progress pics

[John Mcgraw]

I took the day off, and drove up to the powder coater today to pick up the chassis, and it is absolutely perfect! I don't think that I will ever paint a frame again. For what this guy charges, I can't justify painting them myself anymore!

I got the body gelcoated today, and will start wet-sanding it tomorrow. I am still waiting for the stainless fastners to arrive, so I probably will not get much of the suspension assembled this weekend.


Regards, John McGraw

http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrow...der_id=1660210

 

[IH2LOSE]

John.

Besides the sanding of the gel coat, Looks like your on the down hill slope with car now.

Are all of the suspention parts allready polished ?

Now I have to ask you why you chose the gel goal on this car over the slick sand especially when we all know whats in store with sanding the car.

 

[61 Silver]

Hi! John

The quality of your work is just fantastic ! I hope to view your work up-close and get a chance to meet you one of these days.

For those of you that have not dealt with John, he loaned me one of his tools for crimping the rivets on the solid axle rebound straps for just the cost of shipping. You just don't find a person like that every day.

Thanks John for the help on my projects and keep the pictures coming.

Ray

 

[ChuckG]

NICE, John. I agree about the powder coat too. It's cheap to do when you consider the cost/time to sandblast, prime, paint, etc.

"Round these parts" , powder coaters offer 10 shades of black from 100% gloss, to 100% flat. Chuck

 

[John Mcgraw]

John.

Besides the sanding of the gel coat, Looks like your on the down hill slope with car now.

Are all of the suspention parts allready polished ?

Now I have to ask you why you chose the gel goal on this car over the slick sand especially when we all know whats in store with sanding the car.

Larry,

I will use Slicksand after I sand the gelcoat. It is my opinion that there is nothing that is better to use over bare glass and repairs than Gelcoat. Silcksand is made from exactly the same resin as gelcoat, but is has a lot of inert material in it to make the sanding easy. While that makes it a good primer/surfacer, it does not make it a very good barrier coat over repairs and bare glass. PPG reccomends the use of gelcoat over all repairs, and Corvette Image will not warranty thier panels if you do not use it, and experience blisters.
In my opinion, there is nothing better to consolidate the hundreds of tiny little spiderweb cracks, and it does a great job of blocking solvent penetration into repairs and bare glass. This is usually where blisters originate from, the solvent penetrates into the porus body filler and old glass, and the the top surface cures. The first time the car goes out in the hot sun, the solvent bakes out of the body and causes blisters. The gelcoat will stop these solvents from penetrating beneath it.

Almost everything we use on these old cars is excatly the same material. Resin, Gelcoat, body filler, dura-glass, bonding adhesive, Slicksand, and Featherfill, are all just Polyester resin, and only differ by the ammount of inert material they contain to aid in workability or sandability. The Gelcoat is nothing but pure resin with a little color in it, and some wax that forms a cure membrane after spraying. It is about as hard and impervious as you can get with polyester resin. This makes it a little hard to sand, and is a reason that a lot of shops don't use it. It is more labor intensive, and for a guy paying for a paint job, it adds up to a considerable upcharge, but for me it is nothing but a little material cost and a lot of labor, which costs me nothing!

The suspension parts are all polished and have been powdercoated with a chrome-look powder coat. they are not quite as drop-dead shiney as the polished ones on the 59, but the powdercoat ought to make them extremely durable. As soon as all the stainless bolts arrive, I will start bolting it al together. It is a long way from being done, and will probably not see the road until next spring.

Regards, John McGraw

 

[firstgear]

I had my frame powder coated as well.....got the powder for free (semi-gloss black, friend knew powder supplier) and then the powder coater did it for free as a favor to a different friend that I had done a favor for, it pays to do favors, sometimes they come back to you in ways you never expected.

The powder coater had a washer system to clean it first and then they ran it through their phosphate treatment prior to powder coating. This will provide the best adhesion as well as corrosion protection in combination with the powder paint. If the option is there for phosphate treatment, you want that too. This is how ALL commercial coaters treat their parts prior to coating. They put them through a 5 stage washer. From office furniture to lawn mowers to automotive parts, they all do it this way.

Powder coater applied the coating and put in oven (like baking cookies), after about 30 minutes at 325 degrees or so they pulled it out of the oven and then shot powder on it again, this time focusing on the corners and such. When they spray with electrostatic, the powder goes to the nearest grounded point, as it approaches a corner, the side walls look more like ground than the very corner, so when it comes to the corners, they turn down the voltage and "push" the powder with air into it.

Since the metal is already VERY hot, the powder doesn't need the electrostatic attraction to stick, because the powder starts to melt the second it hits the part. After going back over all these corner areas and such, the frame is stuck back into the oven for the last and final cure.

 

[John Mcgraw]

NICE, John. I agree about the powder coat too. It's cheap to do when you consider the cost/time to sandblast, prime, paint, etc.

"Round these parts" , powder coaters offer 10 shades of black from 100% gloss, to 100% flat. Chuck

Chuck,

I ended up going with a 100% gloss, and it looks like a black mirror. I have looked the frame over from one end to the other, and can't find a single defect in it except where the hanging hooks were!
I did the blasting myself before hauling it up to him, and it only cost me $300.
By the time I used DP90, a primer/surfacer, and the finish coat, I would have close to that in materials, and not to mention all the labor. He originally told me $250 on the chassis, but when He saw all the tubes, he had to add some money to it.

I really wanted to paint it red to match the body, but he did not have a red that was a dead match for the Viper red. One was a little to orange, and the next was a little too red, so I opted for black instead. This guy is huge production shop, who just happens to be a car guy as well. A very small percentage of his stuff is car stuff, and I think he uses the hot rod stuff to fill the gaps in his production schedule. His work is first rate, and his prices are great!


Regards, John McGraw