Paint
With Tina on stands and waiting for parts – Namely; Rear brake shoe springs and shockie bushings- I decided it was time to revisit my spray painting skills. Yes I do have some skills, time will tell how many. I started a paint and panel apprenticeship in NZ at the tender age of 17, this would have been in 1970. In the day, first year apprentices were on about $25 a week. Mind you, one could buy a Half gallon “flagon” of beer for 75 cents back then in NZ. Less if you supplied the empty flagon jar. I digress.
When I say “I started an apprenticeship”, that’s about all I did because as the “New guy” the closest you got to painting was cleaning the spray booth after 7 and a half hours of sanding, masking and endless sweeping.
It was not for me and I left after about 3 months for a job in a Stockfood mill paying $49 a week. Worked hard for my money, bagging Lucerne meal 12 hours a day but with petrol at 25 cents a gallon (That’s about 6 cents a litre to you youngin’s ) - My first house cost $10K - I was a bloody millionaire.
After a while I was promoted to shift foreman and was taught on the job maintenance skills by a grumpy old diesel fitter who could mend anything with his toolbox full of shifters, an old hacksaw blade and CRC.
You will all know someone like this, they have “the touch”. He passed on knowledge and he gave me a great basic knowledge of fitting, welding, spray painting and panel work to cope with all repairs that had to be done in-house, but he kept the Touch
As permanent night shift foreman is was my job to solve the many problems mechanical, electric with no access to professionals- My official apprenticeship in mechanical fitting came much later as part of an adult apprentice scheme.
I mention this only as the factory had an eight-month season and four month maintenance lay-off where everything got ripped, stripped and painted. I was the painter based on 3 months of floor sweeping at Monties spray shop. This off-season frenzy lasted for about 5 before the oil crisis of ’75 saw the factory shutdown and forced my migration to the Land of Oz - I know my way around a spray gun, booth or no booth
Again, I degress – us old timers tend to do that.
Time to kit up; (Admittedly this was some time ago now) I think I mentioned earlier that I have a high-volume compressor that a neighbour sold me after he found rural living in Tassie a tad boring and skedaddled back to Brisbane.
-Spray guns- I did some asking around and online checking before settling on a reasonably priced good quality gravity fed jobbie for the final coat. Then picked up a couple of Supercheap cheapies for the undercoat and filler application.
Paint- Acrylic etch primer and surface primer by the litre and some pressure packs of spray putty.
If I haven’t mentioned previously I have always liked the Wedgewood blue tradition look with the jellybeans and chrome.
The body is straight, and I am not inclined to go stripping/sandblasting everything back to bare metal at this stage, Tina is going to be an everyday driver not show car.
All panels that come off have been removed – 2 years 8 months ago and the hunt for surprises began back then. Found some bog old and new in the front quarters. There is evidence of a re-skinned tailgate, Spare wheel door has some fibreglass and a little under the front guard stay.
Started on the main body by painting the Engine Bay, then cabin and the tub. Came up alright but took most of this last summer to finish
I know the usual method is to do this all at the same time but my thinking was to finish these sections and get Tina to a rolling body with brakes and tyres all sorted. Then drag her outside for the heavy sanding. Let the wind and trust me where I live the wind it do blow, shift the dust away. Then blow down and sweep out the shed before erecting a paint booth out of tarps for a decent job on the main panels.
Well that was the plan but I got held up waiting for some suspension parts and decided to sand the body in the shed. Well that and I am still trying to work out what to do about the 13’’ Jellybeans not clearing the HR callipers.
So one wet afternoon I started on the rest of the body and began top down, roof was the first surprise. I found two holes in the roof that had been patched some time ago. I know a guy who has a brother who had one of the police utes – I am still kicking myself I didn’t buy that one when it was for sale- it looks like this ute may have been one of the Police utes
Holes look to be in the right place for the radio Ariel and flashing light. The numbers say that the original colour was ivory white. This lines up with the whole cop car theory as that is the colour they were down here in Tas.
After sanding I found old bog hiding denting around the above-mentioned holes and a section on the front edge roll where it looks like something fell from a great height. This front patch up had been badly done. Bog started falling out with just block sanding, but no rust.
An hour with a drill mounted brass brush and hand powered sanding block it was back to bare metal then couple of hours with a dolly took out the worse bumps. Luckily these were the worst issues I could find in the body after 3 years of looking.
I mixed up some bog and filled the dimples. Left it overnight but in the morning the bog hadn’t set. Tina snickered
Found the problem, I had cleaned out a plastic container with solvent and rug. On inspection I found the rag had oil on it. Oil and water may not mix but oil is death to bog.
So more sanding and cleaning, skimming, sanding, skimming etc etc etc.
Now for the lovely job of sanding and looking for all the minor pits bumps and imperfections across the rear quarters, tailgate etc.
I will update this log when I have finished sanding
