Patches and Paint

Another day of big steps forward. During the week Gene had filled the many tiny dents in the rear quarters and I set to sanding them down. The more I work on this car the more I am convinced that it is going to look better than new. It is hard to see from the picture but those white areas of filler are feathered in like you can't believe.


I pulled the paint code from the door plate and although I suspected that the car was Viking blue it was good to get it confirmed. We bought a quart for the door jams and blew $67. Sooner or later I am going to have to buy 2 gallons, ouch.

I am going to leave the big fill to Gene. This requires more skill and a better eye for the line than I have but as you can see already it is coming together. The vertical edges are now straight and mainly metal. Another day of mainly filling and sanding and we will be looking real good.

The big patches are welded in and to improve the look I have now bondo-ed them in and covered them in tar. Here is a shot of the patch that I should have taken last week

This is under the rear seat and you can see the surface rust clearly here. There are no holes in there but as far as I can see the rust is caused by the fact that there was a sticky rubber padding in the floor. This must have trapped moisture and here is the result. Next week I shall tickle this with the sandblaster and once it is bare metal, prime, paint, tar and then put new sound deadening down. Did I mention how solid this car is going to be? Seriously, this is going to be a 100 year car, 2063 my great grandchildren will be riding this thing. OK back to the point.

Here is a shot of the front. Note the lack of a gear shifter, it's on the column which was one of the main reasons for buying this one, a bench front seat. Incidentally a four speed transmission is called "four on the floor". What we have here is known as "three on the tree". Just to the left of the air conditioner (yes we have air) is the overdrive lever. That should get us up to 17mpg on a long run using supreme grade fuel. BTW look at the dashboard to get an idea of what a great color Viking Blue is. It is hard to see from the body as the 46 year old paint is sun faded. Additionally I have almost decided to make it a two tone by painting the roof off white. The upside is that I am sure it will look cool. The downside is that the paint will then not match the ID plate which kinda devalues the car. Decisions decisions.

Talking of fuel, as we were, I got the gas gauge sender installed and the tank will go back in as soon as I have painted and undersealed the underside of the trunk floor. I was going to do the paint until Gene explained that he would cover me in baby oil so that the paint would clean off afterwards. This sounded a touch homo to me so I decided to leave that until my itinerant tinker decides to turn up, if ever.

Instead I ambled off to do something more manly like drink beer.

Money spent; $67 on Viking Blue metallic.