78 Malibu Paint

[bryes]

I'm really no body man either but I do enjoy it.  I've fabbed all the panels so far but I cheated because I have a sheet metal brake and shear. I have made panels without the machines but it's harder of course.  I match the gauge of sheet metal to match the car. I've been using 22 gauge which is about .028".

I struggle with the welding, but stitch it in like you said. I'm using 75/25 with .030"wire and a Miller multimatic 200 welder.  Id try .023 wire if I had some because I've still been getting some warpage with my current method. If I had to do it over I might have soldered in the doors at least, so that is something to think about too, I've had good luck not warping with solder. This one will have some filler needed to smooth it all out.

[motorhead]

One day I'll do something like this for the challenge... but, mostly because I hate myself.

[bryes]

The rust repair is finally almost done. Only the rhs window post to go in the first picture. It's worse than the rhs that I repaired in the second pict. I noticed my gn has some rust in the same area,, too bad gm stuffs that area with foam or whatever causing the issue I think.

Since rain is forecasted for the next few days, we scrambled to get epoxy on the areas that need filler.. I sandblasted all the lap welds and a few rust spots today and sprayed the epoxy primer, making  sure to get the weld well coated. The last three pictures show the major areas that were primed, the quarters and doors. I used fiberglass filler to seal the welds for the unlikely event that some of my asked might have some porosity. 

I'm actually glad my phone is crappy because it hides some of my crappy welding and the fish eyes in the primer. We need to get the water out of the air lines.._

[bryes]

For the rhs side post we cut out a section from an 87 regal first pic. Not sure why but the fit was off in second pic so I had to cut it down center and weld it up in third pic. Finished in fourth.

were done with rust repair now! Here's the door with filler being worked out.

[Scoobum]

Wish I could weld and do body work. Keep the pics coming.

[TexasT]

Buy a little welder, a hood, gloves, wire and some busted up sheet metal and hit YouTube for some instruction. I learned arc welding in eight grade shop class and oxy/acetylene cutting and welding in freshman shop. I got a little wire feed about ten years ago. It aint much but it'll melt metal. And it is a lot of fun.

[bryes]

Taking a welding class or at least having an experienced person to guide you will save a lot of aggregation I think..


Welding is great fun except for the part where a spark flies in your ear and you can hear your ear canal sizzling. Sucks big!

[bryes]

Car is completely primed now. We did wind up using spi epoxy. Here's a few pics. A few runs but that's what happens when I spray!

[bryes]

Update :

Progress has slowed because I'm working two states away now. We're still. block sanding. The doors seem to be the biggest problem followed by the ps quarter which is about done hopefully. Below is the current state. ps quarter, door and fillers , trunk lid and ds quarter which seems to be turning out nice.

[Scoobum]

Lookin' good!

[bryes]

Well after blocking out the car for the majority of the summer, we're starting to spray the detached components black, no clear yet. So far the results have been a mixed bag.


The good:


The fender in the below  pictures turned out really well overall. I started off spraying the trunk lid, the inside turned out well. The outside turned out to be orange pealed fairly significantly. I think the reason was that I was using medium reducer (70 - 80F , it was about 85 ambient), so I thinned out the paint with a little high temp reducer and the outside of the fender came out really well as you can see in the pictures below.


The fender IMO was about as good as can be expected without a booth. A few specks in the paint that I'm sure will water sand out easily. It looks really straight to me in person, no waviness at all. The paint really flowed out nice, which I can't say about everything else.


The bad:
I had a couple of small runs on the fillers and the fender on the back side. Nothing major. The trunk lid was orange peeled badly, but it's not a show stopper because it will be cleared and water sanded. Sorry for no pictures, just imagine a trunk lid without much gloss bc of the orange peel!


When I started spraying the door my gun started dripping paint out of the fluid nozzle onto the door. We found out that the paint line on my pressure pot had some old paint that was flaking off and getting stuck in the between the fluid needle and seat (if that's what it was called) allowing paint to flow when the trigger wasn't pulled. I had to clean out all the old flaky paint from the line with a .22 gun cleaning brush.


The ugly:
I had to remove the fittings from the flexible lines to fit the cleaning brush in. The fittings are a kind of compression design  that have a brass ring that is clamped, similar to a water line compression fitting. Well in retrospect I should have known better, but to get that brass piece to slide over the rubber line, I lubed it with "tire wet" which works great for mounting tires, but as it turns out should stay as far away from paint as humanly possible.


Although I flushed out the lines with MEK thinking that would be sufficient to take care of the lube, when I went to spray the door I was met with the worst case fish eyes I've ever seen. I guess that little bit of stuff contaminated the whole batch of paint too, and even pouring it into a new container and spraying with another gun didn't help, the fish eyes were still there. Worst of all, I sprayed almost the entire door before realizing what was happening, so that is going to be a real pain. Unfortunately, the rest of the weekend was spent cleaning the spray equipment and sanding down my screw ups!


Sorry I don't have pictures of the bad and ugly, I'm hoping to wipe any evidence of that episode out of existence.

[Scoobum]

It's a great learning experience...a nd you can always sand and reshoot it. Keep the pics and updates coming.

[bryes]

This weekend went a lot better for this project. The only thing  that turned out messed up was the second fender where a small dent became noticeable after I sprayed it black. I sprayed a fender, both doors, the trunk lid and a bunch of smaller panels (fillers etc.) in single stage. Then the trunk lid, fillers and a couple of smaller panels were then sprayed with 4 coats of clear. It's  summit racing paint btw; I beleive it's made by kirkar. High temp reducer with medium temp activator. The ambient temperature was roughly low 80s. I sprayed it with a binks 7 B/C, it's a conventional gun.


The pictures below all have the 4 coats of clear. The paint is really nice by my standards at least, low orange peal. I could really load it onto the horizontal surfaces. But I will say there are noticeable imperfections in the clear that aren't visible in the pictures, so we'll have some water sanding to do. That's the bad thing about not having a booth. A few small bugs got into the paint but luckily the dragon fly that swooped in didn't stick! Overall I'll take it.


Sorry the pictures are so terrible. I wish I would have taken them when the trunk lid was outside in the sun. It looked great imo.

[Scoobum]

Lookin' good! Keep the pics/info comin'!

[bryes]

Over the weekend we got the car painted black with four coats of clear. Below are some pictures. Just water sanding , buffing and assembly to go I think. Also a pic of the incredible assembly of spray guns that I've collected.  I'll eventually have to get some better pictures.


Overall the body is straight, we did see a couple imperfections, nothing major. The paint has fairly considerable orange peel in places.