It’s fall here at Cool McCool’s Garage, but that doesn’t mean we’re sipping pumpkin spice latte’s, or drinking cider and and eating donuts. No sir! We’re sanding our fingertips off! I’ve been block sanding, filling little imperfections, and block sanding some more on the ’34 roadster, trying to have it in color before the weather cools off.
The body is looking pretty nice, which it has to be because the planned color choice will magnify any and all flaws. Since the car has been painted a couple of times, and I didn’t strip all the old paint off (a decision I hope doesn’t come back to bite me later), it’s been a challenge. The two color coats of what looks like catalyzed acrylic enamel (with a primer in between them) don’t feather very well, they simply chip off and leave an edge, I’ve been filling those spots, and other boo-boo’s, with icing. I’ve sanded off all of the Spot and Glaze putty I thought would take care of those spots, and gone to the icing.
It works much better.
The “chicken’s feet” I added to the wheel wells are finished. I decided I didn’t like the little “tails” I’d left on the horizontal bead, so I took those off, and have the fender wells finessed and ready. I didn’t know that ’34’s have flat wheel well panels, only ’33’s have the beads, and mine are “reversed”, but I like them and that’s all that matters.
The nice thing about a ‘glass body is that any mistakes are pretty easy to remedy with some resin, matting, and filler, and the belt line bead is a good example. The cowl bead didn’t line up very well with the hood, so I “fixed” that key moving it down the body about 14″. Easier than hammering and welding, for sure. Likewise the door sill on the passenger side was weird, so some long strand reinforced filler built up the missing bead just fine.
We won’t talk about how I dropped the passenger side door and chipped the back lower corner off, that I’d “fixed” from it’s exiting the car when the door came unlatched in it’s former life. I’ll mix up some resin and chop some mat to fix that, don’t tell anybody…
I repaired both hood aprons (or inner fenders, whatever you want to call them), they’d both had the corners broken off and lower edges mangled, and are good as new now. The headlight stand on the left (F100 pickup shock mounts I cut up, missing in this photo) I had to tweak a little as the headlights (’36 Chevy Master) didn’t line up just right, and I had to heat and twist the brake pedal a little to allow some room for the gas pedal, but all the “build” stuff is now DONE. I think…
In other news, the new springs I put under the Spartan turned out not to be the correct rating, they “settled” on our trip last weekend to Milford MI and the fall TCT Rally. They flattened out so far as to let the eye rest on the bottom of the frame rail, bottomed completely out, actually opened the eye up on the rear spring hangers! I was shocked, they ‘re 5,000 rated Dexter springs, obviously not enough. So, I ordered two new 6,000 load rated springs (well, I MEANT to, but evidently I didn’t check “2” in the quantity box, so I’m waiting on the other one to get here) and have to get that back together for our last planned trip in two weeks
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There’s always something!
Cool McCool's Garage 