Zed Body Kit Start

Last Summer, amid the economic restart following the CoViD-19 shutdowns, I ordered and received a fiberglass bodykit for a Datsun 280ZX. It arrived too late to be wrapped into the body work, and I ran out of warm weather anyway. Today, I restart the body work on Zed (1979 Datsun 280ZX), with hopes for having Zed painted before I run out of summer this year. Even though there is considerable Summer left, my time is less available this year than in years past. Boo has injured her arm/shoulder, preventing her from moving it per Dr orders, so I am doing a lot more not-car stuff these days (read: lawn care, housework, etc) which all take precious minutes. 

Back to Start

bumper gap set

While Zed was parked under a canopy / car port all winter, that is not the same as sitting in a climate-controlled garage. Or even an unheated garage. Rain does not fall straight down, and wind blows organic material around. So, when I was ready to focus on Zed, I had a few steps to just get him back to where I had left him last Summer. I had been using his interior as a staging area for parts and boxes while working on the sound/noise contain effort in Hapy (1972 VW camperbus). So, logically, the first thing to do was to vacate the interior and shop-vac it out.

Next, the body panels needed a cleaning. Rather than use a hose, I hand washed him with a bucket and scrubber sponge. Still, I was unable to free some of the green haze that had appeared. He would need a sanding in order for the next layer of paint to adhere anyway, so I left what remained to be addressed by the sanding. I pulled out the body kit that had been stashed inside and cleaned it too.

Front Fenders

d-side bumper

I had spent some time wrangling the front bumper last Summer. I could only get so far because I had not completely solved for the fenders yet. Now that the driver fender was ready, I could move forward. I started by simply mounting the fenders with M6 stainless bolts. When I fastened the bottoms, the fenders ballooned out into their proper shape. I had not realized how flat they had been sitting until then.

Rear Bumper

The rear bumper was the closest to being complete, and after spending so much time on just getting things back to the way I thought they were, I wanted a win. I started fiddling with it and I discovered that I had not really prepared the steel rear bumper hidden within: it had rust spots on it and it was still dirty from when I bought it. More cleaning with a bucket and a scrubber and then sanding, rust treatment and a shot of Rustoleum got it ready enough for use. No, I don't really like the idea of Rustoleum on this project anymore than I think you do, but this will protect the bumper well enough, and once I sand a key into it for the epoxy to grip into, the paint choice really won't matter much anymore. After the paint cured (or 48 hours later...), I re-attached the bumper, making sure the height was completely flat, with the same distance between the tail body panel and the top of the bumper. It is into things like this that so much time is lost. Bolting on a bumper takes, like 10 minutes. Getting it exactly height-right, took more like 30.

p-side bumper

Once the steel bumper was set, I returned the fiberglass bumper to position to get it exactly where I wanted it. After some time spent fiddling with it, I was able to set the bumper such that the gap is the same across the rear, from corner to corner, and the seams along the rear quarter panel were consistent as well. I drilled a hole inside each wheel well near the top of the bumper and set it for good with a pair of M4 bolts. With the height set, I set the spread (tilt in or tilt out of the bottom of the bumper) of the lower edge. I controlled this with a second set of holes lower in the panels. Again, I set 2 M4 bolts through the bumper into the rear wheel well. I may eliminate some of these bolts later, after the epoxy sets.

Side Skirts

setting the spread

With the rear bumper looking good, I shifted forward to the little skirtings that run under the doors. I was not 100% convinced these were necessary when I bought the kit, but now that I have them roughed in, I like them. These kits are one-size-fits-none. While that was not really true with the rear bumper, it was definitely true with these side skirts. The length is quite good, and the fit into the wheel wells was almost perfect. I say almost, because I had to cut a small chunk out of the top of the passenger side skirt for it to fit. The issue with these skirts is with the little lip that runs the length of the door jam. These are designed to sit on the outermost edge of the door threshold, but the design has 2 problems. First, the lip is fairly thick so the door does not easily close on top of it, if the door is set at the right height. Second, and perhaps more important, the lip is not at the correct angle from the outer edge of the skirting. So, if you set it in place on that outermost edge, either it is in the right spot, but completely blocks the door -or- the whole skirting curls under the car too much, not aligning with the fender lines and looking horrible. I resolved by cutting off the lip with a hacksaw. Yes, that is a rather destructive move. I considered all the plastic panels on the ToyoTruck and the panels that run under the doors do not have a lip hanging on the door sill. These will now be a same.

fun with Bondo

With the lip removed, I was better able to control the angles. Similar to how I managed the rear bumper, I first set the height by getting the under-the-door edge just a smidge below the door opening. I set the height temporarily with clamps and then bored holes, used more M4 bolts to hold the tops in place.  I added a bolt on each side, near the leading edge of the door, to hold the section of the skirting which will attach to the front fender in place. I will use this bolt for setting the epoxy, but will remove it, or cut the head off, after the epoxy sets. Next, I set the spread so the rear outer edges aligned with the rear bumper lower leading edges. Because of how the skirts were constructed, this left a small gap at the top rear of the skirt. If I pressed the top against the side of the car, the bottom of the skirt would stick out too far. The picture below shows how it lined up. Because of the curve of the body, it is not immediately visually clear that the bottoms align, but they do. 

Body Fill the Gaps

d-side skirt rear

Around the internet, Bondo is a four-letter word. No one admits to using it, but practically everyone does in some capacity. If I were a master fiberglass guy and had all the time in the world, I might have built-up the trailing edges of the side skirts with fiberglass. That would have been the "right" way to do it. I don't have that skill, nor the materials, and, like I indicated at the top, I really don't have that time. So, I chose Bondo, and went full-on ShadeTree with it.

I have the panels attached exactly where I want them, held on with bolts. I don't want to remove them apply some material grind some down, re-attach, wash-rinse-repeat, in hopes of getting it right. That could take all Summer and still might not look that great. I want to apply filler to the fiberglass but not create a Bondo-bond with the side of the car. To resolve, I grabbed some non-stick spray from my kitchen and shot the steel body panels where I needed to fill a gap. I then cleaned the fiberglass with oil/grease cleanser, leaving the non-stick on the steel and I filled the gaps with Bondo. Is this how a pro would do it? I sincerely doubt it. Did it work? It worked well enough to define the lines. Once teh Bondo set up, I freed the panels, leaving them loosely attached. There was not any Bondo stick to the steel. I sanded things smooth and did another pass to get the seams really clean. Last summer, I tried to resolve the don't-stick by taping plastic to the steel, but no matter how well I set the plastic, there were minute folds which appeared in the dried Bondo. The non-stick spray left a predictably smooth line.

Sanding

body sanding fun

I re-attached the rear bumper and the side skirts after sanding the Bondo smooth. Then, I set into sanding the entire car with 320-grit. As I mentioned above, simply cleaning the body was not enough. Besides, I chose to not sand the primer last year, believing it would better protect the paint over the winter. It needed to be sanded before the next coat, be it more primer or color. I will be priming the fiberglass body panels anyway, so I may shoot primer on the rest. I'll decide that later.

I am about 2/3 done with the sanding of the whole body (fiberglass and steel), working from the rear forward. Once the sanding is complete, I will be setting the height of the front bumper ends, and perfecting the front bumper seams like I did with the rear bumper and side skirts. After all that, the fiberglass will be removed one last time for priming.

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

Zed, Block Party of 1

Brief post today. After completing the various projects on Hapy (1972 VW bus) and Oliver (1978 MGB), I decided the weather was starting to look promising for getting back after the paint on Zed. Today's short post is re-entering the world of body work.

Where Were We

Last Autumn, I seized an unseasonably warm dry day after rainy season had started to shoot some hi-build primer onto the shell and other removed body pieces. I thought this was the best way to protect the largest portions of the exposed steel from rust. My thought appears to have been spot-on, and the shell appears to have fared quite well. Consider that the shell sat outside all winter under a temporary car port.... until February when we were hit with an incredible ice storm. Power was out across the Portland area for days. I did not lose power, but Boo and I had to go out into it to save the cars parked under the car ports. The ice had been building up, and you could see the material starting to flex. So, we pulled the opaque plastic sheeting off the frames and instead covered Zed with a pair on regular tarps. I knew this would encourage moisture to gather underneath, especially as the ice melted away, but I feared leaving the primer exposed to the elements more. The car ports were restored and the tarps removed within a few days.

Assessing, Sanding and Re-Priming

even under the fenders

Now, months later, our weather is considerably more suited to outdoor play. With various grit's of sandpaper, I started sanding the primer, and looking for rust. I was pleasantly surprised to find very little. Before I could really get started, though, I spent some time cleaning Zed, and vacuuming everywhere with the shop vac.

I started with the front clip (valence in front of the windshield and the exposed sections which will be covered by the front fenders. There were no new rust spots, but the sanding took most of a day. I took the hi-build down as smooth as I could with 150-grit first. The primer was so rough, it took the sandpaper down fairly quickly. Once smooth-ish, I would shop-vac all of the dust and wet sand with progressively higher "grit", starting with 220 and finishing with 400. Once smooth, I cleaned the area with oil and grease remover and then shot the area with self-etching primer.

halfway around

Once my process was defined, I spent the rest of the weekend, and the next week (around my work schedule) working my way around the rest of the shell. Overall, the body withstood last winter's weather very well. Of course, there were many places where I sanded through the hi-build primer down to the bare metal again. I found a few (less than 5) surface rust spots that I needed to sand down to bare metal as well. Still, the overall condition was quite good.

And Then More Sanding

Once the shell was completed, I shifted to all the other body panels (2 doors, the rear tailgate and the massive hood). Those parts represent more than half of the entire car surface area, so I expected that I would be sanding for quite some time. I did find, however, that using a block did move the sanding much faster, but the block can also accelerate you through the primer. So, I am using a mix of the block through the larger flat areas, leaving the edges for doing by hand, or much more slowly with the block. This balance has been working. Also, I only dry-sanded, focusing on 220-grit with a quick pass with 400 (again, dry), out of concern that the hi-build primer would absorb water.

More Bondo? Why, Yes, Thank You

there are always more spots

The shell that sat outside all winter needed better priming, but the body panels that were stored inside all winter needed more body filler. I had thought the hi-build would help cover up more of my bodywork misses. Nope. So, once I got the hi-build down smooth, I went hunting for waves in the panels. I found a few, and returned to the Bondo-Sand-Bondo cycle (See Bondo Zed) . I do want to stress that at no point is the filler more than 1/8" thick; I have 1 of 2 issues continuing to appear: over-sand or under-apply. In either case, the result is a need to go at it again. Fun. Eventually, I will have the panels in a condition where my hand cannot feel wobbles in the panel and then I'll be done. At that point, I will re-shoot with the hi-build over the Bondo spots as well as re-shoot on top of the self-etch on the main shell (this will insure better paint adherence). And then, of course, sand where I shot. Whee!

That's really all there is to talk about. I expect there will be a break in posts unless I take a step away from Zed to do something small on one of the other cars or take a trip or something. So, if you don't see a post, you know why. Once Zed is genuinely ready for final paint prep, there will be a new story to tell, and I'll post on that. Whether we are celebrating US Independence Day or Hapy's 50th birthday before that... well... Let's See. I have discovered along the way that we are missing the front air dam thing that goes under the front bumper. And, I don't have a solution for the rear bumper yet, so I'll be thinking about how to fill those gaps in an interesting way as well. If the solution will require painting to body color (likely), then the actual application of top coat may move further into the future. Cool.

Thanks, as always, for following along-

Bondo Zed

Today, we return to Zed, the 1979 Datsun 280ZX. Earlier, I completed the paint removal that C started. With the smoke finally gone, and the rain storm that followed passed as well, I could start with the body filler so we can get this car painted. I admit that the 2 weeks of smoke gave me time to consider whether I wanted to have a body shop do this or not. I decided that I wanted to learn, and even if I did it poorly, I would learn. I could always farm it out later.

Seek and Mark

The process of finding imperfections to resolve with body filler (Bondo, bog, putty) reminded me of my old house painting days. With a light in-hand, shining on the subject, look for dings. When painting a house, you do this with some spackle in-hand, and just fix the issue right there. Or, if this is after priming, you do it with putty and, again, fix it right there. In both cases, you fix as you go. With a material like body filler, though, that doesn't work. Bondo is pre-mixed with a hardener so while you are out looking for the next ding, it is drying out. So, instead, you walk the car with a pen or piece of chalk. As you find spots, you mark them, either drawing a circle around it or otherwise drawing on it to attract your attention as you circle with the steadily-drying putty.

Hammer Thoughts

Zed mid-filler

By now, most of the worst spots have been hammered out, leaving some hammer marks or imperfections that you just couldn't get to, or couldn't get perfect. Between this crappy economy and buying T's A4, my resources are gone, so I did not buy a set of body hammers. At some point, if I find that I am enjoying body work, I will get a set of these Covell hammers, but $300US is a bit much for a one-time set of hammers. Big thanks to the HotRod Hippie (check his youtube channel here) for the hammer reviews to help me find a set that is good enough for quality work (not HF hammers) but won't break the bank like SnapOn. 

So, after many weeks of using standard tools, like a framing hammer, a rubber mallet and assorted screwdrivers, a pry bar, etc, I have the fenders and doors as close to straight as I can get them. Most important, the remaining dings are slight, like less than 1/8" off-straight/flat. These areas were easy to find. Even while I was marking spots, I decided to try some more tuning on the passenger door handle area that still looked a little too deep for filler.

Mix a Batch

No, not in the Letterkenny way. I mean make some body-filler. The instructions are on the can, but after messing with the stuff for a few days, I concluded that less hardener is better. This gave me more time to work with the material before it started to set up. For a work area, I grabbed a small steel table that we inherited from the Eugene house. Atop that table, I set a 12" x 20" piece of glass that we also found there. I used the glass sheet as my body filler mix-and-apply-from surface. This saved me the $8 for a steel sheet at Harbor Freight, but it also comes clean easier: Just scrape the surface with a razor blade after the material turns to rubber, and it's ready for another go. Last bit of advice: no matter how you may feel about wearing the blue gloves when you work on your car, I strongly suggest wearing them for mixing and applying body filler. Getting it off your hands afterwards took me 4 rounds with the GoJo. The next round with the filler, I wore gloves. No muss, no fuss.

Apply

more Zed mid-filler

Before I chose tools, I hit the interweb for opinions on the various applicators. There are basically 2 kinds: plastic and metal, and there is, of course, a religion about these. I got the plastic ones because they were cheaper. These don't have a handle, which means your fingers are in the stew, but that also means you are that much closer to the work, allowing you to bend the applicator to contour. I'm sure the steel applicator folks have a solution for this as well. Your car, your choice.

Once I started applying, I went the route of too-little-is-better-than-too-much. I did not want to spend all day sanding a bunch of extra filler. I got my wish, but I failed to recognize just how much the filler shrinks when it dries. This oversight drove me to apply-sand-reapply 4 rounds before I had all of the spots filled well. Of course, many of the small spots were completed in one shot; I had to return to areas which had multiple dings or an inward sag that needed to get built up. Again, none of the areas needed more than 1/8" of material thick, but some areas, like on the fenders, had a lot of little dings that took some effort. Mostly, this was a learn-as-I-go thing. I think I tried to spread the material too thin, or far beyond the edge of where the damage was. As a result, I needed to re-apply because I simply went too thin.. on the same area... multiple times. Learning is fun, but my arms we so sore from sanding all day.

Sand

Yeah, the sanding is the effort part. Most folks recommend using 80-grit sandpaper. I had a limited amount of that, so I used 60-grit. This accelerated the initial cut-down, and by the time the filler area was approaching flat, it had worn down to less than 80-grit. It was probably more like 100 by then. I used a full-size (8") sanding block the entire time. Keep the block even with the contour of the body panel you are working on. So, for example, the fender on Zed is flat running front to back, so I held the sanding block parallel to the ground. Then, sand in a diagonal pattern, mixing it up so you're sanding in an "X" shape. I did a little sanding in a circular motion, as well as top-to-bottom, but the best, flattest, smoothest results came when I did it diagonally. Also, try to keep up to half the sander on the body panel if you are not sure how it contours. This held my sander from over-sanding, once I figured this out. My over-sanding caused some extra batch-work too. More cost of learning.

Wash Rinse Repeat

As you sand, you will eventually arrive at a flat, smooth area adjacent to the undamaged body panel. Congrats. You may find, however, some spots that the sander missed, but was sanded all around it. That's a low-spot that needs more filler, and it probably happened because the filler shrank on you. Or you simply under-applied. No worries; just mix another small batch and fill it in. I suggest you learn from my mistake, and fill it with a little extra on top of it. This is how you properly use spackle too, but it took me many times around to figure out what was going wrong,  and I still did it.

Anyway, put a little convex material where the un-sanded spot was, and have a thin layer on top of what was sanded. If you don't, you run the risk of over-sanding those spots and you won't be flat and level with the surrounding body. Yep, I did that too. There is also the risk of putting too much product on, creating a false body contour, leaving you a bunch of extra sanding to get the panel back to the correct line. What I mean by this is you can over-apply, sand it smooth and leave you thinking that you got it right. Then, you get right on top of it to confirm the panel and realize that the body panel isn't following the original line anymore. You gotta sand all that off and do it again. Yes, I did this as well.

Well, that's it for today. Once I am 100% satisfied that the body is as correct as I can get it, I will be vacuuming and blowing it out, removing all the dust I can. Then, I will start masking for primer. I ordered some high-fill primer from Eastwood so that should fill in the tiny imperfections. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. First, I need to close-inspect Zed, possibly body-fill some more, probably sand the untouched metal with some 400, then clean, then mask.... yep, lots left to do and we are already in the first full week of Fall. Still hoping to have him painted before the rains have fully arrived. Based on the weather this past week, that window may have already closed.

Thanks, as always, for following along. Please accept that CoViD-19 is still a genuine threat (back to 40k+ new cases per week in the US) and that wearing a mask is one small way you can help contain it's spread. It is not a commentary on freedom, it is a commentary on being a responsible citizen.

Around the Rim (Part 5)

I really can't believe it took 5 posts to cover cleaning up and painting a set of rims. It took fewer posts to cover replacing the floors. I guess there were more steps on the rims. I can't believe it took longer, calendar-wise either, but getting things done in the cold winter is much harder than getting them done in the warm summer. I should probably remember that when I plan things. It could be at least in part because most of the rim work has been done outside since the garage is full of project cars and assorted parts and painting in cold weather forces some creative thinking. Hmm... anyway.. on to the paint!

Prime and Sand

Once everywhere you don't want paint is covered, you're ready to prime. By "everywhere", this includes the rubber tires, and the inside of the rim. If I had a paint gun, I would have gone that route, but I don't. So, I did the best I could with what I had: rattle-can primer, paint and clear. After all the time I'd put in the prep, I really wish I could have used a real paint set-up, but that's just how it goes. Follow the directions on the paint. Use many light passes with the primer. Make sure all of the deep spots (like the holes where the lug nuts go) get hit before going after the easy spots.

Once dry, let it set for an extra stretch of time. I let them sit for a weekend in a warm dry room, but I'm just like that. Using 320-grit sandpaper, I smoothed out the primer on all 4 wheels. I expect some would prefer to sand with even higher grit paper, and if this were going to be a 6-digit car, I'd defer. I expect to drive this car, not show it. The road will wear the rims no better nor worse if I sanded more. Anyway, similar to the treatment before taping, I wiped the wheels down with glass cleaner after the sanding was completed.

Color Up

First, I wanted a body-color matching edge. I've been looking specifically at rims on cars almost as long as I have been looking at cars. Where having one-color rims was the only way for years, a blending of shiny alloy and color is becoming much more common. I waned to go one more step and do 2 colors plus alloy. So, I started with the body-color match. This brings the rims to the car, helping bridge a gap created by not going with a common rim for the MGB (Rostyle or wire).

To do the color, I first tried to mask off the rest of the rim using thin-wall cardboard, but I could not get tape to stick to the old primer-covered tape. So, I dug back into my old house-painting bag of tricks and cut a make-shift paint shield out of a pizza box. By holding the shield up along the side, but not touching any to-be-painted area (against tape), I was able to deflect any over-spray without getting the cardboard into the fresh paint.

The weather here has been cold and wet. Neither of those conditions are good for painting. To offset some of the bad, I kept the rims inside my living room up to the moment I was going to apply paint. When there was a break in the rain, I quickly moved a room-temperature rim out into the yard, popped it onto an upside-down 5-gallon tub and shot color. Two times around for solid coverage and then I set the rim flat under the front porch eave and ran inside for another rim. I did this until all 4 rims had a vermilion ring.

Black Out
About this time, we were hit with successive snow storms that delayed my progress a bit. That's why the 4 different parts of this post didn't come out one right after the other. Anyway, once the vermilion dried and set for a few days in my semi-warm garage, I planned for the black paint. Before I could shoot the black, I had to cover up the vermilion, remembering that tape wouldn't stick well to primer. By contrast, the painter tape stuck very well to the orangey finish-color. As gently as I could, I covered the orange ring. I discovered while striping the tape that some spots were soft and the paint pulled away with the tape. I chalk that up to the cold conditions and did some isolated touch up.

Anyway, once the orange was protected, I shot the exposed rim with a reasonable coat of black primer, sanded (600-grit) and then shot hi-gloss black. I intended to do two light coats with the high gloss, but between the weather conditions and the paint, I couldn't get a light coat to lay down. So, I did a heavier-than-I-intended coat and then quickly followed with a light coat on top of that. The end result was pretty good, leaving only a couple of sags. I caught them early enough that I was able to scrape them away and re-shoot. A few marks were left behind, but they disappeared during color-sanding.

Color Sand
After I shot the black and let it set a couple of days, I pulled the tape off the orange. It looked pretty good, with a couple spots I knew I'd need to address. I opted to get the wet-sanding done first, and grabbed a bucket of warm water and 1000 grit paper. I cut the paper into 2" squares and wet-sanded each rim with a fresh square, rinsing the paper in the bucket every minute or less. This took down the gloss, but also removed little paint anomalies. I also wet-sanded the vermilion. I had virtually no burn through, with a few little spots near the lug holes. I simply covered around them and fogged-in some black and let that set for another couple of days before color-sanding those areas.

Strip and Final Prep

Once color sanded, I could remove all of the tape and get a good sense of how the final product would look. I knew there would be some clean up needed. Some tape had pulled away from the aluminum, so some paint made it past. Elsewhere, the tape wasn't at the exact edge, so some clean-up was needed. This took a few hours, but the result is better than I'd expected. To remove the over-spray, I used 220-grit paper on the raw aluminum. To set the fine edge, I used a putty knife along the contour to mark the line from black to raw aluminum and then sanded the rest of the paint on the aluminum side with the 22-grit. Once it was all sanded, I hosed it off, cleaned them with glass cleaner and then hosed them off again.

In the Clear
The funny thing about paint is that you find every little minor defect after you've applied it. I spent a few hours just nick picking on the paint edges and still they weren't perfect. I decided it didn't matter and I was pushing it too far. These rims were $100 with barely-serviceable rubber on them. They had deep gouges and the clear coat was flaked. I decided to just shoot the clear and be done with them knowing full well that the more time I put into them the more heartbroken I would be when the inevitable piece of gravel scratched one.

Once I had the rims cleaned, I moved them into my living room (thanks for your tolerance, Boo) so I could get them up to room temperature. Remember, it's in the 40F's during the day and getting below freezing at night, so getting the paint to adhere is a concern. So, I had an afternoon when it wasn't actively raining, so I followed the same process as before: one rim at a time, I bring a rim out, set it on an upside-down 5-gallon bucket and shoot. I was able to get a light coat of clear to lay down, so I followed the suggestions on the interweb (as well as on the can) and shot 2 light coats within 10 minutes of each other on all 4 rims. Then I moved them under cover and set them flat to dry.

The picture to the right, here, was taken the following morning, after it had completely dried. They aren't perfect, but I think they look really good. The concept of a 2-color plus chrome was executed, and once the tape came off the rubber, and they were mounted on a car, I think they look pretty amazing.

So, that's it for the Rim Job. I had a morning of swapping rims around the cars in the yard, but it was totally worth seeing the car transform. I think the next big effort will be addressing the radiator in the bus. I did promise Hapy that I'd replace his rad before the next festival season began. 4Peaks is less than 3 months away!

As always, thanks for following along-

2022-April-18 UPDATE:

It took me 4 years, but I finally found a set of center caps that fit these rims perfectly. Recall, these rims came from an early 90's Honda Accord, so you would think finding center caps would be relatively routine. It wasn't. I tried a "standard" set (69mm), but they did not fit (too loose). I had effectively given up, but I found a set of 70mm caps, and they fit perfectly. I had to tap them on with a rubber mallet, but they clicked in perfectly, and now look the business. I have not decided if I am going to adorn them with a sticker or something in the center. For now, I am leaving them as-is. Frankly, I do not intend to do one more thing on Oliver until he passes smog. Anyway, here's a picture with the new caps, but first, the sizing details:

• 6 Clips
• Outside diameter: 70 mm(approx 2 23/32 inch)
• Backside clip to clip: 64.2 mm(approx 2 17/32 inch)
• Sticker mounting diameter: 44.6 mm(approx 1 3/4 inch)
• Clip Length: 10.7 mm(approx 13/32 inch)

Around the Rim (Part 4)

Continuing the saga of the mid-90's rims, today's post covers damage repairs, and masking. If you haven't read the prior posts that got us this far, the links for the other 3 parts are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Basically, I got a set of rims, they were kinda beat up, but I'm going to use them anyway because a few hours of my time is worth the $700 I would have to pay for a new set of 15" rims. This is just one more way to express that the journey is the destination, and why incur the environmental cost of new rims when you can keep another set out of the landfill? Everybody wins. If the set you're messing with doesn't need repair, and you don't plan to do any fancy paint, you could skip to the end and shoot a few coats of clear and be done with it.

Filling the Gouges

The mid-90's Honda rims had been on a daily driver for most of their lives. There appeared to be some bad-parking days when the rim ate into the curb. There were snow and ice days when the owner put on tire chains which scratched up the face near the lug nuts. Because of how bad the damage was on a couple of the rims, I decided that I would fill and paint the bad areas, and have a consistent color plan across all 4 wheels.

I could have used "bog" or Bondo, but I had a small tin of Lab Metal from when I swapped out the Westy poptop for a Riviera/ASI top a few years ago. It had dried up a bunch, but a after letting a few ounces of lacquer thinner sit in the tin overnight, it softened it right up. Similar to bog, or spackle the Lab Metal applies like a paste. Work the stuff all the way into the damage. If the Lab Metal won't hold, you may need to dig some material out of the damage so the Lab Metal has something to bite into. It's sort of like how the dentist sometimes has to drill out some good tooth material in order for the filling to set without an air bubble, and then hold.

Either way and whatever material you use, over-fill the damage so there is extra filler all around and on top of the repair. Consider that you will be sanding this down, so don't go crazy with it, but if you try to make it all nice and flush when it is wet, the material will shrink as it dries so you'll have a concave patch relative to the size of what you filled. Once it is dry, lightly sand with a high-grit paper (like 220 or something) until it is flush with the surrounding undamaged wheel. I followed this step with a general light sand with 320-grit paper on the entire rim and then cleaned it with glass cleaner so there was no dust remaining.

Masking and Cutting

Masking sounds so simple. Just tape over where you don't want paint. When you're painting a door frame for your closet, it is that simple. The dry-wall is flat, the edges are square and tape sticks really easily. When you're talking about a rim, none of those things are true. It's round. The various lips are not hard-edged; they are usually beveled or rounded off and tape doesn't stick as easily partly because of those 2 factors and partly because tape just doesn't want to stick to raw aluminum.

But, it can be done. First, use tape like a tack-cloth, pulling the surface dust off the raw aluminum. Doing this immediately before you tape will definitely help the tape stick. I also found that over-taping, or applying tape beyond the edge of where I wanted the paint to be allowed me to direct the tape better. Once on, I would set the edge with a razor-blade held mostly parallel to the rim but at a fixed angle, sliding along the rounded edge. This defined a very clear and consistent edge that I couldn't do with just the tape-edge. Each transition from taped to not-taped where I could get a razor-blade I defined this way. Yes, this takes considerable time. For those areas where cutting the line with a blade wasn't possible, I followed the old axiom from when I painted houses: use tape to prevent paint from getting where you don't want it. More simply, if you can't get the tape right on the edge, err on the side of getting a little paint where you don't want it versus covering up where you really wanted it in the first place. This sounds obvious, but in practice we all are such perfectionists that we try to get the tape right on the line. Sometimes, this means you cover up a thin line where you wanted paint and you don't see it until you pull the tape. That moment really sucks. So, get that paint a little too far onto the raw aluminum and then work the line afterwards with a razor. This is much easier and looks way better than trying to do touchup or retaping/shooting. Between the sanding and the taping, this is where you spend 95% of your time and makes the difference between a not-that-great paint job and a looks-pretty-good one. It's all in the prep.

I can't believe how long this has gotten or how long it has taken to finish these rims. Anyway, I should be finishing this thread of posts with one more: next time with priming, color, wet-sanding and clear-coat. Thanks, as always, for following along.