[Touring919]

Here is a couple of series shots along with the most amazing time saver when it comes to body work.
passenger side roof corner that needed a patch that came from an incorrect roof. So there is “some” imperfections I need to fill in.

IR linear sander. I have a board sander that works fine. But man this thing flys through the filler. And it doesn’t cause tennis elbow.

after 10 minutes of sanding. All done! That would have been nearly an hour by hand plus some advil. For sure one must keep moving and pay attention. Doesn’t take long with power sanders to go too far. If so add more filler and repeat.

down inside the gutter is all hand sanding of course.
basically just rinse and repeat over the whole car from here. Then seal it again before going to the surfacers.

 

[Touring919]

Better picture of the sander. It is hungry. I had a husky 5hp 60 gal compressor. It wasn’t enough and would end up filling the sander with water due to condensation. It didn’t work for crap once the bearings got wet. I upgraded my air supply so this thing can run all day long with no issues now

 

[Touring919]

One gallon of filler later and it’s all straight. Or at least as straight as it needs to be.
Used the long board hand sander to find the high spots.

those get taped down before filling. Then of course lots of sanding.
this is how it looked just before putting the final coat of epoxy down. Well what I thought was final.

once I got the final epoxy coat on I saw a couple more trouble spots that needed touch up. One was a spot of filler I didn’t fully sand. The other was a deep but small ding I just didn’t see before.
Once those were fixed I re sprayed just those spots with epoxy. Waited a couple hours and sprayed the jp202 primer surfacer. Inside of that waiting window I also put a layer of weld sealer down inside the rain gutters.

basically ready for color……once I get the rest of the panels ready to go too.

 

[LARSOFVT]

Looks good from that angle. Is the weld sealer you used a brush on type seam sealer?

 

[Touring919]

Yes it is brush on. Wurth

 

[Touring919]

Starting on the “easy” stuff this weekend. Trunk lid from donor car. Hood from random Facebook find. Fenders, one original and one from donor car.
Hood is in great shape. Had a small spot of rust to repair on the braces. Trunk lid. Different story.
when it comes to old rusty parts it is a lot like politicians. You pick the lesser of the evils.
This is the clean trunk lid.

the wire wheel never holds back the truth. Time to get to cutting and bending and welding.

will update soon when it is all patched up and smoothed out.

 

[Touring919]

Trunk lid turned out well.

time to givethe air compressor a workout again. Media blastedthe trunk lid. Hood and both fenders. Inside and out.

after the trunk lid I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the pile of sand. Glass actually. The dust pan gives it some perspective. Just scoop it back in the hopper and keep going until it is done.
then seal it up.

Below are the panels after a good coat of CRE. Above is the por15 I brushed in after the sealer top coat. Didn’t want white visible when the hood was open. So black por15 was the one step solution instead of coating cre and then something else black.

yes I did spray with about 200 lbs of dust on the floor! Priority was sealing bare metal. Not having dust free "paint". Everything gets sanded smooth so really some contaminated is not a concern at this stage. Plus sand is heavy. It will not magically start to float. I’d have to kick it or blow it with air. Notice under the fenders that are close to the ground the floor is very clean. Made sure that was clean so that when separating the low spots I didn’t blow dust around.

 

[Touring919]

Next was smoothing the dings and dents.

these panels were not bad. The original fender had a fair number of battle scares but still cleaned up nice. Had my helper running the air sander. She liked that way more than the elbo grease method.
Once happy with how straight everything felt it was another cre coat to seal and then a surfacer of jp202. Same process as the main body.

looking good!
However. No matter how straight something looks or feels. ….The long board never lies.

high spots are where the white cre is coming thru. Light gray is sanded. Dark gray is where the board didn’t touch. Another coat or two of surfacer should fill these in. They are not actually as uneven as the contrasting colors make it appear. It is a lot of flat steel so I am being a little more picky about getting these very straight.

 

[galaxiex]

Coming along nicely!
Cool that you have a little helper.

What is CRE?

 

[Touring919]

A word about paint philosophy. Ask 5 different painters and you will get 5 different answers. Heck you ask me and I’ll give you two!

how I have done things in the past. But not on this build or any future jobs.
1. metal work first. Cutting welding hammering
2. Filler work (bondo)
3. primer
4. color and clear
This has worked and I have an example that i still own with 12 year old restoration. Paint still looks good and my bondo, part store grade, filler is invisible under the paint. And trust me on this truck I didn’t follow the rule of don’t put it on too thick. It was my first go at a restoration. I think my care to ensure metal was always very clean is saving my rear in this case.

This build and likely forever in the future this is my preferred order layers.
1. Metal work
2. Epoxy primer
3. Filler and all the sanding that burns thru that original primer coat.
4. Epoxy again to seal up exposed bare metal and seaup that plastic filler.
5. Primer surfacer ( 2k primer builder) to ensure all scratches are filled in and very minor low spots that filler is to heavy for.
6. Color and clear

I’ve heard of people mixing up the order of steps 2, 3, 4, and 5. I don’t feel strongly about it other than I would push to seal things up at some point under the paint. Makes most sense to me to do it early as possible. Once stripped metal can flash rust quickly so waiting to seal is a bad idea.

Sanding grits. I recommend looking at your data sheets for the coatings you plan to use. That includes filler. They all have sheets that provide the grit that is best for adhesion. So don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the company that is warantying their products. I suppose I could say the same thing about asking how to layer them but the data sheets don’t say anything about order. Some will detail compatible coatings.

As a side note. Growing up near Pittsburgh I always knew of PPG and knew they were a paint supplier. Always thought PPG stood for Pittsburgh paint and something. Reading today about some local history and saw that PPG stands for Pittsburgh Plate Glass. (They had a large factory in Charleroi where I was eating lunch today). Started as a glass company and grew into a chemical giant that also makes alot of paint. Now I know.

 

[Touring919]

Last of the disassembly. Getting doors ready for body work while I wait for the booth to heat up.

Figured I’d give a step by step of disassembling the doors.
staring point is removal of the vent window. It captures the side glass so I really think this needs to come out first. It’s take 10 mins so it really isn’t a big deal if your goal is only to get the side glass out. Any way here we go!

remove all the screws circled. There are 3 screws (or bolts) and 2 nuts total.

Close up of the crank mechanism for the vent window. The least obvious screw that must come out is the center one which is sort of a set screw to hold the vent windows axle in the crank mechanism. Leave the mechanism bolts tight.

there were two nuts removed with square washers under them. They are attached to adjustable studs. It is best to remove these. Otherwise they catch on everything when trying to slide the vent window frame out.
with all those removed it just slides up and out. May take some wiggling to work the window axle free from the mechanism. It is a snug fit in there.

after the window and frame is out the mechanism can be easily removed by removing the two bolts. Now I know why mine was bound up. It is missing the bottom plate so the sector is not supported. Hopefully I kept these from my donor car.
side glass. This come out very easy now. Only scary part is getting the three circles Philips screws out. Make sure you have the proper sized driver so you don’t strip these!

the two on the ends are accessible with the window up. There is a hidden one that required retracting the window several inches. With these three out and the two limit stops out the window lifts out. Stops are circled bellow.

 

[Touring919]

To get the regulator and crank out there are 6 bolts circles in green. One it hidden behind the screw driver.

then fold it up and slide it out the big rectangular hole.

Removal of latch mechanism is sort of easy. Three screws for the latch and three bolts for the inner handle. To get all three inner handle bolts the forward mount plate of the armrest needs to come off.
for the latch again be sure to have the proper sized screw driver.

there are all the pull rods that are a little bit like a spider web. I removed the rods from the lock tumbler and the outer door handle. All the rest I left attached. Don’t forget this little guide which is screwed to the frame.

everything then lifts through the big rectangle hole.
the handle and lock are all that are left. Two 7/16 nuts hold the handle on. And the tumbler is held in place similar to the tabs that hold rubber brake lines in place. Slip it off the back and then the tumbler falls right out of the door.

and there you have it. A stripped door. Complete it weighed 80 lbs. stripped it weighed 42.

 

[Touring919]

To anyone that zoomed in on my hood and called BS that I could leveler it with a few coats of primer…….you were dead right!

I did two more coats and it was getting closer but I didn’t want the film build to get too thick. So I took a step back and filled it in.

then a lot more sanding with the long board it is finally flat.

 

[Touring919]

While screwing with the hood I also got the doors ready.
They were pretty solid. But not fully solid. Lower areas at the corners had some pin holes. Found another mouse nest and you can guess that was a weaker area.

Nothing like mouse pee to get into the tight spots.

it is all patched up now.
some went well. Just a couple pin holes where the weld must have been contaminated

Other spots didn’t turn out as perfect. Still fine with a little filler.

 

[Touring919]

This cracks me up a little. Door had a dent. Someone fixed the dent very well. But they drilled holes in it so the filler could have some “bite”.

I’ve seen the hole technique on bad fixes plenty of times. Folks that are piling on a quarter or half inch of mud will use holes to increase their chances of it not falling off. Under its own weight?
this is the first time I have seen the technique used when the dent was hammered out properly.
I welded the holes closed and filled in over top. It only needed a skim coat. Other than filling the holes it wasn’t worth trying to make the metal any more straight.
so after filling in and pounding out many other dings and dents. I thought I was good to go and resealed. Well some semi gloss primer works wonders for finding more!

three of five are shown. But you get the point. Filled those in and re-resealed the doors. Time for surfacer primer and then store these away for warmer weather when the color goes on. Fingers crossed for April.

 

[Touring919]

That was the last of the prep for painting. Well once I hit it all with surfacer primer. As a mile stone update I just passed the 600 man hours mark! That is a lot of hours for what effectively was all paint prep.
most of itrust repair and some actual work with sand paper and a spray gun.

I did not think this could threaten a full 1000 but I may be close by the end.

I won’t say the financial mile stone I’m currently at. I’ll save that for the end. Right now I have just piles of parts so it hurts to think about. It will be less painful when a shinny running car is there instead of piles of stuff.

When we get there I’ll summarize the chunks of the build into man hours and dollars because I’m a data nerd and I’m sure you all would love to know.

 

[Touring919]

I was a little wrong. Remember when I said I was done with prep work. Particularly the main body? Turns out when I put it back in the booth and looked at it with fresh rested eye balls and brain it was pretty rough around the edges. I blocked the whole thing out. Filled in many pin holes and even a couple low spots I didn’t see before. Again. Fresh eyes.

really wasn’t happy I had to remask everything. Good thing I don’t charge myself much for labor.
after blocking with 120 and then 220 I got another full coat of surfacer primer.
now I am just touching up a few spots that still had rust pit low spots that looks kind of like really bad orange peel. Sanded out well from the 2nd coat. A 3rd touch up coat in those specific spots she should be smooth as glass.

 

[Touring919]

Now that it is all one shade of gray again I’m onto figuring out the body mount situation.
mad 6 new j-nuts tonight.
four 7/16ths nuts for the front cab mounts.
Two 3/8ths nuts for an area that currently “should” be a pad.

also need to sort through this mess and see what is salvageable. Most of the washers or stand offs are ok but anything with threads is junk. You can see some of the new bolts and washers tI compensate for my lack of original hardware.

and of course the body kit for a galaxie that comes with way more than you need. At least as far as bushings go.

 

[Touring919]

This is another place I will diverge a built from convention. Not too much. Pictured below is the factory mounting structure.

green are bolted. Blue are pads that the body just sits on. The detail drawings Are visible if you zoom in.
this is my plan for stiffening up the structure of the whole car.

I’m going to add a “wagon pad” at the front which regular cars do not have. I will bolt mount 3 instead of using a pad which a wagon also does. #3 is the one just in front of the rear axle. This is where the extra 3/8ths j nuts will go. Then the rest of the way back will be as ford intended.
it may be minor but with my substantially stiffer suspension I want to improve frame rigidity where I can.

 

[289Galaxie]

Not sure if convertibles are different than the wagons but what you refer to as the wagon pad is bolted on them. There are three body mounts on each side that are bolted. First picture shows the body mount bolt with clipped washer just in front of the rear wheel arch. Second shows the side rail mounts. ('67/'68 frame shown)

Don't know why but there's a duplicate of the first pic.