Monday, September 27, 2010

Handbrake frustrations

Ahh, the ever frustrating world of car restoration. A few posts back, I chronicled the very bad spray-paint job on the Handbrake. All the paint had to be scraped off, wiped down with paint thinner to get the sticky mess off. After stripping, I procrastinated quite a bit, which is usual for me after having poor results. Seen below in it's wet painted glory, it simply didn't dry.

Brake Handle

I had procrastinated enough, on looking at the original condition of the handbrake, I finally convinced myself that I wasn't doing worse than it was when I got it, so I proceeded on.

Original condition

I carefully painted on a coat of primer, let it dry for 24 hours, and then sprayed on a coat of black. After it was complete, I wasn't quite happy with it but I didn't want to tempt fate too much. You could still see the imperfections in the piece from before the paint job, but realistically, I let it go.

Pre-Installation
I wasn't very happy with the handle, so I wrapped it in rubber sealing tape. Used to seal communications connectors, over time it will somewhat collapse on itself and become one solid unit. We will see how well it turns over time.

Re-install
After fighting with it for over a hour and a half on the first attempt, I was ready to re-install. I had another hour planned to get it done. Once I arrived, I went to work. The connection to the brake cable took all of about two minutes. Surely, I would have trouble with the main connection... Three minutes later, I had the main connection made and the handbrake was installed and working.

View from Driver Side, up and down

View from passenger side, up and down
Extreme frustration! I had planned for at least an hour to get it back in place and it too all of five minutes. I was infuriated with myself for such poor time management and poor planning. I had left everything else to work on it at home. I walked around the car several times trying to wing something to work on and couldn't really find anything to so with the stuff I had on hand.

After a while, I decided to simply wipe down the entire car to take the layer of dust off the car and returned home. Once home, I dis-assembled the driver side door, like I had been planning to do for many weeks. This work will be covered on a future installment.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Looking into the Past

I have sent out a initial volley of e-mails to try and find out some more information about the car's previous owners and it's original restoration. Utilizing the sticker on the windshield as a starting point. SPC South Plains College Faculty Staff 88-89 Parking number 4167. This provides not only a date that the car was obviously used (who puts a parking sticker on a car they don't drive) and a geographic location as to where the car was!



Armed with this information, I have sent out e-mails to the following.

South Plains College: Magazine editor

Found under the Alumni section of their website, I am hoping to get a response of who better to talk to. I'd love to get a Faculty List from those years so I can start weeding out the possibilities. Unfortunately, I need to tread lightly, with all the privacy laws. If this contact fails, there is a whole employee list that I can start taking pot shots at and see if I get any bites.

Lubbock Mustang Club: Historian/Website

Hey, one of the first Lubbock are clubs that I found. It's quite a longshot, but being that it is somewhat of a memorable car, maybe they have an old member that might remember something. Dandled the sob story of my mustang as an enticement carrot to help me. If I don't get a response, they have a long list of officer e-mails to try.

Caprock Classic Car Club: Website contact

Well, it wasn't a classic at the time I place it in the area, but it wasn't far from it. At the time it would have been about 20 years old, 5 years from being a classic, but different enough maybe to trigger memories. It appears their website was hacked and all previous content lost! I have backup copies of all the photos, and text of this blog. It'd be a chore but I could re-build it.

Nifty 50s Car Club: Website contact

50's car club?!? What was I thinking... Well, it's only 10 years off their topic, maybe someone branches out to other interests. Maybe if they were around in the 50's, they might remember the 60's. Well, one of the e-mails listed bounced so i hope the other one is good, as there is no other contact listed.

South Plains SCCA: West Texas Region, Asst. R.E. South Plains

Well it is a sports car, and it was in the region. Maybe someone remembers it. Assuming that someone was in their 20's saw the car at this time, it would put them in their 40's now. Long-shot yes, e-mail effort minimal. Also a long list of e-mails available if I get no response. My Brother was very active in the club at one time, I wonder if he can tweek anyone to help.

Overall this initial volley is just that, something to get me started crafting e-mails that request information, buttered with a bit of nostalgia, and a bit of a challenge. If I don't get responses, I will revisit the approach and try again.


Monday, September 20, 2010

Turn Lights

Turn Lights
Ahh, one of the most identifiable features on the round-tail Spits are the rear turn lights. These are often found in serious states of disrepair due to their exposed nature. Simply walking around the car can lead to them getting bumped and cracked. Also, the sealing foam insert used to keep out the water very rarely does, but then again who drives their car in the rain.

Passenger Side removed
Suffering from seal shrinkage, general dirt, plus a butchering on the reflector, this one looks not to be too bad. The hardware is trashed, the foam seal is trashed, the rubber seal is cracking.

Lets face it, for being 40+ years old, a simple clean-up, polishing and re-cutting of the foam seal added to manhandling the reflector back in shape isn't too much to ask for such an identifiable piece to the car.
Passenger Side Clean

Driver Side removed

Though the foam seal is missing, this side is in seemingly much better condition. For one, the reflector wasn't mangled. The hardware was in better shape, but will be replaced regardless.

Using the original seal as a template, a replacement seal was made from simple craft foam and an exacto knife. Though I doubt that this will pass as original, or provide better protection, it has to be better than no seal at all.

Driver Side CleanBoth sets have been cleaned, polished and re-assembled, ready to install on the car when the time comes. To keep them safe, they have been inserted into a cloth protective sleeve. Perfectly formed for the task, you can find these relatively inexpensively at many fine stores. Simply look in the socks isle. Frugal people like me will keep replaced old socks and unmatched ones who's partner has disappeared into the Washing Machine Black Hole.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Proposed Paint Color

In looking for a color to paint the car, I have my heart set on red. I've never owned a red car before. I love the look of a red car, and combined with the Spitfire style, red is a sure attention getter. I find that the existing color on the car seems too light and too orange for my tastes and I have kept my eye out for likely reds to use. As the car will never be confused as being all original, I don't mind deviating from the Signal Red of that year.

Color Samples
On the left of the color sample is the color that is on the car now, taken from a picture. The color on the right is the proposed color I am thinking about. It was also taken from a picture of a trunk painted that color. It looks a little too dark, but look how it shines on the trunk below.

The Truck

The shop where my car is at was repainting this trunk to match the replacement bed that the owner put on the trunk. The trunk owner preferred the red of the replacement bed much more then the funky blue two tone of the trunk itself. Fresh out of painting came this absolutely gorgeous trunk. This is the color I was looking for. I fished around and found the can used to paint it. With the can, I have the paint specifications and can get the color reproduced when the time comes.

Scarlet Red

Spray Can MADNESS continues...

Emboldened by the success of the floorboards and the trunk, armed with my mighty aerosol paint cans I marched on! It seemed like everything I sprayed turned out spectacular, I couldn't go wrong... or could I.
Driver Side Rear

Passenger Side Rear
The rear compartment was sprayed, carefully avoiding the vinyl wheel well covers that are in pretty good shape and I want to avoid having to change them. The pictures really don't do it justice as the flash went off when the pictures were taken.

Center Area
After carefully removing the hand brake, I proceeded to spray the center area and was giddy happy with the results. It really looked spectacular. Nice even paint, it looked like it came from the factory like that.

Under Front Wheel Wells
I switched to the glossy black and masked off the area under the wheel wells, and again, it looked spectacular. I then looked for other easy access areas that I could respray. I decided that with all the work I did on the wiper motor, I wanted to respray this area. I brushed it all well, like I had in other areas and...

Wiper Motor Shelf
Well, that didn't go so well now did it. I don't really know what happened here other than the entire area, though smooth, painted horribly. I will likely have to strip this layer off and try again once I figure out what went wrong the first time. Thus ends the madness, with a major downer on this horrible spot.

Brake Handle

I had sprayed this before the major downer and left it to dry. It wasn't the best paint job I had seen but it would be functional and acceptable. 4 hours later, I attempted to re-install it and things went downhill from there. First I shouldn't have painted where the hinge section is, as the paint just smeared away. Uhh smeared, that's not right, this stuff should have been dried by now. I tried to get it installed and kept hitting wetter and wetter areas of paint. Eventually the paint was ruined and I returned the piece to the house for stripping. 8 hours after being sprayed, it still had not dried. I stripped the entirety of the brake handle back to it's original condition and will retry once I get my spray paint confidence back.

Drivers Seat Base

With the fight I had to originally take off the seats, the thrill of triumph was quickly extinguished by the condition of the base of the seats. Seen here in all of it's ugliness, the base was partially protected with a waxol type of coating, while some of it was just plain rust.

Original Condition

As a sideline project, I would attack the base with a combination of hand brushing and wire wheels on afternoons when I had a bit of free time. I eventually got quite happy with the result. Time marches on and I moved to other fractional projects in my free time. The unprotected metal quickly began to powder rust again, though my free time had disappeared. I eventually made the time, brushed the rust off and sprayed it to afford it some level of protection.

First Spray
The first layer is this wonderful silver paint. I love the look it creates as it really looks like it isn't painted at all, just bare shiny metal. Unfortunately, it isn't really designed for outdoor, much less rugged handling.

Second Spray
To help protect the metal and the delicate silver paint, I spray a layer of clear coat on the piece. It really dulls the silver and takes away all shine to it. It ends up looking like a gray paint. Not really the effect I would like but it is protected at this point.

Installed
It really looks great on the assembled seat. All that remain is to acquire some Stainless Steel bolts, nuts, and washers to mount the seats to the car, I intend to repeat the sins of the past and use bolts that will drop through the welded on nut on the floorboard and put a matching nut underneath. I also will be using over-sized washers to attempt to spread the weight out over a larger area of the floorboard to hope to minimize the areas that are cracked.

Finalized Seat
Well, as you can see, you can't really even see this part. It likely will never be seen much, but I know it's there and I know it will last a bit longer with the tender loving TLC it received.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Amazing New Products

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With the rust seeds in place long enough and the rust will begin to grow, bring more excuses to buy more parts and rebuild time! I always wanted to drop a larger engine in it, but I need to remove that body rust, and I need to remove the engine to get to it anyway!

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Instant Gas
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Coming Soon!

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The makers of these fine products is not responsible for any of the products shown. All content are approximate. These products are not warranted in any way to perform as advertised or even exist.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Drivers Seat

Well, my personal goal of having the spitfire ready for the road by my birthday has come... and passed unfulfilled. Well, it was an ambitious goal to begin with. Though I do see the project time-line slipping with all the Summertime heat, I just can't get myself to working on it. I have to kick the funk off and get working...
Drivers Seat
One of the first items I will need to put back into the car to get things moving will be the drivers seat and boy does it need the work. Looking at the above picture, the seat looks really to be in pretty good shape. The foam seem quite acceptable, not dry-rotted and still providing plenty of support. The vinyl is relatively OK, a few scrapes, and a mild deformation of a burn, but considering the relative obscurity of the seats for a '69 I'm pretty happy with the way they look. The original interior of the car was tan so I'm not sure if they are recovered (likely) or replacement seats to match the now black interior. Now for the parts you can't see very easily.

Carefully looking at the above picture shows a little too much of a slant to the left. This is because the hinge pin is sheared. Looking at the pin itself, it's rusty but not a rust issue. I have no clue the amount of force necessary to shear this but I'm assuming it was a lot.
Sheared Pin
I spent a good 2 hours on that @$&!#ing pin. It resisted being punched out, it resisted a hacksaw to try and cut the heads off, it generally really was meant to stay in there and it sure tried it's best. I eventually got a rotary tool and a cutoff wheel and simply ground it out. The pin itself was re-drilled to accept a bolt and it was carefully repaired. The nut used only would go so far and left the bolt the ability to move, yet the nut was tight. It's not perfect, it's not original, but darn it it's functional and will be hidden from sight.

The next "issue" leads me to believe that the seats were recovered at some point in their life. Some PO (Prior Owner) had placed a sheet of metal under the seat. This work was definately not performed by British automakers. It literally looks like someone took a blowtorch and burned through to cut the metal to shape. Nothing was done to protect the metal from rusting and, oh, did it rust.

Seat Plate

I removed the offending plate and gave it to my father to use as a pattern. We had somewhat of a misunderstanding as he thought I wanted the plate refinished and was questioning my sanity! Thinking about it I never really said I wanted a Stainless plate made and just assumed that the shear offensiveness of the plate would be self-explanatory. Anyway, my dad produced this piece of loveliness in Stainless. I'm sorta disappointed that the piece will never be seen, but happy that the piece will never again become a rusting pile of ,err public forum, uhhh rust!

Replacement Seat Plate

Back Panel

The back panel was made from thin fiberboard. It needed replacement as it was warped out of shape, had mild water damage and was obviously not original as the screw holes weren't very well placed. I cut a replacement piece out of fiberboard from Home Depot. It's a little thicker that it was before but it should hold up better. I covered it with vinyl my wife bought me and, for my first upholstery job, I think it will do.

On beginning the work on the passenger seat I quickly noticed that I had no foam in the one from the drivers seat but the passengers seat had a thin foam under it. I plan to remake this side too, so I will make a matching no foam one and call it OK.

Drivers Seat

After repairing, cleaning the seat and conditioning the vinyl it looks pretty serviceable! I hope to soon be able to place the seat into the car, but the road to that point is long and hard.

Restoration work for a hobby should not be to a timetable, though to some point you have to set goals, lest it fade to a pile of parts that never get completed. I've seen so many advertisements for "everything is apart" project cars being sold off before completion. I simply refuse to give up!