A Little Different Restoration Project

Show off your work! Anything from final results to full start-to-finish project journals.



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PostPosted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:09 pm
I have been lurking for a while but never registered or posted on here. Im a novice auto body guy. Short of rattle can stuff this is my first autobody experience. I was a mechanic by trade for 9 years. (got out of the industry and turned to aviation)

Background on the car is that it is a 1997 Eclipse GSX (All Wheel drive Turbo) that I bought and paid for when i was 16 (first car and my money). Somehow I had enough respect for it to not wreck it or blow it up to badly. Over 2-3 years I built it up to a 600ish whp car (I was a performance nut at the time). It was just stupid fun to drive on the street. During this time a crazy ex-girlfriend somehow got upset with me and ruined my car. Spray paint, tires, mirrors gone, ect... So i had a "Buddy" that claimed to be a great painter and was starting a shop and wanted a "Shop Car" to show off his skills and would just charge materials. I pulled the motor and what not to do it right and after 6 months with the car and countless unanswered phone calls he claimed it was done.

I got it back and almost vomited but just decided to cut my losses and leave. The car had no clear coat, it appeared to be just a single coat of base and more orange peel then words can describe. The bodywork was awful. While there was no sheet metal damage from said crazy person, there was scratches from a key and the spray paint all over. Where he "repaired the key marks and spray paint you could see where he just sanded and primed those spots so the car looked like it had almost zebra stripes in it because of un-level paint. The door jams appeared to be rattle canned with a similar color, the front bumper had cracks in the paint (no flex additive i assume) and the paint appeared to have little halo looking things in it.

I just took what i had and wrote it off as a bad investment. I figured i would get it done properly but it was "painted" for now. A couple weeks later i took it to the car wash and was going to spray the dust off of it, turned the pressure washer down to the lowest setting and stood about 10 feet back and as i was rinsing sheets of paint started coming off. Upon closer inspection the paint underneath was un-skuffed and had zero primer. He just sprayed a new color directly on top off the factory paint. to make it even better, i noticed little pits all over the car and after consulting an actual painter friend of mine it turns out they were tiny rust spots from water in his paint. I was then told that the only way to fix it right was to strip the entire car and remove those little rust marks.

At the time i didn't have the patience for that so I covered the car and let it sit for around 5 years. After a career change from the automotive industry I actually got the itch to start working on the darn thing again so out of the barn it came. I decided to do the entire "shabang" and start from scratch.

Original Paint
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And so it began

Car with the bad paint
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Day one after engine/interior
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Lots of Stripper, sandpaper and elbow grease
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Decided to just get everything out of the way and dropped the fuel tank, brake lines, and sub frame making it a 100% bare shell and then brake out the sand blaster for the engine bay. That was a level 10 pain in the ****.
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Replacing the front frame rail and radiator support due to the swiss cheese effect from a few different FMIC's and Radiators.

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Decided that id clean up some things on the car and seeing that i'm going with a fuel cell i'm filling the fuel door. This was my first real welding project, teaching myself as i go. i quickly learned that with metal that thin you cant weld the whole thing at once. warped the piss out of it but luckily i had a spare and it turned out nice after some grinding and sanding.
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Primed up the body, (got tired of sanding surface rust)

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Completed First coat of primer

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Blocking discovering a few small imperfections (i expected the fuel door, but was happy with how close i got it to start with)

(wife dropped the ladder on the thing when we were moving... )

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Fill sand repeat.
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On to the Hatch and Spolier. Filled in the rear wiper and radio antenna holes. If i was better at welding it would make the process much quicker.

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Anyone with experience feel free to chime in with suggestions. As I've said i have never done any type of bodywork and have been teaching (and screwing up) myself as I go. The interior was skuffed and cleaned prior to primer (not as concerned about the finish in there. The body was sprayed with a 2K "direct to metal" building primer. 2 coats then sanded with 320 and body repairs done. The final primer coat is in the works (on the chassis) and has been sanded with 600. Everything is cleaned with a wax and grease remover prior to spraying primer and the garage is at 80 degrees and let dry over night bore any work is done. I'm using a decent HVLP gun (with about 3 inline driers on the air supply) and most of the spraying is with a 1.4 tip @ 25psi per the tech. sheet on the primer.

Next step before paint is undercoating. I'm currently building a jig to elevate the car to make it easier to spray undercoating underneath.

I thought it would be neat to put my project on the forum here seeing most of my performance buddies don't care or understand. Again, any input/suggestions are more than welcome and appreciated

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:48 pm
Very impressive for a first time project. You will see this through and feel good about having done it yourself. So far you look like you have a handle on it, any questions please ask we are happy to help!



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PostPosted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 11:41 pm
Wow, you are all in! That is an incredible amount of work. What color are you painting the car?



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PostPosted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 9:24 am
Thanks guys! The pics I posted are spread out over a few years. Changing careers put a pause on it for a while, then moving and consolidating all the wifes junk :-D into the attic and building a giant storage building to reclaim my garage. I tried using a DA for the finishing sanding but its just not cutting it. Either its too fast or im not good enough at it, tends to leave waves of a sort so everything is done by hand. (dry sanding, i haven't tried wet sanding yet)

I've been just covering stuff in the garage for the time being when spraying primer. I just use a pretty high grade respirator (3M) and change the filters out every time i spray. I still get a little debris here and there but with the lighting i rigged up in the garage im getting pretty good at spotting dust/dirt and getting rid of it before it becomes a problem. The cloud from spraying is pretty thick so i just leave it be over night after i do something. I've researched on here some of the home made booths for when i get around to actually painting with good filtered airflow.

The million dollar question is the color. I still haven't decided on that yet. Im either going with a dark charcoal or a black. Id prefer a dark charcoal but I've poured through every paint book i can find and everything just looks grey to me. This picture is something i found a while ago that i like but i haven't been able to find a code close.
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Either way I haven't even began to research spraying the color. I'm Taking it one step at a time. Ive still got the underside and plastic parts to get started on before i can think about moving to the next step. Seeing this is my first project, complexity of the mixing and spraying will have a pretty heavy impact on what i choose (metallic vs pearl, ect...) based on potential results for a rookie. haha


I do have a question. (im not going to lie, i haven't searched it yet either) I want to re-coat the belly of the car with undercoating. I figure when going to this level of effort i might as well do it all. Is this something that i can just clean the existing undercoating and apply on top of with a new coat, or would i need to strip some/all of it off before reapplying?

Thanks again!
-Kevin

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 12:03 am
Ahh good old gsx.
Building 600hp on an awd car. That is crazy. Must be in the top5 fastest cars in your area.

Looking good and a lot of work being put into it!
I vote dark charcoal color.
Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 9:31 am
Answered your other post on undercoating.
Car is looking real nice - look forward to seeing it done.
1968 Coronet R/T


ACTS 16:31



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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 5:49 pm
Serf27 wrote:Ahh good old gsx.
Building 600hp on an awd car. That is crazy. Must be in the top5 fastest cars in your area.

Looking good and a lot of work being put into it!
I vote dark charcoal color.


Thanks.... I'm leaning that way as well. I just have yet to find a charcoal that is dark enough for me yet. But, that being said I have not really looked hard yet.

600hp was the old setup. ;) I plan on going bigger with this one. A street driven 8-900hp car. Technology in the tuner market has come light years since i was back in it. I will defend myself and say that there will be zero aftermarket "body kit whatever you call it" on my car. I love the stock look and am going to keep it that way.

'68 Coronet R/T wrote:Answered your other post on undercoating.
Car is looking real nice - look forward to seeing it done.


Thanks for the advise! I spend a good amount of time cleaning the wheel wells out with purple power and a little skuff work with 3M pads and did a small test spot again with the napa brand and the results were 100 times better. That was just a test for adhesion. It will get removed and im going to go with the stuff you recommended. Alot of people have it good reviews.



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PostPosted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:55 am
HMMM What was the advise on Undercoating Jim?
I didn't see the other thread

Keep up the good work

How do You like Aviation so far? I been Pro A&P for 20+ years wishing I had listened to Mom & Dad been a Lawyer or Doctor myself lol or kept Playing with my computer when I was a Kid
http://www.oldcomputers.net/ts1000.html

Be-leave it or not but It was cutting edge tech back then
God what a POS that was Had to write your own programs from a Book and use a Tape drive thinking back I ask myself why didn't I stick with it? why did I wanna play with Big Engines ???

:rolleyes: :knockout:
Dennis B.
A&P Mechanic, FCC General radio Telephone Operator
Line Maintenance A&P Mechanic and MOC Tech specialist.



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PostPosted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 5:52 am
Awesome job so far. Big job to take on first hand but definitely worth it in the end. If I can suggest one thing. When applying body filler make tight neat passes it will save your shoulders later and makes it easier to sand. 8-900 hp that's insane for that car I had a 95 GSx burnt orange was almost to 450hp and I thought that was nuts then again that was almost 10 years ago lol. Good luck and keep us posted.
Good work don't come cheap, cheap work isn't always good!

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 8:45 am
Doright wrote:HMMM What was the advise on Undercoating Jim?
I didn't see the other thread


Dennis,
Just stated what I did on the Jeep CJ that came out looking nice.

The best thing to put on bare metal is epoxy primer.
You can then apply undercoating or bed liner over the epoxy while it is still in the re-coat window.
That's what I did on this Jeep. Black ********** Epoxy, 2 coats, followed by Upol Raptor bed liner.
See bottom of page 2:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=23656&start=10
1968 Coronet R/T


ACTS 16:31
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