How much can be done with a gallon of Bondo and a gallon of industrial enamel?
Much has been said about "perfectly good Mustang" and "henious acts on a classic". Well, poo. This Mustang was far from perfect. Sure, it was an A code coupe, but it was a rusty, dented up A code coupe. The bondo was laid over rust and old paint; dents were hurredly hammered to accept over 1/2" of Bondo in some places.
Now the rust is replaced with steel, and ummm...
It's orange.
Note: Captions are on top of photo renditions
First, you need a decent dust free environment. Since I didn't have one of those, I grabbed some plastic sheeting (before the recent unpleasantness) and a staple gun.
Just some exploratory surgery here. All this bondo has to come off since it was laid over paint and is rusting underneath. This was the worst spot, but was also typical of other areas of the car.
More Bondo. A couple of whacks, and the rust was revealed.
I used a combination of chemical and abrasive stripping to get the paint off the fenders.
I reinforced an area behind the shifter to accept the emergency brake from the Supra.
I hammered out the dents as much as I could, and then naively applied my own Bondo, as if I could do better than the previous horrible job.
Many thin coats does the trick. File the Bondo when it's soft, and then use a dual action sander to sculpt. A straight piece of wood with sandpaper is useful as well.
After getting the fender close to perfection, a bit of thick primer is used to cover gouges and bubble defects.
Then I had to wait for a pretty day to prime the car.
I also wet sanded the car to smooth it out as much as I could with 400 grit paper.
Now before you paint, you need the right safty gear
You're gonna make a mess. This is paint, and a whole gallon of industrial safty orange paint at that. So I set up some newspaper, and some spring clips to hold my HVLP gun. This ended up being a pretty efficiant workstation.
These are really just a tease. Since the car is dissassembled, I only have pictures of parts of the car. Here's the rear fender and the doors.
I painted everything. In retrospect, maybe I should have saved this paint for a second top coat, but I really wanted to make this car orange!
I like the way Chrysler went monochromatic on their engine compartments. It looks cool.
Even the interior and the traditionaly black semi-gloss dash board got the treatment.
The rear panels came out better than I thought they would, given the damage and how little natural talent I have with bodywork. From 10 feet, the car looks okay, but I can show you where I have all the basic no-nos of paint. I have fish eyes, ornage peel, thin paint, sags, runs, drips, you name it.
Another tease: I've decided to use a V8 after all.
