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  #141  
Old 09-20-2016, 08:43 AM
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syborg tt syborg tt is offline
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Holy Crap John this car is going to being awesome when it's back together.

I love the detail that you are going to show everything that you are doing.
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Is a car ever really done???? It's like a ball of yarn unwinding, that has no end... Author DKz Garage

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  #142  
Old 09-20-2016, 09:53 AM
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Really great work John! Can't wait to see it at the track!!!!
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  #143  
Old 09-20-2016, 09:59 PM
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Thanks guys!

I'm finally nearing the end of bodywork and paint prep. Got the doors in final primer which were the last big parts of the steel body panels and am currently sanding all of the small pieces that are in final primer (about 50) to be ready for sealer/paint. There's lots of different materials used in the construction of all the smaller pieces. Cast metal, stamped steel, various types of plastics, fiberglass, and the Endura bumper. The bumper caused me lots of lost time and materials.

The first time I painted the car 25 years ago I used 3M flexible material repair products followed by the old type lacquer primer followed by epoxy primer and top coated with acrylic enamel. Worked great and still looks good on my original bumper. I bought a new (used) bumper about 20 years ago with the intention of modifying when I got around to it, which is during this rebuild. The bumper had several layers of primers and paints over the the original paint. It was all cracked and crappy looking so I blasted and hand sanded it to bare Endura.

I modified the bumper by filling the bumper jack slots and trimming the lower lip and then proceeded to use the modern version of the 3M flexible repair material to repair lifting Endura and make it smooth. Then primed with PPG K-38, blocked, primed, and blocked till it was straight with very little primer on it. Then laid a couple medium wet coats of K-38 reduced for final prime and set the bumper aside to allow materials to shrink back while working on other parts. Knowing the bumper was going to get flexed moving it around off the car while working on it I used a flex agent in the primers to slow down full curing. When final primed I put the bumper in a safe place in the house to allow full curing and shrink back.. A year or so later I pulled it out to mock up all the front end sheet metal on the car and the "final" primer was all cracked.

I asked at my local paint supply store where I buy all my materials and they had no real positive answer as to why the final prime cracked. I'd gone through the same procedures with lots of other flexible parts for this car as well as modern cars and never had the final prime crack. The only difference was the use of a flex agent. SO, it was time to start from scratch.

I stripped off all the primer and repair materials I'd put on the bumper and proceeded to go through the process all over again. Those of you who have sanded Endura bumpers know this is not fun at all because for some weird reason it seems to take twice as long to sand anything on an Endura bumper. This time the bumper was on the car with all the front end sheet metal aligned so I could work it so the panel alignment from bumper to fenders and hood was nice and smooth sanding across the panel gap. I did not use any flex agent in the primers and used PPG Omni primer for the blocking coats to reduce cost a bit then used K-38 reduced for the final prime. It looked perfect, so I set it aside in the house to shrink back and fully cure. I moved on to the G-brace mock up.

Several months later I needed to move the bumper out of the house overnight so I stuck it in the garage. In the morning I went to retrieve the bumper and found the cracked primer you see in the pics below. GRRRRRR! So I put the bumper in the truck and zipped up the street to the paint store. They related that a restoration shop they supply was having the same problems on a GTO Endura bumper. A quick internet search showed that others had similar problems when using the modern high fill primers like the PPG Omni and K-38. The general consensus is not to use a high fill but rather an epoxy primer for blocking sanding etc. on Endura. So I sanded all the primer off by hand then sprayed it with PPG DP48LF epoxy primer the paint store guys gave me for free because they felt bad and knew how much time and materials I already had in the bumper. It's now almost ready for "final?" prime with reduced epoxy primer.

Apparently the thin Lacquer primer and epoxy primer I used 25 years ago was fine but the Endura bumper expansion/contraction rate is different enough from the rate of the high build primer that it causes the cracking? We'll see...... Tough lesson as I now refer to it as the $3,000.00 bumper because I've got over 100 hours in it plus a couple hundred dollars worth of blasting media, panel bond, flexible repair material, and many coats of primer that ended up on the floor. K-38 is 300 bucks a gallon!

So here's the pics. I put some dry guide coat magic dust on the cracks so you can see them in the pics. If it doesn't work out this time I'm gonna buy a fiberglass bumper. Last pic is blocking out the final prime on the shaker scoop, most of the other small pieces are done with blocking and ready for sealer/paint!







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70 Firebird Esprit, 400 TA clone type "The 14 car"
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  #144  
Old 09-20-2016, 10:01 PM
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I'd blocked out the front fenders for final primer and set them aside when I took the front end sheet metal off to work on the engine/trans and G-brace mock up. I didn't want to mask off everything since the cowl and cage are already painted and the fenders were coming off anyway. Finally got around to shooting the last coat of primer on them today. Will start blocking out the final primer on the major body parts for sealer and paint soon.

Meanwhile I've got all the smaller pieces ready for sealer. With all the extra pieces like the multiple sets of fender vents and rear spoilers I've got about 50 small parts that need to be body color.

As if I didn't have enough paint work with body color parts I've also been prepping and painting other parts like the hood hinges, under tray supports, inner fender extensions, etc.






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lab-14.com
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  #145  
Old 09-20-2016, 10:03 PM
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Shot some body color on the inside of the fenders today. Then once the paint flashed over I put them in the South Florida natural solar baking area. Will bake them some more tomorrow.





I've got a lot of small pieces to be painted body color. Almost ready to start shooting sealer on them.

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lab-14.com
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  #146  
Old 09-22-2016, 06:11 AM
gofastwclass gofastwclass is offline
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Wow! Sorry about the paint experience on the endura bumper. I had a similar experience tuning my latest engine combination. Turns out my wideband oxygen sensor was slowly failing and skewing the readings ever so slightly.

Excellent progress, hopefully the bumper saga is over. There is nothing I hate more than chasing my tail.
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  #147  
Old 09-22-2016, 09:28 AM
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So, with this post I'll finally bring this thread up to date. A lot has happened recently so I've got some catching up to do. The short version is listed below with some quick explanations in the paragraphs that follow.

1. Car still in my own self inflicted paint jail.
2. Started a new company called Lab-14 making pieces to repair and/or strengthen structural parts of sub frames and other parts.
3. The 14 Car is now sponsored by PRO-TOURING F-BODY.COM and is getting all new suspension.

First, paint jail. I've been working on getting the 50 or so smaller pieces as well as the doors, fenders, trunk etc. into final sealer. Only have the body and hood left to block & seal. There's been no big rush to get everything cut in and assembled for paint because I needed to be able to use the sub frame and related parts for mocking up parts for the new company.

Lab-14 (short for Laboratory Fourteen) is my new endeavor. The initial products are low tech, simple things that are used to repair and/or strengthen, the 2nd gen platform. Products for first gens and other platforms will be developed as the company moves forward. Some of the products are items that showed up previously in this thread while others haven't been talked about here yet. I'll write a separate post about the new company and products and go into more detail about the individual parts.

PTFB is now sponsoring the car and so all the old suspension components from various manufacturers are being replaced with PTFB GEN II products. The car will remain a traditional coil/leaf spring car (my decision) and will certainly be a challenge to get set up and tuned with the additional down force created by all the aero modifications I've been making. Since I work building cars for others also, I sold everything that came off of my car to a customer with a 70 TA who wanted them all installed. In addition to the springs, sways, control arms, shocks etc. that came off of my car I also installed on the customer car other new pieces from PTFB including an 800 12:1 box, tie rods and adjusters, Idler arm, ball joints including tall uppers, as well as the PTFB solid body mounts and GEN II frame connectors.

Well, everyone likes pics, so here's a couple of mine and one of the TA that now sports some of my old parts and a bunch of new PTFB goodies.

Digging my way out of paint jail a few pieces at a time.



Installing Lab-14 front sway bar mounts. Will talk about them in an upcoming post.



70 TA with a new attitude influenced by a lower altitude. You may notice the white ball looking thing on the hood. It's a Samsung 360 degree 3D virtual reality camera. An amazing piece of equipment that's supposed to be available in the USA now. I've had one at my disposal the past several months and it's amazing. If you try one you'll be hooked. I suspect the 360 VR cameras are going to affect video as much or more than Go Pro's did. http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/gear-vr/?cid=ppc-

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lab-14.com
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  #148  
Old 09-22-2016, 08:54 PM
WSSix WSSix is offline
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Great work, John. The car's going to be too nice to race if you're not careful
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  #149  
Old 09-23-2016, 04:16 PM
gofastwclass gofastwclass is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WSSix View Post
Great work, John. The car's going to be too nice to race if you're not careful
Is that a challenge?
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  #150  
Old 10-31-2016, 05:45 PM
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Oh no, it'll get raced!


This is my shameless self promotion post about Laboratory Fourteen "Lab-14", a company I started earlier this year. There's no budget for advertising yet so I can't sponsor any of the forums this thread is posted on so if a mod feels this post isn't appropriate or it conflicts with forum rules just delete it and I won't be offended. I'll get back to the regular project posts after this one.

As mentioned previously I started a new company named Laboratory Fourteen "Lab-14" based primarily on parts to repair and reinforce the 2nd gen F body sub frame and also including some restoration reproduction pieces. I 'd been making "one of" pieces for repairs and builds on other peoples cars and mentioned the pieces I'd made for my car in this project thread (which is on several forums) asking if anyone else wanted them. After selling through PM's and emails for a while making small batches of products I figured I should just form a legal business and expand the product line. I've owned several successful businesses I built from scratch and operated for as long as 25 years before moving South, so I've got some experience. The concept of Lab-14 is simple products based on repairing and reinforcing factory chassis to provide a solid footing for all the modern suspension and tire technology we have available today. To make this concept work I realized it's gotta be cheaper, easier, and quicker to just buy my products than to try and copy them yourselves.

Thanks to all of you who went through PM's and emailing back and forth to purchase products before I finally got the onlne store set up. Here's a link to the store for anyone interested in checking out the products. https://www.lab-14.com/ Most products are for the sub frames and some are G-brace accessories but there's also some restoration sheet metal pieces that have not been reproduced till now.

By offering a number of different things that can all be purchased from one place a person can get everything to beef up a sub frame designed to work together from Lab-14 with just one shipping charge. Saves time driving around buying materials and hardware then trying to find items not available locally online. It's easier because the material choices, pattern making, and metal fabrication work is done, plus all the correct hardware has been figured out and included. You can just order everything in one shot from the online store at WWW.lab-14.com rather than trying to make your own stuff buying metal from here or there then fabricating etc.. and figuring out what hardware is needed then purchasing from multiple places. It's cheaper because you're not spending money driving around trying to source materials and hardware, paying shipping from multiple vendors, and buying materials and hardware you don't need because you can only buy in quantities greater than what is actually needed. After all, most people want to just build the car not spend all their time fabricating, sourcing, etc. It takes long enough to complete projects already.

Since we all like pics, here's a couple pics of products taken during small batch production to get the company going.







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lab-14.com
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