Bumper Work

This weekend I cleaned up the bumpers. I bought these bumpers about a year ago from Parker Tyler in Maine. They are straight for the most part with only a few dings and dents - that's to be expect with 40 year bumpers, right? I removed the old deco strips and rubber inserts carfull not to damage the old aluminum strips. They should be in good shape and only need minimal polishing when we are ready to reinstall them. The rubber of course will need to be replaced.

I sprayed the bumpers down with aircaft stripper only to find that the stripper only lifted the top coat of paint. It appears that these bumper have had a couple coats of paint over the years. I then had to buff them down by hand to the bare metal.

Once cleaned, I spent a couple hours with a hammer and dolley trying to straighten out the dents. For the most part, they looked pretty good.

I've spent hours on the website Auto Body Store which has a great teaching area and discussion threads. After hours online, I had the confidence to move forward with filler. I chose to use Evercoat's Metal Glaze. This material spread smoothly and was easy to sand down. None of my filled in areas were more than a few mil deep and an inch in diameter. I used 80 grit paper before I applied the first layer to make sure it adheared strongly to the bare metal and then used 80 grit again to finish it. Once I start priming, I will use a high build primer on the bumers to get the final later.

After I was satisfied with the work, I spread onto the bumper Ospho to prevent further rusting. It may be several weeks before I start to prime everything and with the humid salt air where we live I risk rust forming quickly.


 

Links Updated

Work has finally let up and I'm getting rolling again on the car - focused on body work now. In the meantime, I have updated the links page. I had a couple dead links and added a few new ones. Thanks for letting me know that you like it. The links page by far has the most hits.

I'm Still Here

I've received a couple of emails asking where I have been. I'm still here and no, I haven't sold the car. Since October, business has been good and has not allowed much spare time. On top of that, I started a small project at the house to build a deck. Needless to say, I went over budget and past schedule.

Summer's Over- I'm Motivated

The long hot summer has finally come to an end and mother nature is slowly starting to show some relief. The past couple months have been rough on us including an evacuation from hurricane Rita. Highlights of our evacuation include:

• I was in San Diego and rushed home in time to board windows and evacuate 11 hours after I landed
• 25 hours from Houston to San Antonio(normally 3-1/2 hours)
• Started with 3 cars, one ran out of gas 10 miles outside the Houston city limits
• 2 hour emergency room visit in Gonzales
• 5 adults, 2 kids, 2 cats, a labrador, and a gerbal
• Spend one night in San Antonio then went to our fish camp in Riviera Beach for 3 nights
• On top of this, I had a miserable summer cold

At the end of the day, we can say that there was no major damage to our house, only a few limbs down.

So what's next? I spent Saturday morning cleaning the garage so now I'm motivated to get back to work. Over the past several weeks I have had several visitors stop by and encourage me to do as much body work myself as possible. I have even had a couple offers to help me with the labor and shoot the paint. After the estimates I have received so far from the professionals, I'm giving it more and more consideration.