Front Engine Dragster....

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

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 8:21 pm
Well been a while since I have been on the forum.....about 2-3 years ago when Darrel helped me restore and paint a 76 vette, turned out pretty sweet with his help. He also gave me a taste for a great hobby that I decided to take to the next level. I painted the vette in a garage...now I have a complete mechanics and body shop complete with paint booth for my personal use only. I decided to post my next project for others interest and also to get pointers on since even though I have the equipment, I am far from a professional. I literally just finished installing a paint booth I purchased form M1Manufacturing in North Carolina which I hope will enable me to do some quality paint jobs of my choice. Well here we go and any suggestions or pointers will be appreciated.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 8:38 pm
The wife and I live about 4 miles from Cecil County Dragstrip in Maryland. Last January I took a trip to Texas and picked up this little number at a give away price. The fella that owned this did 5 passes on a fresh engine, then passed away from cancer. His son liquidated his estate. My wife and I thought it would be fun to play with on Friday nights, but for each racer the personality of the machine must match the owners. Since the wife is 4'11" and African American while I am 6'3" and Caucasian, renaming this machine the "Salt&Pepper Shaker" seems a natural fit. Now I must turn this thing from blue to white.....I am thinking a pearl white. This should be an interesting project. The only bummer is the original paint job is full of stripes....and they are painted in stripes not decaled.

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Give a man a brush, and he will paint a Picasso.
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 9:10 pm
Hey, man welcome back! Nice, digs! Yeah, start posting up anything you want on that dragster project. If you want to start experimenting on the cheap with some pearls drop over to.... www.paintwithpearls.com
On the stripes thing, when you run your hands across them do they feel kind of like they are "on top" of the other paint? Just curious, they could have all been laid out in base/clear then clear coated or an artist type could have done them over top of the entire paint job with something like One Shot load in an air brush or detail gun. My cousin is a custom pinstripe/artist/lettering guy and does jobs both ways depending on customer preference. His One Shot enamel work really sits up top on paint if he does it that way.......
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 9:56 pm
Hey Darrel, nice to hear from you again. That vette still looks as sweet as the day you and I finished the project. Now I have this dragster which I would like to finish by the end of May for the track is already open. Those stripes....what a PIA. What they did is lay a basecoat of red, taped off the stripes, and shot it with blue. They hid the edges of the stripes with silver vinyl stick on pin striping. All in all it adds up to many layers of paint. I took on section of it and bought a soda blaster from Harbor Freight. It takes the paint off but man is it slow. I know you only get what you pay for but I could not choke the price of a commercial blaster for the amount I would use it. I plan to finish the one section with the blaster but will have to figure out another way to prep the rest of it so that I can shoot it with primer well enough to hide those stripes. I don't want to pay to have someone else blast it like I did the vette. As before, any help you or others on this fine forum can give me will be greatly appreciated. I will post more pics soon.........John
Give a man a brush, and he will paint a Picasso.
Give a man a spray gun, and the wife better hide the car.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2018 7:44 am
So you are not having problems with the tape stripes, right? And is that body shell made of fiberglass or metal? If metal it might be easier to just use an aircraft grade stripper. Brush it on, lay plastic wrap over it, walk away.....check it in a few hours and it should have cut clean down to the bare metal. Now if that's a fiberglass shell you would have to brush it on watch it, and scrape each layer carefully as you near the gel coat/primer/surfacer. Chemicals can be used on fiberglass but you have to go slow and stop well short of the bottom layer of paint. The stripper can soften and/or remove that surfacer.....you don't want that to happen. The Methocell thickener and wax in the stripper can also cause adhesion problems if it gets in that gel surface.
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:43 pm
So we started on this project today, those stripes are something. I snapped some pics to give a better idea of what I am dealing with. The front nose cone and the rear shell is fiberglass....the rest is metal.

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Give a man a brush, and he will paint a Picasso.
Give a man a spray gun, and the wife better hide the car.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:53 pm
Hate me for saying this but I do not wish to put all the time into this that I did that vette. Where as we went with the chemical bonding on the vette, I want to go with the mechanical bond on this. Anywhere I can use an air sander I want to get use to using the tools. The vette I did all by hand and although it turned out showroom, my arm still hurts.
Sooooo......I broke out my palm sander and some 80 grit, with a little effort it ate those vinyl stripes right off. I also used it to try and feather the stripe edges.

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Give a man a brush, and he will paint a Picasso.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:01 pm
Only problem is the 80 grit with a palm sander leaves swirls. I then took 150 grit and hit it by hand which did a lot of good but in some places I still have swirls. I plan to use House of Kolor high build primer. House of Kolor has good quality product but do you think it will cover up the swirls??? Do you think if I hit the rest of the body with 150 grit it will cut in enough for the primer to grab onto?

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Give a man a brush, and he will paint a Picasso.
Give a man a spray gun, and the wife better hide the car.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:54 pm
Yeah, you are getting "pigtails" as the debris (coating, dust, dirt, wax, etc.) you remove tries to harden back on the sandpaper. Going directly from 80 to 150 is a bit much....try doing a grit between that like 120, then step up to the 150. The 80 grit removal is fine for what you are doing. As far as primer covering them, I don't like to "assume" it always will cover stuff like that.... just depends on the brand of high build..... I've used some HOK in the past but never their primers.....
Metal, wood, fiberglass, we work it all... www.furniturephysicians.com We can restore the irreplaceable!

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 2018 6:04 pm
Pig tails can cause a lot of work. Try slowing the rpm down on the palm sander as it usually helps reduce or eliminate the pig tails. Keeping the debris from accumulating under the center of the pad is the goal.
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