Imperial Journey

Two paint problems on top of the front fenders… First, I managed to drop something and leave a large chip on top of the fender. Applied some touch up paint with a small brush which stuck up. When I tried to sand it down I managed to sand through some of the adjacent paint into the white sealcoat/primer. You can always make a problem worse…

Second, on the opposite side of the car I managed to sand and polish through the paint into the white sealcoat/primer.

I mixed up some black paint, loaded it into my “spot” gun, and tried to touch up the areas. I ended up with poor control and thick paint on both sides. After sanding the new black paint I covered it with three coats of clear coat.

The clear coat looked terrible – I clearly didn’t have the paint gun set properly, and it was difficult to control over the small areas. This is why the recommendation is to clear coat an entire panel.

Still, with nothing to lose I went ahead and started sanding the newly clear coated areas with 1500 grit sandpaper. This leveled out the lumpy clear coat, so I followed up with 2000, 3000, and 5000 grit sandpaper and then the fast cut polishing compound. The good news is that the clear coat blended well – you can’t tell where I did the new clear coat.

Unfortunately I still have problems with the underlying black paint. It is lumpy where I touched up the paint chip and there is some white showing through on the other side.

After contemplating the situation for a while I decided that I needed finer control than I’m getting with the spot paint gun.

I ordered an air brush which should provide very fine control over paint. When it arrives I will sand down the bad areas and repeat the process. Hopefully the air brush will give me the results I’m looking for.

Stay tuned; it looks like there will be an update three at some point.

The title of the previous post Light at the End of the Tunnel? was prescient. Yup, the light was an oncoming train.

Polishing the paint left a lot of pig tails – small loops gouged in the paint. I kept hoping that the finer grades of polish would remove them, but no luck.

I also managed to sand through the clear coat in a couple of areas. Not good!

And while polishing with the smallest 2″ DA sander I managed to rub the edge of the backing plate against the an adjacent surface leaving long gouges in the paint.

OK, taking them in reverse order:

I carefully sanded the backing plate gouges starting with 1500 grit sandpaper. With luck, patience, and good technique I might – just maybe – be able to sand out the gouges without sanding through the clear coat. After 15 minutes of careful and paranoid work the gouges were gone and the clear coat was still intact. Great relief!

Next I got a quart of clear coat and a can of clear coat blending agent. After masking off a large area around the damaged places I sprayed three coats of clear coat. Started with a quick spray over the damaged area and then sprayed and blended progressively larger areas for the next two coats. After letting it dry over night I carefully sanded it, starting with 2000 grit sandpaper, and polished the areas. The results weren’t perfect – there is a slight banding where the original clear coat was feathered into the base coat. But it is hard to spot. I asked a friend to try to spot the repaired areas and he couldn’t find them. I know where they are, but it is something I can live with.

The pig tails were a major problem. I think I finally identified the source: I think it was a combination of less than perfect cleaning of the surface which left small pieces of paint from the previous sanding stage combined with using a hard foam pad with a smooth surface. Specifically, a Chemical Guys Hex-Logic Orange Medium Heavy Cutting Pad. Other pads have a more open foam surface which I believe can absorb paint particles rather than trapping them between the pad and the paint surface.

The pig tails were deep enough that I couldn’t polish them out. I also couldn’t sand them out with 3000 grit sand paper. The only thing that worked was to go all the way back to 1500 grit sand paper and sand the whole surface. Carefully – very carefully! The clear coat is getting thin, so I’m at constant risk of sanding through it. The 1500 grit was followed by 2000 grit and 3000 grit – and then 5000 grit. Yup, I added another grade of sandpaper. The goal is to get the surface as smooth as possible before polishing.

When I start polishing again I’m going to be using softer open cell foam pads. Specifically, I will be starting with a yellow Griot’s Garage Boss Perfecting Pad. This pad is rated for removing light defects – we will see how it works after the 5000 grit sandpaper.

I also got a rotary buffer with some softer pads and will see how it does for polishing.

In summary, I’m now entering the third month of a 1-2 week job. Yeah, about par for the course…

On a better note, we spent last week in Pennsylvania visiting relatives and exchanging bumpers at Librandi Plating. In I’ll Be Chrome For Christmas I covered how I ended up with the wrong rear bumper. This time I unwrapped the bumper before loading it up! Yes, this time it was the correct bumper. Librandi offered to plate another part to make up for the inconvenience, so I took the cowl covers that go at the base of the windshield. I had wanted these done originally, but they pushed me over budget and came back home with me. I’m looking forward to getting them back!

After admiring the newly chromed trim in I’ll Be Chrome For Christmas it was time to get back to the paint job mentioned in Back in Black!

As the old observation notes, the light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train.

The first order of business was to tackle the orange peel, dirt nibs, and other imperfections in the paint with 1500 grit sanding disks on an orbital sander using the highly rated 3M Hookit Purple Finishing Film Abrasive Disc which is designed for clear coat. I was going through these disks a lot faster than expected when I noticed that they are intended to be used damp, not dry. OK, that made a BIG difference in both how they worked as well as how long they lasted.

The bad news is that sanding turned the shiny paint job into a dull matte finish. The good news is that you could watch the orange peel disappear into a smooth surface and the dirt nibs vanish. This actually made a difference!

Of course it took forever. Going over the entire car took over a week. Admittedly this was half days, as my arms and shoulders aren’t what they used to be. Still, it was a long time spent on tedious manual labor with the ongoing threat of a moments inattention creating a huge mess. And this was only the first of six steps.

The bulk of the work was with a six inch DA sander. This works great for most of the car, but there are a lot of small and curved areas that had to be done by hand. Which also takes forever and is even more exhausting than using the power sander. After a few days of this I ordered a smaller DA sander that uses three inch, two inch, and one inch sanding disks. This smaller sander should be able to do both sanding and polishing.

After finishing with the 1500 grit it was time to move on to the 2000 grit. The original pass with 1500 grit does almost all the work for smoothing the surface – each subsequent pass basically removes the progressively smaller sanding scratches from the previous pass. At least that is the theory…

It turns out that the theory is correct! The pass with 2000 grit did go faster. And you could start to see some sheen in the finish. Encouraging!

The next pass was with 3000 grit. Which, if anything, went even faster than the 2000 grit. You could start to see how it is going to look. Maybe this is actually going to work!

At this point the bulk of the car was ready for polish. I needed the small DA sander and sanding disks to finish up the sanding stage – and these were still on order. I had to wait a bit longer to see how the paint would look after polishing.

I couldn’t stand it! I had to see if this was actually going to work! Out came the new DA Polisher, foam pads, and 3M polishing compounds.

I’ve been starting each step with the roof of the car, on the theory that the roof is generally less visible than the hood, trunk, and sides of the car. Once again climb up on the bench and start working from the middle of the roof out. Immediately notice two things: First, the middle of the roof is still almost too far to reach. Have I mentioned how big the Imperial is? Second, the electric DA polisher is much larger and heavier than the air-powered DA sander. And the polisher requires two hands, unlike the one-handed operation of the sander. My entire body is not going to be happy about this…

Polish up the first area with coarse polishing compound, wipe off the residue, and take a look. Wow, what a difference! A smooth surface that looks great and is showing substantial depth. This is encouraging. A bit of haze, but that is what the finer grades of polish are for. Finish off the rest of the roof with coarse compound and then start again with the medium compound.

Now we are getting somewhere! It is looking really good – smooth, clean, good shine, excellent depth. I ran out of time before getting to the final pass with the fine compound but it looks like I’m getting the finish I wanted.

There is still a lot of work to do but I’m really encouraged at the moment. Hopefully this light is actually the end of the tunnel and not a train!

To the tune of I’ll be Home for Christmas. Yes, I went there!

While I was at the paint shop picking up the Imperial – documented in Back in Black! – I got a call from Librandi’s Plating that the chrome parts were ready for pickup. Sweet! I wasn’t expecting it until February.

I got the call on a Thursday. A quick examination of the weather forecast revealed an opening between storms in a few days so we scheduled a quick road trip on the following Monday and Tuesday to get the parts. There are times when it is good to be retired! We have had years where our truck was snowed in from January to April so it was a relief to get the parts back before winter really hits. And the week before Christmas was perfect timing.

All the parts were carefully wrapped in 62 layers of newspaper and we were in a bit of a hurry so we decided not to unwrap them for inspection. We did check them against our list – I was actually able to identify each part even though they were wrapped up.

With a certain amount of trepidation I started unwrapping and checking the parts. Would they meet my hopes and expectations? Or would they be just OK?

As I unwrapped each part I was almost shocked. The parts are absolutely beautiful! You expect chrome to be shiny – the difference is in the finish and details. And these parts are close to perfect. They have a jewel like appearance and a great finish. The more parts I unwrapped the happier I became.

This is how things started out:

And how they finished up:

This picture doesn’t really do justice to the quality of work, so let’s take a close look at one part:

As mentioned, chrome is shiny. A poorly done part will be shiny but have defects like ripples and waves, pits, bubbles, color variations, gouges, and similar visible artifacts. As you can see from the reflections, these parts are smooth and clean – absolutely beautiful!

The plating shop did have a solid foundation to build on. The Imperial parts are very well made – they are solid and heavy and looked great when they left the factory. Still, the results exceeded my expectations!

There was, however, one slight issue… As I unwrapped the very last part, the rear bumper, and checked and admired the finish something seemed a bit off. Stepping back and studying the bumper it suddenly hit me – it was the wrong bumper!

When I called Librandi’s and explained the situation I was met with a moment of shocked silence followed by a quick search and “OK, I have your bumper here on the bench in front of me.” It turns out that my order number was 31701 and the other order was 31781. My bumper is a 1963 (Chrysler) Imperial, and the other bumper is a 1964 Chrysler. The two orders were next to each other. And, to be fair, the bumpers look a lot alike, especially when wrapped up.

I’m working with Librandi’s to get each bumper to its rightful owner. Since I’m 400 miles from Librandi’s and the bumpers are about 7 feet long,weigh about 80 pounds, and are easy to damage in shipping, this isn’t as simple as you might expect. Stay tuned for updates!

In the meantime I’m a bit frustrated. I really want to get all of these beautiful parts back on the Imperial and see how it looks. But before that I have to color sand the paint and polish the car to get the paint looking the way it deserves to. And to get the paint to the level of the chrome parts! Expect more whining about this task.

Major development – the Imperial is back from paint! And it looks great!

After all the body work I had done the car was sprayed with a sealer, three coats of black basecoat, and three coats of clear coat. Normally only two coats of clear are applied – we went with three coats to provide a margin of error for sanding and polishing.

There is a saying in the automotive world: If it is perfect, paint it black. Black paint showcases any defects or flaws in the body. Any dents, ripples, bulges, bends, or other imperfections that would be invisible with other colors will demand your immediate attention in black. The Imperial isn’t perfect – but it is close! The body is really straight and the repairs I’ve done are good enough that you can’t see them. There are a few minor issues – that I’m very aware of! – but most people will never notice. And it looks so much better than it did before!

No more shotgun marks, cracks, dents, chips, rust holes, exposed primer, or damaged paint. And the paint is glossy, not weathered patina.

It has been a bit of a journey to get here. I started serious work on bodywork and paint preparation in February. In April I thought I was down to a couple of weeks of work and started searching for someone to paint it.

It turns out that it isn’t easy to find someone willing to work on restorations – most shops just do accident repair and insurance work and aren’t interested in someone bringing them a project for paint only. I can kind of understand this. 90% of paint quality is based on prep work. If they just spray the car they will be blamed for any issues. So most shops want to do all the work themselves.

I found a shop willing to take on the job and tentatively scheduled the work for May. Then reality hit – the more old paint I stripped off the car the more problems were uncovered. I whined about this in several previous posts… Time passed, work continued, and the car was finally ready for paint around August 1.

This was when the problems started. The paint shop was backed up 6 weeks. No problem, I can wait. After 6 weeks I got back in touch with them. First I couldn’t get the job scheduled. Then they stopped returning my calls. Fine – if they don’t want to do the job, I don’t want them to do it!

Which put me back to square one. I had a recommendation for a small local body shop: Atlas Auto Body in Berlin, MA. They are an old school one man operation that has been around for about 40 years. I talked to them, reached agreement on the work to be done, and scheduled the job for the week after Thanksgiving.

When the day arrived I had the Imperial towed to the body shop. Although the car was running great and the shop was only five miles away by back roads, all of the turn signals and lights were off the car and out at the chrome shop. With my luck, if I drove it there would be a police parade on the road and they would be in a bad mood. Towing was $125 and worth it for my peace of mind.

After a few days I got a call: the trunk lid was finished and he wanted me to look at it to make sure that it was what I wanted before proceeding with the rest of the job. I looked, it was what I wanted, and he proceeded with the rest of the car. A few more days and the car was ready. Close examination didn’t turn up any issues, so write the check, call the tow company, and drag it home!

Which brings us to today. The paint looks good – most people would leave it just at it is. But it could be better: there is moderate orange peel (texture in the paint that comes from the painting process itself) and some dust nibs. To make it look great it should be color sanded, buffed, and polished. I think you can see where this is going…

It needs to be sanded with three or four different grits of sandpaper and then polished with three different grades of polish. All 63 acres of the car body. Yup, going completely over the entire car six or seven times. Have I mentioned recently that I’m not very bright? And that I’m a glutton for punishment with no sense of self preservation? Sigh…

In an amusing coincidence, while waiting for the tow truck to bring the Imperial home I got a call from the chrome shop – all of the trim was done and ready to be picked up. Looks like a quick trip down to Pennsylvania to pick up the trim before the weather turns bad. Report to follow!

Previous article: A Room for Three Seasons.

Next article: getting the trim pieces back from the plating shop in I’ll Be Chrome For Christmas.

With the boat running right after the previous article on Flat Mercury we can move back to getting the Imperial ready for paint.

The doorcards – the covering on the doors inside the car – needed to be removed to work on windows and for paint. Unfortunately the inside door handles are attached to the doorcard and come off with the doorcard – meaning you can’t open the doors from the inside. I’ve been working around this for months, being careful not to shut myself inside the car. Fortunately I never did this – nope, not once. Never happened. Never made the mistake of closing all the doors while I was inside. Nope, not at all. This especially never happened when the battery was disconnected, making it impossible to lower the window and use the outside door handle. Trust me, never happened.

Ahem.

Anyway, I needed some way to open the doors from the inside. While considering several excessively complicated ways of making a handle I happened to contemplate my scrap steel box.

Hmm, those cutoff end pieces of steel tubing from a variety of earlier projects might just work…

A quick measurement says a 1/2″ hole will just fit over the door handle shaft. Setup the drill press and a 1/2″ hole magically appears:

Locking the door handle to the shaft is easy – flip the new handle on its side and drill and tap for a 1/4″ bolt:

All that is left is to slip the new handle over the shaft and tighten the locking bolt:

Lather, rinse, and repeat three more times and I don’t have to worry about locking myself inside the car again! Which never actually happened, of course…

Confession

I take safety seriously. Pain hurts and I don’t like the sight of my own blood. But I slip up from time to time.

The most dangerous phase while drilling holes is when the drill bit breaks through the back edge of the part. The drill bit can catch and grab, pulling itself into the part. When using a hand drill it may just stall the drill. I’ve mentioned that this industrial drill press doesn’t stall…

I had the part clamped in the drill vise and had a good grip on the vise. No problem for the first 98% of the hole. Unfortunately, when the drill broke through the back of the 5/8″ thick steel part it grabbed and started spinning.

The vise was ripped out of my grasp, dragged the part up the drill bit, and EVERYTHING started spinning – both the part and the vise. The part plus vise was widely out of balance and promptly snapped the 1/2″ drill bit and sent the vise plus part plus one half of the drill bit flying through the air.

Fortunately the vise flew away from me – missing me completely and hitting the drill press where it left a large gouge in the massive cast iron base. Somehow my hand holding the vise wasn’t hurt. The drill press was running at fairly low rpm – but still fast enough to do plenty of damage in a fraction of a second.

I got lucky. Really lucky. I wasn’t hurt, the vise is actually OK, and the damage to the drill press is cosmetic. The only thing actually broken was an $8.00 drill bit, making this a very cheap lesson!

The drill press table is set up so that the vise can be bolted to the table. If you look at the second picture you can see how the vise is bolted down. As it will be when I use the drill press in the future!

Next: while the Imperial waits for paint let’s tackle home renovation with A Room for Three Seasons.