Ya looks like a really sweet ride.

Now if they would do a kit for a late 80s Corvette .......

Always wanted to do a Vettarosta Guy who was making them was killed his wife was running the shop last I heard but they stopped making the kits.

So my helpers needed a Saturday off...I was on my own.... One thing I do like about working alone is it gives me time to figure things out and do a little more adjusting of stuff. I did attach the rear wing/lip spoiler to the tailgate. Also, pulled my quarter fiberglass bedsides and made some long attachment bars on the inside of each fender for the original wheel liner clips. The gas cap door fits about perfect, big surprise.... I've got just a few pic.s of these thing....I'll get them on here to tomorrow. About 14 hours in on the last two days.

So I did get the top lip fiberglass spoiler on and where it lined up fairly well. Piece was a little undersized so I had about 2 hours of trimming it and the upper tailgate. That was epoxied in place. Oddly enough this is the first modern kit that had no type of lip/return on the wheel well opening. I would assume that it was a cost cutting thing by the fiberglass people, I mean it's probably a lot easier to pull from the mold without those. Anyway, you see me taking some 3/8 inch thick pink foam with epoxy and matt and forming an edge for the fender liner to mount to. There really is not much tension on this mounting area but I did the epoxy, wet on wet, with a lot of matt for a nice strong surface.
So hey. the oem gas cap door.... looked inside this pocket on the fiberglass and there are two molded in drill points. Drilled them through and bolted it up with no adjustment and this is what I got.....thing is like within 1/8 of an inch of being where I want it......
So I've been out and about shaking the car out for maybe 100 miles or so....
OBSERVATIONS.....Man, take several hundred pounds off a car from midway back and it turns into an animal. I mean that in a good way.... this thing is quick and responsive, downright tossable. My gas gauge is moving down a lot slower. I think that is not just a weight thing but the fact that in cruising the car is doing that 8 to 4 cylinder switch sooner. So here are some pics....

So this Tuesday I got an itch I needed to scratch and put the rear window in.....Fitment was great and the window came with the proper urethane sealer. Suggestion on this stuff....manufacturer says keep it at 80 degrees when applying. NO....NO.....that does not work. I would have broke my caulk gun in half trying to get it out of the tube. The tube ws metal so I hit it with my heat gun for about 5 minutes and that got it moving. You could also probably have put it in an oven at 150 to 200 for 5 to 10 minutes I figured.

So we got a Thursday in as a car day but it was just Riley and myself.....grandson was in the corporate video chat thing as they reassemble his department. I reset some rivets deeper for better body work and we started hogging in those rain gutter up on the roof. I think with a short truck cap these things just don't look right. It also gives some more strength and rigidity to the window, rear cowl area. The idea was Durglas filled out, round of Rage, and final round of USC Proflex, feather out a little farther each time. Along the upper ridge attachment I mixed epoxy with microballons, and made up chipped/chopped mat to feed in along there. The idea is to create a matrix to fight against movement because of the different expansion ratios of different type of materials.
Riley and I did another car day here on Saturday and just kept finessing our attachment points with the Pro-Flex. Between dry times we installed this pretty cool exhaust. This fits after the main "suitcase" muffler in the dual system. Dodge did a pretty decent job with the exhaust on these cars however they found that they had loudness and drone problems with the car before it was produced, especially these Road and Track models. There answer was these near 40 pound each giant resonators which did indeed tame the savage beast however it sucked about all of the character right out of the Hemi engine. Now enter.... Blastin' Bob's Fat Pipes (http://www.blastinbob.com) This guy is out in California and had the perfect solution to my car. He sells many different systems and you can go online to hear them. The one I chose was a mandrel bent resonator system. This was shipped to my door for like $300. Took me maybe 45 minutes to install, saves a good 40 pounds over those giant fart cans and sounds very much like the Corsa system I had on my 2006 Vette. Great sound at idle, great when you get on it, and NO drone at highway cruise.
So we are thinking we might be into Tamco's new high build epoxy by the end of the week.....stay tuned....

So here we are....July 3rd.....we worked hard and wrapped up our wood restoration work by Wednesday this week. Car day was Thursday and I got my grandson and shop helper both for the day. We did some more massaging of some minor fills and disassembled the nose while starting the mask/tape/trim pull on the whole truck.
Well, I am using this truck project as a test bed for a few things....
First, I was able to pickup a new/old stock 6 stage turbine motor and quickly boxed and modified that unit. Man, I thought the 5 stage units were strong.....this thing is a beast with external cap pressure (I don't have a cap tester anymore) probably in the 12 psi range. For the truck shoot I was going to combine this with a new Sprayfine Gravity gun. I will eventually put a rheostat controller on this set-up for a little more control. I must say though....right out of the box, if you put one of these guns with 4, 5, or 6 stage turbine you'll love it. The 1.3 tip setup is about perfect and could shoot anything with the 6 stage. We used the gun with some heavy bodied wood stains and my in-shop 4 stage and it was great.
So what may you ask are we shooting with the new set-up for the truck......something I've been itchin' to try.... Tamco's 700 series High Build EPOXY primer! Finally, a light bulb went off in somebody's head that we needed an all-in-one product that could seal, prime, and build like a 2k and dare I say....NOT SHRINK. The whole truck (except the bed and jambs) is now covered in this stuff. This stuff can cover guys! I put a 1.5 tip setup with the 6 stage system and it was like a one foot wide garden hose of clinging, flowing, thick stuff. If flowed for about 3 to 4 hours and was nice and hard this morning. It's very easy to sand back and get this.... you can sand it tomorrow, next week, or wait even years later to sand it. So the plan here is to put everything back together, get the bed in (still waiting for my floor), and just drive it for 2 to 4 weeks while preparing for a sand down, retweek body work, one more coating session with epoxy, sand, and then into base/matt clear.

Monday, so we were on the road with deliveries but cut about 3 hours loose to put things back so I can drive the "new truck" and shake it out. Here are some better pic.s to give you an idea of where we are headed.....

Man, you are knocking this thing out very quickly.

Is this high build epoxy a new product meant for automotive work? Please post some picks of what it looks like when you start sanding it.

It's Tamco's latest product.....check it out here.....
https://tamcopaint.com/collections/prim ... oxy-primer
I really like it, only downside would be the 30 to 45 minute induction after mixing.
Yeah, it's kind of amazing how it sands with the few test patches we did. It feels kind of hard/brittle to the touch but man, it knocks down nice. Surface feels kind of silky after you hit it. I only put maybe 10% reducer in it because I was using our turbine setup however I think I could have just added a splash instead and would have been fine.
I will indeed report on the overall sanding when we get there.....time to drive and shake out any movement, cracking, etc.

So today it was my grandson and myself sanding, sanding, sanding. The initial impressions I had about this Tamco high build epoxy were correct. The stuff is what I would call "surface hard" but sands up nice and breaks up into dust. In the black it guide coats itself nicely. I had at least 4 areas that I knew would need about 1/16 or less skimming and I could get those to easily stand out. I just took a long Durablock and put some sticky micky mask on it and ran it over the areas slightly bending the block to catch my surrounding level areas. It slightly burnished the outline of the needed fills.
And then, there is my grandson. If I could clone him we could rule the world, well, maybe the US, or at least, Ohio. He's fast and has a great eye for highs/lows. So we have about 3/4s of the sanding done. One more good hit at sanding and refining body work and I think we could do a slightly thinner epoxy coat and final sand before moving on to color. My Paint with Pearl additives come in Monday so I'll start experimenting on my speed shapes.
Oh, and I have done about 200 miles on the truck checking for movement, vibration, cracks, etc. I got one minor 2 inch crack at the base of the rear window pillar that I traced to movement from the reapplication of trim. I've since ground that back out and used epoxy/matt for a build up to more accurately allow for the trim so we are good on that.