42' Cadillac

@Brad J.

There is a little wrench in the top right corner of the text box when you are posting, this will show you all the BBCode tags and let you exert more control over the appearance of your post, but you'd have to familiarize yourself a bit with BBCode.
 
So here it is.
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Nice!!! I'd take that over a new buzzing paper thin airbag gps calculating "car" any day.
Good job.
 
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Well, I was seeing if anyone was paying attention. I had to replace the clutch in this 41' 75 series car. I'm just starting to work on the 42' again. Been a busy winter that didn't allow me to work on my crap.
 
Here are some parts that I painted a while ago. I've been moving forward slowly on the project. I had both from fenders dipped. I removed the inner fenders that were spot welded to clean up the seams. I split them in half, blasted, 2 coats epoxy, and then panel bonded the halves back together. I then sprayed 2 more coats epoxy on the inner fenders. I mated the fenders and inners back together last week.
 

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Fenders were pretty nice. I had them dipped because of heavy scale rust on the backside. They sat around most of the winter as I had a couple patches to put on each. Once I did the patches then I blasted them to clean up a little rust that grew over the winter. Two coats of epoxy, then I blocked and picked the low spots and still had a little filler work in some areas. Worked the filler with 80/120 glazed over the filler with 3m flowable finish putty. Finished with 180 followed with a light 240 blocking. I put three coats epoxy over the entire fender. When the fenders were within one blocking round of paint I panel bonded the inner fenders to the main fenders. Spot welded in each of the three corners and the glue did the rest. I always leave the zip screws in place and slowly cut and grind the heads off keeping them cool. I hope to shoot final SS on the fenders this weekend. They are chassis black on the bottom and inner skirts so I just have to sand the outer fender, mask and spray.
 

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More fender pictures. They were stuck on my camera. I have a lot of time into the fenders. Not rust work but addressing the inner fenders and just he shear size of them.
 

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Painted the fenders a couple weeks ago and then off to the Hershey swap meet for a week. They took a half gallon of SS for 5 wet coats just on the exterior. I've had trouble this entire car of spraying the spi with little gassing bubbles. The first coat is visible but by the end they can barely be seen. The entire car has done it so far. Never had trouble with SS before this job. Still using the original 2 gallons that I started with. I should probably take a part and see if they sand and buff out. They are consistent throughout the entire surface of every panel. Changed nothing on my end and I always use the same procedure. The third picture shows the first coat with is always the worst. Even painted the backside of a model T fender this week and it did the same.
 

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I removed the doors. Drivers side floor has a little bit of rot. I patched it out until the sill. The inner rockers were removed because they had rust holes in them that I ignored when I sprayed the bottom. New inners are made but I haven't put them in yet. I was trying to beat the crappy Michigan weather that was coming.

Once again my dad had a few days before they headed to Arizona. We had great weather so we stripped the 1 orignal coat of black laquer and red oxide primer. I buzzed over it with my old buffer with a Norton 8" 80grit sanding discs and dad followed up with 80 grit on a DA. This cleaned the bulk of the body but I wasn't interested in stripping the jambs by hand. The next day we tapped it up and I blasted the jambs and drip rail as well as the lower rockers to clean metal. Everything was cleaned with 700 and 710 and I sprayed 2 coats of epoxy on the body.
 

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This taping and blasting twice and such is a big waste of time. It's easier to do a customer car where the body is pulled I don't back track. My plan was to throw the complete doors back on the car when painted and finish them in the future. I have a pretty good idea that plan will change since it's dumb to keep back tracking.
 

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Brad, it is coming along nicely. I didn't know those old cars had cooling fans in the seats. For every one step forward, I take two steps back. I thought back tracking was normal progress.
 
Those are the heaters. Each fan has a heater coil that wraps around the fan blade. Hot air blows from under the front seat and it's also ducted to back through the vent in the picture. They also have another heater coil and fan under the dash for the defrost. Pretty crude compared to today but they worked pretty good. I bet the rear windows must of fogged a lot.
 

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The roof along the side had a lot of dents like stuff was leaned up against the car. Before I sprayed epoxy the first time I removed the headliner and bumped the dents. I picked and filed them and couldn't shrink disk because I didn't want to burn the factory dynamat in the ceiling. Once I sprayed the 2 coats then I picked and blocked again with a long board and 80 grit. With the roof all smoothed out then I did filler work to 180 and sprayed 3 coats of epoxy. Now I'm finally working on the rear wheel wheels and remaining bodywork. I'd like to have it sprayed by X-mas but so far the evenings have been spent prepping chrome and laying out interior pieces to order new fabric. Yes, it's getting a new interior as the headliners didn't survive removal other than a pattern for a new ones. Leatherette in the front and wool broadcloth in the rear.
 

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Ok, so it's not painted yet. Still doing the metal work around the wheels but seem to be dragging my feet to want to do it. But I did need to see some progess so I finished out the inside. I sanded/ wire wheeled cleaned up the floor boards. I wanted to blast the front to white metal but didn't want the media everywhere since it's already been blasted and cleaned. Front had surface rust under the carpet. The back had nothing. Just the tar used to hold down the factory version of dynamat. I cleaned it all up and sprayed two coats of epoxy inside of the car. I also blasted and epoxied the floor heaters and other ductwork under the front seat.

I had a wood frame around the rear quarter windows that needed work. Wood was fine but the joints were loose. I removed them from the car and took them apart and reglued with panel bond. My favorite wood glue. I then painted them with epoxy. I always seal every piece of wood on a car like this to remove the smells the wood absorbs.

I soaked 3 coats of epoxy into the roof mats. It looks like they brushed tar on the roof and stuck the sound pads. I couldn't not remove any of it. Stuck like crazy. My plan was soak epoxy into the fiber mats to make a stable foundation for lizard skin. Worked fine.

Next I sprayed 10 gallons of lizard skin combo of sound control and heat control. I do have enough left to spray just under the dash which I haven't removed yet. I wanted a project I could do in a weekend. Hence the front one weekend and the rear another. The weekends did turn into 4 days each time though. The lizard skin made a noticable difference in controlling the noisy shell. Seems really solid. I have fat mat to install also but I'm not sure it needs it. Maybe just in the rear floor.
 

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