WILLY'S FACE LIFT - INSTALLMENT 9

It was a good day but most of the time was spent on preparing for painting. Yesterday afternoon,after Pamela got finished at college, we went to the PPG auto paint store I had visited earlier.  We found that we could get an exact match to the truck. We were all excited but there were two problems: (1) you must spray paint and (2) it costs $268 for 2 quarts.

We ended up going through their book of industrial implement paints (known as tractor paint) and getting a pretty good match to the truck. It was still $74/gal but the fellow there figured we'd probably not use more than a gallon of each color. In the end he threw in a quart of black to do the pinstripe. I was told by several people who know paints and pinstripe that we shouldn't use a pinstripe because it doesn't last well.  It's going to be a tedious job, but I re-did the lettering on Willy last year, so I figured I could handle it.

This morning we had breakfast with good friends, Cherry and Carl Berges, picked up painting supplies at Lowe's and headed toward the garage.

Guess what Pamela started doing?  You've read the other blogs. Yes, she continued to work on removing silicone.  She's getting a good clean surface for us to paint, but it's taking a lot of work. She brought some acetone today.  It didn't take take it off alone, but it evidently did help.

Felt's Locks in Evansville made us keys for Willy's original lock, so I removed the ugly deadbolt. I filled the cavity left in the door frame with bondo. It took me three tries to repair the 2 inch hole it left in the door skin.  What finally worked was putting the fiberglass material on the plastic mixing board, mixing the fiberglass resin with the hardener, coating the material, and then picking up the soaked material and applying it to the door. I'm going to fill the door cavity with expanding foam before I patch the inside.

After I worked on the door I started sanding. The entire body must be sanded and then washed with trisodium phosphate to help the new paint bond better.  Just as a trial run I prepared the right rear corner up to the dinette window. I sprayed the area that is to be painted white with a primer. It isn't absolutely necessary but there are a lot of places where there is bare metal and if that would get chipped somehow it would rust.

I purposely used a light grey primer because Pamela had been looking over my shoulder last might when I was working on pictures of Willy. It looked like more of an aluminum or chrome on the computer. For a short while we toyed with changing from white in the middle to a chrome or aluminum grey. I used some touch up spray from Pamela's Chasta - which is very close to what we're going to paint Willy - so we could get an idea.  Actually we rather like the chrome, but we decided to stay with the original White. We don't know what it might take to get the chrome color we want.  You can see the chrome against the burgandy in the picture below.

Pamela - guess what  - finished up the silicone removal while I sanded the fiberglass on the door, sanded the rest of the right side, and washed it down with trisodium phosphate. We're ready to continue priming.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to get some of the painting done this weekend.

It is slow, but everything we do is new to us, and we want to do it right.

Willy sits ready for primer and paint.