someone had sanded much of the body (including the whole roof and one side) to bare metal with a grinder, then let it sit out 14 years. The surface rust was impenetrable, and I didn’t dare grind the metal any further. So I finally resorted to some icky, yellow, spray-on “rust converter” that chemically changes rust into…something else.
After getting the engine running, installing a new trans, doing other mechanical work, killing the rust, hammer-and-dollying, filling, block sanding, and lacquer priming, the car didn’t look much better, but it was progressing. A cheap repro grille, lights, and bumpers helped.
Once the mechanicals were redone, the body and paint were really the easy part. But when it came to all new upholstery, interior/dash trim, new glass, running boards, wheels/tires, and so on, it got to be a losing proposition in a hurry. I forget what I sold it for, but it wasn’t nearly enough to cover my costs and labor. That’s the last time I tried that.
Okay, this introduction is getting lengthy, but I hope instructive. Besides the lessons already taught, I just want to stress that whatever else I have to teach in this book, I have learned by doing, making mistakes, and asking lots of questions.
Many books of this type are written by (or with) professional painters or shops that have perfected a specific system that works for them. That doesn’t help much if something goes wrong, and it’s very hard to preach one system in today’s ever-changing world of paint products and equipment. This is especially true if you’re painting at home in your garage, not in professional shop conditions. On the other hand, some books are written by people who work for, or are “sponsored by,” a particular paint (or polish) company, and therefore push a single brand of products. Not only are such books skewed, but today they are out of date as quickly as they are printed. More on this later, but I avoid specifying products by name and number in this book because (1) as soon as I named them, they’d be superceeded, and (2) I’m not sponsored by anybody.
This one was pure fun. About the time nostalgia drag racing got started, I found this old Altered sitting ignored in someone’s backyard. The owner obviously didn’t want it, letting me have what you see here for $300. Honest.
Other than adding an extra hoop to the roll cage and rebuilding the brakes, I didn’t have to do anything but clean and paint it. I used “Urethane Black” spray cans on the frame, which were excellent (but no longer available), and sprayed things like the axle, spring, and radius rods with a Mercedes silver. Several other parts I had cad plated, which is really cheap.
The fiberglass body and grille shell had never been painted, so I sanded off mold lines, primed them, and sprayed them Corvette Yellow in single stage, glossy, catalyzed enamel. No rub out needed.
The injected Chrysler Hemi was an extra $500 and needed a couple of new parts. The very talented Steve Stanford added the turned gold-leaf “Low Buck Special” and “Pure Purgatory” lettering, along with painted-on teardrop taillights and license reading “Cheap.” And, no, that’s not me in the driver’s seat. I like the building part, not the scary part.
Let’s end with this ’53 Chevy, which became my most involved car project. I wanted to promote ’50s rods at Rod & Custom magazine, and my cousin’s inherited coupe looked like a cherry-pie prospect—until we stripped it down and bead-blasted it to bare metal. Since it was a magazine project, I got some expert help repairing the worst sheetmetal and filling/peaking the hood.
I still did the vast majority of the car in my own garage. I didn’t remove the doors because they fit well and the bead blasting cleaned the jambs thoroughly. But the entire interior was stripped, all glass but the rear window was removed, and all the front sheet metal came off (a few times). With some bodywork and custom modifications, here is the car coated in PPG K200 (an excellent high-fill primer that is no longer available), prior to a lot of block and board sanding.
I painted the dash and window frames charcoal gray to match the upholstery. But note the quality of paint and detailing in the doorjambs. It was easy to paint these when all the interior and glass were out of the car. But this sort of detail is what makes the difference between a regular and really high-quality paint job. It just takes time and effort.
Since it was a magazine project car, that meant it was the first time I didn’t have to work within my own personal budget, so it’s, by far, the nicest car I’ve built. I just had to do most of the work myself, which included filling, smoothing, and painting the firewall, inner fender panels, under the hood, splash aprons, and lots of other parts, all in the 3-stage pearl with clear.
This paint color sort of came about as a mistake, or a compromise. This was the ’80s period when pastels were briefly popular on street rods. I would have painted the car competition orange (or black), but we went for a custom mix somewhere between cantaloupe and watermelon—just a solid-color lacquer (non-metallic). But after I painted the car this color, it looked like an atomic-reactive pumpkin. It glowed in the dark. So I decided to soften and tone it down with a lighter pearl coat, which became known as “Peach Pearl.” It might not be the color I’d choose today (I’d go with the black), but I have to say it’s probably the best paint job I’ve done. And it’s the first pearl I did on a big, full-size vehicle. Nobody told me to spray it like a candy, so I’m lucky it came out even.
