Now Complete Restoration / Pulling my 1969 'Bee down for strip and paint

[birdsandbees]

Thanks Armor64. It's not "concours" level, so don't follow it totally if you're going that direction. I want to drive this thing, but I took it a bit far so it will be pavement only! ... but I do have 3400' of gravel from the garage to the first paved road to do so! I figure after I chip it up a bit, the undercoat will stick better in the wheel wells!!  

[birdsandbees]

Todays acquisition ! Thanks 6pktgo (Fred). Now I can get the 12YC's (or what ever they were) that I bought last year out of my engine.

Also picked up a gallon jug (ouch $72) of paint stripper and what I think will be a perfect deep Brown paint for the ramcharger air box.

[AKcharger]

I liked that plastic repair!

[birdsandbees]

I liked that plastic repair!

Thanks AK, still have a lot of them to do. That hood tab, I cannot snap it off!..but I'm still going to embed a wire into it for more strength.

[armor64]

Thanks Armor64. It's not "concours" level, so don't follow it totally if you're going that direction. I want to drive this thing, but I took it a bit far so it will be pavement only! ... but I do have 3400' of gravel from the garage to the first paved road to do so! I figure after I chip it up a bit, the undercoat will stick better in the wheel wells!!  

definitely not for mine also, the floors/quarters/inner fenders are already done, but alot of the welds on the front are edge tacks, so didn't have a good reference on what to fix to make it look better.

I'm mostly going budget restomod, EFI/AC/4 wheel disc/17in magnum 500s.

Anyway, again, amazing work here.

[BDF]

This is looking great & SO close now! I have mixed emotions reading the thread now, condolences for loss of daughter prmarliy, relief that you survived the fires.  Then congrats for the upcomong nuptuals & enthused to see car on road agian. Keep on persevering. I too was interested to read about the '69 x 14" road wheels as I have a nice set in the garage now (with a pack of NOS J11Ys)

[birdsandbees]

Thanks guys!

Put another patio heater together (got 4 on sale 75% off for my daughters wedding next Fall). I figured I may as well use it to warm up my work space... NOT under a heat sensor like I did with the first one yesterday and set off my shop fire alarm. Monitoring didn't find it funny...!

All remaining paint stripped, power washed and drying off so I can grind cracks and repair.

Thought I'd try to remove the 50 year old wave in the air box mounting edge.

Lots of heat and a flat board. Worked great.

Here a crack.. there a crack.. everywhere a crack crack! Everytime you look at a piece you see another one. This one was barely evident and I touched it and the piece fell off.

Notched up hard wire set into the grove I ground out.

Tools of the trade!

[birdsandbees]

Wire embedded for added strength on the hood attach tab.

Rubber air box flaps. I never even noticed until I took the boxes apart that they're different lengths. I was actually marking one as to which side it fit, when I noticed there was no need.

OE part number of one flap.

OE part number of the other.

Rubber overmold was peeling along the steel shaft, so I cleaned them up on the wire wheel and then used liquid rubber to recoat around the shaft to seal them up.

Plasti Dip rubber coating.

A couple of coats of rubber and good to go.

[birdsandbees]

Reminding myself of what will be visible and what will not in case I can build up some repair areas thicker than OE.

Made a "mould" on the outer show face with wax paper clipped tight in place, for the large broken out areas on the drivers side front of the box.

Cut some fiberglass heavy cloth to fill the large broken out spots.

Added a layer of JB on top of the wax paper and outward onto the air box (like doing gel coat), then laid in the cloth and squeegeed in another layer of JB. Sitting for the night and I'll see what I have tomorrow.

Now to make the center box one piece again.

Has a twist to it and I can only join one break cleanly at a time. So I clamped one side down with a perfect fit on the break line.

Ground the crack to half part thickness, added some "branches" and some groves to embed wires.

Coated with JB and left for the night. Many hours into this now and having flashbacks back to doing an instrument cluster and why I didn't just "farm" it out! LOL

[birdsandbees]

Wax paper "mould" worked great!

Getting the thumbs up!! Well except for the air void I somehow managed to trap in.

Before I went to the dentist at noon I got the other side of the center ring clamped in place, ground and sealed together so it could set up while I was gone.

Crack ground and groves for metal "stitching".

JB'd and off to the dentist.

[birdsandbees]

Back in the shop about 4 hours later. Cleaned up the missing flange area.

Built a dyke to replace the flange.

Flange "poured" and set enough to peel the clay.

Top section set up enough to flip and do the other side. All ground out and ready to seal.

All parts firmly back together again. Tomorrow is sanding to shape and probably filling some voids.

(to think I could have just bought a repro for $700 US.. LOL... 20 hours of labour so far)

[birdsandbees]

Is everyone tired of airbox pictures yet?? LOL I'm sure tired of working on it. Repair areas sanded down to find low spots in the JB where it sunk into the broken / ground out areas.

Same deal here and ready for a skim coat to fill the depressions.

Drivers box end almost there, just needs a skim of JB

Skim coat of JB makes it look pretty good.

Center ring all skim coated.

Driver box skimmed.

[birdsandbees]

Then I had to switch uniforms and play "Mr. Plow" before I couldn't move this potato snow.

3 hours later and the skim coat sanded out quite nice.

Center ring just needs some finer finish sanding and everything scuffed for priming.

Drivers side box looking good.

[alfaitalia]

Great work as always....you have way more patience than me...especially on a part no one will see!! On my car that would have been glued back together and put into service!! LOL! How ever my wife did laugh at me spending many hours painting and detailing my calipers , brake disc hubs and edges and even polishing the rubber brake hose unions!.....well its all very visible with an open spoke wheel design!!

[birdsandbees]

Great work as always....you have way more patience than me...especially on a part no one will see!!

LOL, well if I was never going to open the hood in public I wouldn't have bothered with all the engine and suspension detail either!  

...........

All five parts scuffed, wiped, hung and ready to prime and hopefully paint.

Primer on and some days I just amaze myself, it covered all repairs good enough for paint!

Paint going on.

Everything painted and most important I used a flashlight to look in all the tab areas to verify coverage and get the spots I missed !

About an hour later. I couldn't have hit that colour better if I'd tried. No runs even, what happened to me...

Now to see if I can get the boxes riveted back together with out breaking humpty dumpty again!

[Charger-Bodie]

 

[timmycharger]

Great work!! love the repair method! 

[birdsandbees]

Thanks Guys! 28 hours into the Ramcharger box at this stage. 

[birdsandbees]

Slow day today, but every little bit moves me towards the goal.

Paint "booth" set on bake and RPM'ing bumper attach and Ramcharger hood hardware.

[BLK 68 R/T]

Looking good, lots of work on that air box ducting. 

[birdsandbees]

Looking good, lots of work on that air box ducting. 

Thanks. Gonna let the parts sit for a few days for the paint to set up on the plastic and then attempt to rivet them back together. With luck that's successful and then I'll be installing it to my hood so I can get the front clip back on my car.

[birdsandbees]

If anyone has followed the entire build, you would have seen where I was a bit pissed the resto shop that did my car shell sent all my chrome and stainless out without telling me, to the tune of 5 G's +. The only thing I'm ticked about now is I wish they'd had ALL the pieces when they sent it out!
................................................................
Trying to sand out pits on the hood scoop bezels. 400/800/1000/2000 and praying I don't go too far !

Polishing time. I ended up having to use the courser green (stainless) vs the Red rouge to get some marks out, but at least got things presentable.

Did my final buffing by hand using MAAS.

Getting there..

Good as they're gonna be, unless I send them out for rechrome.

Next up the drip rail trim rear corners that they forgot to send out. One on left almost there vs "as removed" on the right.

Both pretty good, could use a bit more work.

One door key tumbler almost there, still has a bit of scratching I need to sand out, vs the "as removed" on the right that the previous body shop in '88 just sanded right across. Scoop bezel sanding to here is 5 hours of hard work!

[hemi-hampton]

Looks Good LEON.

[birdsandbees]

Looks Good LEON.

Thanks Leon! Was waiting a few days to rivet the Ramcharger boxes together and then realized I need to get the scoop bezels on, then scoops, then the Ramcharger air box...... and it was then I realized the scoop bezels weren't part of the trim sent to the chrome shop! They also forgot my door mirror, so it's another thing to tackle.

[birdsandbees]

Media blasting the rear licence plate holder and the ramcharger airbox cable brackets.

Plate holder in primer.

I wasn't happy with a couple repair spots that go under the Ramcharger sticker, so I smoothed them out so that the label will sit nice and repainted.

Quick repaint

Booth on "bake" again. At least I know how many hours a 20lb tank lasts now, so I'm ready for the Daughters wedding!