With Chapter 3 that is!
After about 7 hours the last few days, I have managed to finish applying the rustproofing paint to all of the frame, and many of the loose parts, most of my garage floor, my favorite jeans, my new hat from the casino up near Quincy, and an old Apple sweatshirt. Somehow, I managed to avoid getting it on me, probably out of the terror that was instilled in the directions on the paint can that said if you get this stuff on you it will be permanent. "And we know what permanent means."
It came out okay. I am not a very good painter. The kind of patience that is required for this particular part of the build is generally only found in the comatose. I probably spread it on too thin, then too thick. Getting it into the crevices where the trunk, hood, and door hinges have moving pieces was probably a really bad idea. I will still have to go back and clean up some of the pieces where there are drips, or pieces of the brown paper that I was working on that have now become one with the metal. In the end, I can see where if I wasn't trying to be so frugal, this would have been a good thing to have had the factory do, or have sent it out to be powdercoated. Oh well, it wasn't that bad, and I did save several hundred bucks.
Here are a couple of before and after pics of the frame. Sorry the lighting is so bad.
Here is a picture of my mom getting into the act. She helped paint some of the disassembled parts.
I had let her borrow the lovely hat she was wearing in the picture fearing that some of the paint might get in her hair. Didn't happen. But afterwards, I traded that hat in to the NAPA autoparts store which was running a promotion this week where you could get a beautiful new Michael Waltrip hat in exchange for any old crummy one with any purchase. I made out like gold on that one.
I had to move the cockpit into my living room. It would not really fit anywhere else I had planned for storage. No poker games at my house for a while.
Next up is the rear axle assembly. It is encouraging to actually being to the point of putting things onto the car rather than just taking them off.
It was a bit of a problem when the toothpaste like tube of silicon that I was using burst open at the bottom. So the goo came out of just about everywhere except the little nozzle at the end. I made quite a mess of it all, but I think I got the gasket seated well enough. I won't really know until later when the axles and brakes are in and I am able to fill the whole housing up with the appropriate oil. Unfortunately, that will have to wait because I have found that I am missing a vent tube for the axle that did not ship with the rest of the parts. So I am waiting to hear back from Hurricane on them sending me one.
