Bear Metal

Today we celebrate getting every last bit of paint, Bondo, primer and rust off of the 1979 280ZX (Zed) metalwork. It was a bear, but we are full metal all the way around. I know: we all thought I wasn't going to get this done next. I am as surprised as you are.

The Grind

This paint removal started almost 3 years ago, shortly after C acquired the car. He did not like what the prior owner did with the big purple "V" on the hood, stretching onto the rear edges of the fenders and the tops of the doors, covering the mirrors. Rather than just remove that paint, he wanted to bring the entire car all the way down to metal, discover what rust there was and repair it. Since the car is over 40 years old, and many of these old Z's suffer from rust damage, it was the right call to make. By the way, body-filler mates to bare metal consistently, but does not bond to primed metal nearly as well, so for a much better paint-prep, it is best to get to metal wherever you intend to apply filler. 

C used various techniques including airplane paint remover, a belt sander, an electric grinder and an air-powered grinder. With the grinders he used various attachments. Once he lost interest, I got around to finishing the work, using various tools as well: sandpaper, razor-blade scrapers and, of course, the electric grinder.

For those thinking about doing this, I forewarn you... it is extremely time consuming to do it this way. There clearly is a reason why the folks on those MotorTrend television shows (looking at you, Iron Resurrection) have the cars sandblasted before they do anything else to the body. In a few hours, a skilled sandblasting shop can have the bare metal exposed, leaving you just the clean-up of both little missed spots and a ton of sand. Figure, I spent 2 hours finishing one fender alone and it had already been chem-stripped, ground-on and hand-sanded beforehand. Since there is time cleaning up all media that is left in the body cavities, etc, that time needs to factor in, but I still think it's a better use of resources (time and money) to sand-blast. Otherwise, the TV folks would hand-grind: more sparks = better TV. One point that I would like to make about the pictures: those dark spots are where I ground off the last of the paint, so those are just discolorations. For the most part, they are flat; they just look bad in the pictures.

The Sand

Manual grinding (and some media-blasting) only works on the metal parts. On modern cars, and even on Zed, there are non-metal parts that would get destroyed by a sand-blaster. For example, the mirrors and the headlight buckets are plastic. C didn't know the headlight buckets were plastic and hit one of them briefly with the grinder, putting a deep gauge in it. So, for these, I will sandpaper by hand. These are the last pieces I still need to complete as of this writing. But, for these plastic parts, "completing" is simply sanding down so primer and paint can adhere. I will need to use a different product to fill the gauges in the headlight buckets, and that won't matter for the rest of the car, so I'm setting that work aside temporarily.

Temporary Assembly

The grinding was preceded by removing all of the body parts that could be removed: tailgate, fenders, doors and hood. I felt that I needed to make sure the body lined up properly, and everything was where it was supposed to be before I started laying body-filler into the small divots in the metal. So, piece-by-piece, I set them back in place, held in with the fewest fasteners possible to just hold them where they are supposed to be. The bottom edges of the fenders are not yet tied into the frame, so if they look a little off in the pictures, that's why. For a brief period, Zed looks whole, and pure shiny silver metal. Atop that metal I will apply a very thin coat of body filler to eliminate the small imperfections found all over the place on this car. I intend to leave the panels in-place on the car until the bodyfiller has cured and been sanded.

To be fair, this car is in amazing shape, rust-wise, but it has seen 40 years of use, so there are small dings all over it. They will disappear easily. The big dent in the driver fender may be more difficult to disguise, but time and effort will tell. If you recall the pictures from when we first bought this car, the damage on the driver side looks way better, especially when we consider that a complete body-work noob (me) banged the dents out with a framing hammer. Yeesh.

That's it for today. This was really more of a status report than anything else, but after so many months of this car sitting, having the paint off the metal and getting re-assembled for Bondo seemed post-worthy. Thanks, as always, for following along.

Z Progress

It's been quite some time since I posted an update on the 280ZX project. Today, I'll catch everyone up. For my US former military readers, Happy belated Veteran's Day and thank you for your service.

Tear Down Blocks

shedroom

In my last post about the Zed in March (See Strip Tea Z), I described the tear down of the donorZ, and even posted the link to the craigslist sale of the picked-over shell. We found a buyer, a guy who rebuilds old 240's, 260's and 280's, and he knew there was some remaining value in what we sold him. To make the sale work, I had stripped lots of good stuff, and stashed them wherever I could find a place in the small garage. Mostly, these parts were set inside the keeperZ (Zed). This had the unfortunate side-effect of reducing the interest in working on the Zed. So, this past weekend, K2 and I emptied the Zed of all of the parts we were storing in there. This created a need to deal with the shedroom.

Shedroom

inspected

When it was conceived, the shedroom was a "couple months" solution (See 280ZX * 2 = Y). Now, over 9 months later, it has persisted. Boo and I decided that we needed to embrace the shedroom, and set it up better than the basic pile of parts on the floor that it had become. Otherwise, the work which has stagnated will never restart. So, similar to the interior of the Zed, we moved all of the parts out... into the hallway. Then, we installed a set of monster shelving and organized the parts onto it. This made the space much larger, and more useful... and allowed for all the other parts from the inside of Zed to fit. So, now we have the Zed empty of spares, and parked in the driveway (under a 10x10 canopy), ready to be worked on.

Auto Shop Class
K2 has started an auto-shop course in high school. This is the only such course available in the state of Oregon, and has a class size of less than 20, so it's kind of a big deal. Gone are the days of every high school having a shop like this. As I said, Oregon only has one. From this class, K2 is learning things that he is now teaching us. Included in this growing list of teachings is the multi-point inspection.

Inspection

stripped

K2 wanted to do some work on the Zed after we emptied it of spares. The auto-shop class is much more focused on mechanical than body or interior stuff, and he felt that doing classwork stuff would help him retain the teachings. So, he set to doing a full inspection of the Zed, recording his findings for us to evaluate. My sole influence was for him to write everything down, and not to filter anything out due to concern that we wouldn't want to do the fix. Similar to having the boys decide if a car was purchase-worthy, I want the boys to drive what is or is not in need of repair, based on diagnostics not cost or convenience. The list was pretty long, including the brake booster and radiator replacements, and a full tune up. That's totally fine. I tell them that money should only guide "when" not "if" something should be done. If it is a safety item and you can't afford to fix it, get a bus pass until you can.

Strip

Sunroof Returns

With weather changing, our window for getting the grinding done before winter arrives is closing. I don't think we're going to get the exterior paint-ready before then, but I think we can get the old paint off before pushing Zed back into the garage for body-fill. How we manage the sanding of that body-fill will be the adventure that follows. With K2's preference for mechanical, I expect he'll get after the tune-up and radiator replacement completely independent of the exterior work. After another weekend day dedicated to the paint, we have stripped the fenders, hood, driver door, rear quarter panels, and roof. All that's left is the rear hatch and the passenger door: both of which can be done on the front porch. So, we are ready for the seasonal rains and the winter that follows. We can figure out body filler along the way.

Sunroof

the grind

The early 280ZX delivered with a sunroof. The donorZ was a late 280ZX, and it shipped with T-tops. Our early model, however, arrived without the sunroof. The prior owner who made such memorable decisions as removing the less-than-one-pound rear speaker panel, gutting the interior for weight and hacking the wiring so the fuel pump and ignition were triggered by switches also decided to remove the glass sunroof and weld on a patch panel. And weld it poorly with gaps and burn-thru. To resolve the leaks, the seam was "sealed" with duct tape. Neat. I had a couple of hours on a Saturday, and the sky, while threatening, wasn't supposed to open up with rain for a couple of hours. So, I backed the Zed into the driveway. The duct tape removed with a razor blade, and within about 15 minutes I was able to knock the patch panel free simply by hammer a wedge into the spotty gap, focusing on the welds. I cleaned up the edge with my angle grinder and then switched over to my wire-brush. I cleaned up all the spots where I'd used the chemical stripper, removing the flash-rust that appeared in the time since. It is interesting how the steel wire brush stripping doesn't leave the surface susceptible to flash rust, but the chemical does. One more factor to include in the mental-math when I look at paint removal in the future.

That's it for today. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Strip Tea Z

Okay, maybe that name is pushing the pun envelope a little too far. So what? I'm gonna push it a little more. Anyway, we're due for an update on the 280ZX project, so here it is.

Let's Strip
C and I increased our focus on the tear down of the donor car over the last few weeks. The seats came out with relative ease and they are sitting in the shedroom (see 280ZX * 2 = Y for an explanation) with the bare-steel front fenders from the keeper Zed. Next, C pulled the center console and radio/climate control console. These were held on with Phillip-head screws and removed fairly easily. Then, C pulled carpets. They don't look like they got much love over the years, but we are going to try to deep-clean them. We thought about just buying a new set for the front, but the newer carpet won't color-match the rear carpets perfectly. Worst case, we buy them anyway. First, we're going to try some cleaning tricks.

Plastic Surgery
Next came the plastic cards that cover the rear 1/2 of the interior. They are all held on with Phillips-head screws and pop-in tabs. Considering that these panels have never been removed, I expected all of the plastic tabs to break off (like they always do on VW's half this age). To my surprise, we only lost one or two tabs. But the plastic cards were filthy. An hour with the hose, soapy water and a scrubby solved that, though. Once dried, the plastic cards joined the growing pile of parts in the shedroom. We also pulled the rear speakerbox which the prior owner (PO) of the keeper Zed chose to remove for weight. Since it weighs less than 2 pounds and provides great utility both as a keeper of 2 plastic bins, but also retains the lines of the car, this decision seems especially dim-witted. No matter. The donor box was in pretty good shape with just a little surface rust around the bottom edge. Another hour of sand-prime-sand-paint, and it's ready to join the other parts in the shedroom.

Screw Holes, but No Screwing
C removed the after-market steering wheel so he could get after the dashboard. The dash should be held on with a handful of screws. As C went looking for them, he found the holes where they should be, but no screws, except for 2. So, the whole dash was held on with 2 screws and tension on the wires and speedometer cable. Zoiks. We removed 2 screws which held the defrost control cover plate to the dashboard from below. Then, we were able to pull the dashboard away enough to slip a hand behind and detach the speedometer cable. The dash then came out as one large piece, with a thick pigtail of wires running out the passenger side. C will need to decide whether he wants to try to get the newer dash components working with in the (slightly) older model or just remove bits down to the covers and swap them. The raw dash has a nearly flawless cover so either way the keeper Zed will be vastly improved by the swap.

We have also pulled the door cards, the wiring harnesses, power door lock motors, and the power window switches and motors from both doors. Since the door glass is so hard to come by, we are keeping those too. We are going to pull the outer scrapers from the doors as well, effectively gutting the doors of anything useful.

Grind Grind Grind
Meanwhile, the grinding on the keeper Zed paint continued with the rear-end almost complete. The rear tail lights are out and C is looking at the rear tail gate as the next, and final, piece to address before we make decisions about swapping in the T-top or restoring the moonroof. When we removed the rear bumper from keeper Zed, we discovered that it was more rust than steel, so we will be sourcing an after-market or salvage one. Unlike the MGB parts I've sourced lately, these Zed parts are hard to find and expensive when you do.

Rim Job
If you followed the Around the Rim saga (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), you already know pretty well what's been going on in this space. I bought a set of mid-90's Honda rims and cleaned them up so I could put the nasty rims that came with the MGB onto the donor Zed. This frees ups the donor Zed rims to put on the keeper Zed; which was the whole reason for getting the donor car in the first place. Once the Honda rims were cleaned up and painted, an afternoon was spent rotating sets from one car to another.

That quick post covers many many hours of work. We are in the home stretch for getting the donor Zed out of our yard, though. I vacillated between keeping and not keeping the transmission, selling the engine or not, etc. In the end, it's just not worth it. I don't have another car to put them into, and I don't have the storage. Besides, someone else can really use them. So, we resolved to posting the car in its mostly-stripped condition, on craiglist. We figured that someone would pay the price of one core charge to get a working engine, transmission and various other parts we didn't need, but are serviceable.

Thanks, as always, for following along. More next time-

Around the Rim (Part 3)

Today's post continues the saga of upgrading the rims on the '78 MGB from the crummy chromeys to some mid-90's Honda alloys.

Clean, Clean Again

original Honda rims

After 30 years of use, and very little in terms of care, these new-to-me rims needed some love. First, they needed to be cleaned. I started with some basic car wash, a scrub brush and a hose. This worked some, but there was some stubborn brake dust and other grime on the insides. This took brake cleaner and some 150-grit sandpaper, but I was able to get down to some silver. I washed them a third time, this time with dish soap and a scrubby sponge in my kitchen sink (Boo puts up with so much). Once cleaned up, we could really get a look at what I'd bought.

Assess the Damage
Two of the rims were in fairly good condition. There wasn't much in terns of curb rash around the outer edges, and there were only a few scrapes from what looked like applying snow chains. The other two rims, however, had been in a few fights. There were some small chunks chipped out nearest the rubber, and many many gouges in that outer edge as well. Sadly, there were some deeper wedge-shaped scrapes in the face where, again, it looked like the rubber strap for tire chains had been put on possibly wrong such that the loops dug into the rim.

Plan the Work
The damage, though, was purely cosmetic. I was able to add air, and the air held in all 4 tires. Since the damage was surface, I knew I could repair it, but I felt I would need to paint rather than restore to plain aluminum. I'm sure there are others out there who can repair aluminum such that it looks like the damage was never there. That's not me.

paint concept (upper right)

To fix the chips and gouges, I thought about brazing alumi-weld into the gouges, and then polishing. Alternatively, I could use Lab Metal. I've used that stuff before, and it really does finish nicely, but I'm not convinced that it will leave the exactly right color. I suppose I could mix aluminum dust from sanding the rim into the mix for coloring if I really wanted to retain the all-aluminum look. After looking at the rim on the car, I think adding some color would look better, especially since there is a very limited amount of chrome on the car.

So, I planned to repair the chips and gouges with Lab Metal, and paint the outer lip and the mag-face, leaving an inner rim and the insides of the mags the original aluminum. This would bring out some of the chrome while not having an overwhelming amount of it. I mocked up a few options in paint so I could get a sense of how it would look and then I got started. First, you need to get down to the bare aluminum.

Take off that Clear Coat

on-car paint concept

The Interweb is a great resource, but some advice just isn't that good. While some is wrong, other advice can just be ill-suited to either your skills or project. For example, there appear to be many folks advocating removing the factory clear coat by sanding until what you're removing shifts from white to grey. Then you know you're down to the aluminum. While this does work, it takes an incredible amount of time. If you try to short-cut the time by using a lower grit (like 60 instead of the recommended 100), the car part will get deeper gouges that need to be sanded off with higher grit. In the end, I'm not sure if much time gets saved. I tried this method with one wheel. Since clear coat is not applied uniformly, you will hit grey while also still removing coating. In the end, I think this method was a bust, and don't suggest it.

For the other 3 rims (and I came back and did the sanded rim too), I used airplane stripper. C had some from when he was stripping the paint off the 280ZX, so I knew it worked and worked well. At least on paint. I knew that it didn't damage rubber when little drips got on it. I laid out the three rims, and brushed stripper on one wheel at a time. Once I got done brushing the third rim, the first was about dry, so I applied a second coat. Doing all four wheels would have timed out just about perfectly. Once the second coat was dry, I attacked the rims with steel wool. The clear coating scrubbed right off, leaving the bare rim with little flecks of clear coat left behind. To get completely cleared, I used a razorblade scraper. The airplane stripper was significantly faster and left behind a better surface. I hosed the rims off, and they were ready for the next step: fixing the damage. I'll get into that next time.

Thanks, as always, for following along. More next time-

Z - Work that Body

Today's post covers some more of the efforts on the 280ZX.

Rain Rain Go Away
In my last update about the 280ZX, I described some of the efforts that were going on. The oil and oil filter were changed, but the main focus of the work was dismantling the body. This included removing and stripping body front fenders, removing the dented driver door and removing the hood. If we had a garage larger than a freight elevator, this would have all been done in the friendly, climate-controlled confines of my garage. Instead, we were doing this under 10x10 canopy. Enter a wicked storm. The first night, the wind blew so hard that the canopy flipped over, leaving the Z exposed. We righted it and that afternoon set some things on the feet so they wouldn't move in the wind. Well, they didn't move from the wind... exactly... but they moved.

The torrential rain that fell the following night destroyed the canopy. All four legs were broken, the supports under the main tarp were twisted and mangled. The car was kinda dry, but the canopy was suspending huge bowls of water over the top of it. Boo and I got the water away from the car, but all over ourselves. Hahaha.. The canopy frame was moved to the yard where T could cut it into pieces with the angle grinder. The canopy top was laid on top of the Z to try to keep it dry. The wind remained relentless, so we held it down with whatever we could find: pain cans, old rims, etc.

If you thought the front yard looked bad before, imagine the scene now. Like many yards, it is in it's late-fall least attractive state anyway with leaves and overgrown landscaping. Of course, we have the 7 cars in various states of repair. One is in pieces under a make-shift tarp that is covered in paint cans and rims and other stuff. The canopy frame is sitting in a heap. And, of course, there are bits and pieces of the Z project strewn about the driveway and lawn. Did I mention the large blue tarp where some parts had been primed and left? Yeah.. it's a mess. So so bad. Or it was. And the inside of the Z was still getting watered better than my yard in the summer.

Move-a Move-a
C has been working very hard on this car. He comes over on the afternoons he doesn't have work and spends at least one day every weekend on it. He usually works at least one day every weekend at his job, so, basically, if he isn't in school or at work, he's on his car. Proud dad. He is steadily preparing the car for a re-paint, but the more he exposes, the more he is creating opportunities for rust on the panels or water to get into the inside. The panels have been getting stored inside the 2-car shed (technically my attached garage, but it's really barely 18 feet deep) where the MGB sits awaiting funding.

On his last visit we noted how much moisture was still getting inside his car. By moisture I mean standing water, not just vapor or dampness. Standing water. So, we moved things around in a full-scale version of Tetris. We moved cars all around, some car parts got aggregated into big unwieldy piles, and found a way of fitting the Z next to the MGB in the garage. Now, C can climb in and out the driver side and work on removing windows or tail lights inside. When necessary, we'll move the Z straight back into the driveway for grinding and then move it straight forward into it's indoor storage spot. We were all very pleased with the net results. Overnight, we ran fans to get the moisture off the car so with every step he takes forward he won't be watching his car deteriorate from the weather.

So.. Where's the Progress
Yeah, Okay. I know. Lots of words there but no tangible update about the car itself other than it is now stored indoors. Here goes: T went down to Sacramento and picked up some interior plastic bits as well as a driver door (Thx T!). The door, like the fenders and the hood, has been stripped down to metal. We swapped out the power window guts from the donor door, replacing with the manual crank style from the folded up original door. We test-fit the door card and rolled the window up and down. Perfect.

On the next dry day, C will be setting all bare metal outside on that awful blue tarp and shooting them with primer. Of course, he will follow the standard process of wiping the parts down with mineral spirits first so the primer adheres well. Also, he has started to remove the small triangular rear windows. It appears that these were installed with that black windshield caulk, making their removal more difficult. Still, those are the places where rust can go unnoticed, and he wants his paint job to last longer than a few months, so he's going where rust hides.

Ahead, he plans to remove the trim around the windshield and remove the glass so he can address the small rust spots he can already see. Next is removing the tail lights, rear gate and the glass from the gate so the rear tailgate can be prepped. Once all pieces are ready, he wants to learn how to shoot his own paint, so we'll be looking into that. I sincerely hope we get a dry spell or we'll have to figure out a temporary painting shed. Since so much of the car is in smaller pieces, the "shed" may not need to be as large as a car. We'll see.

One last thing: when it came time to move the 280ZX from where it has sat almost since it arrived in October, it started right up. The only other car we have that starts that fast is the VW bus. I took that as a really good omen.

That's it for today. As always, thanks for following along.

Zup date

Its been a few weeks of sporadic work on the 280ZX we picked up in October. Today's post covers some of the work that's been done thus far.

Oil

When we bought the car, the owner was pretty up-front about the condition of the car. He had the transmission gone through, put in a new clutch and rebuilt the engine. My first thought when I heard that statement was "yeah, right". When we looked the engine bay over, though, the paint tells the story: the engine block has been recently painted purple. The exhaust, intake and all other components haven't any purple on them. So, either he went through considerable trouble to make it look like he rebuilt the engine or he actually did. He did share that the valves will need their post-rebuild adjusting, so we'll have to remember that.

Still, any used car probably has old fluids in it. With a recent rebuild, engines need oil changes more often, so one of the first things C did was an oil and oil filter change. Good man. The oil was not terribly black and we did not find any little metal bits in it. Even the magnetic drain plug was clean. All good signs.

Hammertime

Once the oil was done, C wanted to get after the bodywork. The front driver fender had a pretty good dent in it and the driver door was bad dented badly enough that it wouldn't close properly. The fender was extremely easy to remove. There is a series of bolts along the top, like any other car fender, but only a few on the bottom and none along the door frame. Stunned, we had the fender off in a matter of minutes. C thought about the cost of a replacement fender and decided that trying to get the dents out was a worthwhile learning experience. So, he grabbed a framing hammer, set the fender on an old tire and started wailing on the dents from the inside of the fender. Now, that sounds pretty horrible, but the execution was actually pretty damn good. He spent about an hour working the dents down smaller and smaller until all that's really left are framing hammer markings. We will need to finish the fender out with some real body tools, but I think for his purpose (daily driver) he will be able to get it looking decent.

The driver door was a bear to get off because of the dent. We needed to hammer and pry-bar the lip just so we could get a wrench onto the hinge bolts. Still, with a 12mm crescent, the 6 bolts came off with relative ease and the door was soon on the ground. We sourced a replacement outside Sacramento, but for now the driver door opening is protected with a tarp while the new door is stripped. As you can imagine, our front yard looks stunning.

De-Purple

As you could see in some of the pictures, the prior owner wanted the accent color to be purple rather than the stock blue. So, he painted all of the blue areas a plum color. It may have been great for him. C hated it. So, he went at it first with my angle grinder. It created lots of dust, but didn't really take out much of the purple. So, he bought some aircraft paint stripper. Now, this is some nasty stuff, but it totally worked. The key was letting a first coat of stripper set up and then put a second coat on. Once that's set up, we could strip it off. Some areas we did one coat to get the clear coat and a second pass to get all of the paint. Either way, C stripped all of the purple paint off: passenger fender, driver fender, passenger door, hood and even the little bits on the rear quarters.

That's as far as C (with a little help and guidance) has gotten. His progress has slowed as he has decided to get a job to help pay for things. Since school is his first job, and hourly wages for new-to-the-workforce jobs are rather low, the inflow of capital will be slow, so the rate of improvement to the 280ZX will reflect that.

Thanks, as always, for following along. If you happen to have a cache of 280ZX interior bits, we're looking for those too-