Week #124

There were a few left over tasks to be completed from last week.  They all concerned painting some things blue in the engine compartment that had either been added or corrected.  I had experimented with getting some seam sealer to ooze from between the fender and inner fender and it seemed ok the way it turned out so now I needed to "hand" paint it blue so it would look like it was that way from the start.  This was a no brainer.  Just poured some paint in a little jar and paint with a small hobby brush.  I can't say that it looks like the real thing but I'm hoping that there will be so much to look at while standing in front of the car that no one will really notice... or give a poop for that matter.

Next on my list of things to do was to clean, prep and paint the lower grill.  I scrounged up 3 from the garage attic and scanned them for the best one.  Two of them were completely damage free but were a small bit warped along the bottom edge.  The third was as straight as an arrow but had a very strange bit of damage at one upper corner.  While looking over all three I couldn't help but notice that these grills varied a bit in shape at this area where the damage was.  Taking this into account I decided to just grind down the damage and for a new corner.  The new shape was close to one of the other pieces anyway.  The cleaning was very slow.  The slats in the grill were very close together and required a cut down tooth brush to get to all the dirt.  This was tough dirt too requiring some pretty strong cleaner and time.  That was a couple nights work believe it or not but the effort paid off as the black plastic looked literally like new.  I then scuffed the painted area and taped off the non painted part.  Using the Mopar Performance argent wheel paint I gave it a few light coats and it was done.  It looked great in place but I had yet to clean up it's mounting hardware.  That'll be soon.

During a visit to my parts source I scored a real nice tinted back glass for the car.  The original back glass had some fairly severe deep scratches and I could/would not use it.  I was a bit worried about replacing it thinking I would have to go with some ultra high dollar new replacement.  Luckily this piece I found has but a couple of small scratches that will surely go unnoticed... and the price was right too!