Week #104

With only one week to go until the body man expects the car at his place, I have yet to coat the trunk and rear panel with a decent primer. The body man got all over me about using lacquer primer for as a base on the bare metal… hey, no one said I knew what the hell I am doing! The same is true for the rear panel. After I installed it and dressed up a few blemishes I just gave it a few coat of what I had … plain old' lacquer primer. Anyway I was given instructions to coat those areas with a high quality epoxy primer or he would. If he did it would just mean more money from me to him. I agreed to prep these areas before he got the car.

Part of prepping the trunk and rear panel included trying to remove as much of the lacquer as possible either by sanding it down or sandblasting it off. After discussing it with him, we agreed that if I sat the car out in the sun for awhile to let any moisture in the primer evaporate and sand it down as much as I physically could without killing myself I could get away with coating what was left with epoxy primer. That sure sounded a lot better than pulling out that friggin sandblaster again!

Over the next few nights I sanded the rear panel down to practically bare metal. The trunk had quite a few more coats than the rear and it just wasn't possible to sand it all down. As I got into sanding the trunk, it was obvious that I had spayed more than just lacquer primer in there. I must have spayed some of that Eastwood ready to spray metal etching stuff. There was a tough coating just before bare metal and it looked like the stuff. Leave it to me to forget that I had done that. This is one of the problems with stretching a restoration out over such a long period.

I sprayed the epoxy primer on Saturday morning with the plan being to have it down off the rotisserie and on the dolly that afternoon. I had arranged to have the car over to the body shop on Sunday morning. Things were looking good as I had it all painted by about noon and had started it off the rotisserie. While up at the front of the car working the front down one notch at a time, all hell broke loose! The cross bar between the front and rear assemblies of the rotisserie came apart at the rear. The entire car dropped about 2.5 feet in one big loud swoosh. I have never been or felt that freaked out in my life. You know how they say your life can pass before your eyes… suddenly every dollar I had spent to date passed before my eyes. In a fraction of a second I envisioned the car bent in the middle, quarter panels bent under, etc, etc. I could see from where I was that the wheels at the rear support had rolled out from under itself and the vertical support on the rotisserie was nearly pointing straight at me. Try to visualize this… there I was, pacing back and forth, 4 steps right, 4 steps left, moaning, that's right, moaning, trying to get the nerve to walk to the back of the car to see what damage there was. I finally did it. What I found was the rear of the car suspended a foot off the floor being held there by the rear rotisserie brackets transferring half the cars weight into the rear panel of the car. The panel was obviously damaged but it was keeping the car from falling any further.

I was still freaking out. How could this happen. Over the next hour and a half I was able to raise the car and set it on jack stands and then assemble the dolly under it. The damage looked terrible to me and I just knew I was going to have to replace it… again. I reached my body man that evening to relay the day's event to him to get his input. Not seeing the damage made it tough for him to help decide so for the moment he would go along with me on replacing it. This would delay me getting the car to him by a week but he was fine with that... as long as I was.