Door Gaps

[elrey]

Vette, you certainly have done a splendid job there! Nice work with the wheel, a handy skill. :thumbsup:

 

[Lotuswins]

Vette, I am really impressed with the wheel work. How long did it take you on those pieces?

I can sympathize on the rear fender gap problem. My car had severe shunts on the left front and the left rear sometime in its history, and the body shop did a very botched job on the repairs. They not only did major bondo sculpture on the shrouds and fenders, but also on the frame. The rear shroud was made up of two, overlapped in the middle and pop riveted together with a nice layer of bondo to smooth things over.....great stuff.

Anyways, after replacing the left front frame quarter, all sills, outriggers, etc. and aligning the frame I prealigned the fenders to make sure things fit....unfortunately I didn't do such a great job as after I replaced the lower portions of the fenders, replaced the front of the front fender, and pieced the rear out of two fenders, I painted the insides of the fenders thinking things would bolt back up, ready for the finish body prep for paint....uh, well needless to say, I was back welding and grinding like you on your rear fender to get the gaps realigned....

But the good news is that all fenders and doors are on, and I'm almost ready for final prep before paint, kinda like yours. And yours looks great by the way!

Now if I can find a local paint shop to spray the ivory paint on....I'm just going with a single stage dupont paint. I figure its easier to maintain than two stage, and won't be too glossy.

Keep up the great work.

Jerry Rude
Roseburg Oregon

 

[vette]

Jerry, the only downside to a basecoat/clearcoat paint job is the high quality gloss. And that is obviously subjective based on what you want. I started spraying base/clear on all my projects over 10 years ago and can't force myself into going back to any other system. The reason is the quality of the finish that you can produce and the durability of the finish. It takes the same amount of work or less to produce a really quality and durable shine with base/clear that is takes with any other system,(acrylic enamel, lacquer, etc.) And it is 1000 times more durable. If you are using a non-metalic colour you sometimes can get a pretty good finish with a single stage urethane paint. But if it comes out with even alittle orange peel or dryness if it is metallic you can't wet sand(block sand) it smooth and buff it. So I don't even waist my time on single stage urethanes. Again, that is purely subjective. I'm going to opine that the opinion would be different for the one who is applying the paint and finishing it verses the one who is just paying for the finished paint job. But if you are using urethanes, the gloss factor of single stage verses base/clear is so very close that you might as well go to base/clear for its ability to be massaged and hand sanded and polished to perfection.
Shaping metal or panel beating depends on many factors. Obviously the persons skill, also the technique used and the type of tools available. One thing for sure is that a truely finished piece takes time. In my case it took alot of time and those pieces are the best of the lot and they are not really finished. And I am still learning. I finally decided to stop right there because i had brought the other fenders along to the point where i decided to use them. The wheeled pieces I will keep for either another project or for damage repair if I should ever need that. I did use some of the new skills to finish the fenders that are on the car. And I wheeled some new pieces to repair the door skins.