Baby's got a new dress!

It's been a long week of sanding and painting, but as of this morning we have paint on our car!

I finally made my peace with the blemishes on the body earlier this week. Daniel and I shot one last coat of high build primer on Monday, and did our final sanding and a good wash on Tuesday. While washing, we were able to identify a few more rough patches, which we hit with some 320 grit wet sandpaper.
On Wednesday afternoon, with the car masked off and tacked, I shot our blue stripe paint on. It started out as a disaster, with the paint gun shooting blobs of blue all over the hood. Upon inspection, I realized that I had done a lousy job of cleaning it after the last primer coat, so half the spray holes in the tip were clogged. Twenty minutes of soaking in lacquer thinner and wiping and I was back in business. The paint went on fairly well, although with a fair amount of orange peel.
Thursday was spent wet sanding with 800 grit to take down the orange peel and the few specks that floated in while spraying. We then laid out or stripes with 1/4 inch striping tape. Things were starting to look good!

We had been planning on building a paint booth around the car for the final painting, but I changed my mind after realizing that if we did our painting in the early morning, there would be no breeze, little humidity and cool air. We agreed that the effort to sand out a few specks of dust were much easier than constructing a booth. Moving forward!
Yesterday afternoon we re-masked the car, along with our stripes. Daniel had a team of friends drop by and the work went fairly quickly, and all of the boys did a pretty good job. I stayed after they left and double-checked all of the taping to make sure it was in order. Our plan was to get up early Saturday morning and begin spraying immediately.
This morning we had beautiful weather for painting, and hit the shop by 7:30. A few little details later, and we were mixing paint by 8. As soon as I made the first pass on the car, I realized I had trouble. There were areas where the blue dust from wet sanding had not been wiped off, and they showed up like mountain ranges under the top coat. My next pass, on the hood, revealed a dozen fingerprints from sweaty hands the day before. The paint was a mess.

In a panic, I realized I had forgotten to give the whole car a wipe down with lacquer thinner to clean the oil and grit off. I stopped and soaked a rag with thinner, and wiped off the whole half of the hood and trunk that I had sprayed just seconds before. With my heart now sunk to my feet, I grabbed the gun and began again, completely disgusted with myself.
Fortunately, we're using a single stage acrylic urethane which has proven to be extremely forgiving. The paint flowed on beautifully, and with each orbit around the car, my spirits rose. I had planned on using the entire gallon, but after five solid trips around the car, we still had over half a gallon of paint. My arm was getting tired and I couldn't find anything else to coat, so we called it.
I wasn't sure how long to let the paint sit before removing our striping tape, but I knew that the urethane would be dry to the touch withing a couple of hours, so we went back at noon and began to unmask the car. With each pull of the tape we got more excited. It definitely isn't a show quality paint job, but it looks pretty darned good, and should look even better after wet sanding and a good polishing. And Daniel is finally really excited!

Tomorrow we're going to take another huge leap (for us) and gas the car up and drive it to our house. It's only a mile and a half, but it'll be the farthest this little car has traveled under it's own power in probably twenty years. We plan to bring a bunch of trim and interior items home with us and tinker on the car in the comfort of our own driveway.
Prom is next weekend, and Daniel has committed to driving his date in the Mustang. The pressure is on!

Prime time

Foolishly, I though that we could blast a few coats of high-build primer on the car, sand it smooth, and be ready for a top coat. As with everything else on this project, there's no easy way out!

Let the painting begin

I had purchased a HVLP paint gut a while back, and we loaded it up with primer last weekend. The first coat went on pretty good, but unfortunately, I had forgotten that it was HVLP, so I had the pressure up too high and we were in a cloud of paint spray that required two fans to evacuate. I realized my error while getting ready for the second coat, so we backed off the pressure to what I thought was appropriate. The paint cloud was no more, and in fact it seemed like the fans weren't even necessary, although we did keep them going. However, the paint was going on with a pebble texture. I though that it would lay down as the paint cured, but again I was wrong. We were left with a layer of grainy primer that would have to be sanded smooth.

Second coat--a lot less foggy

Undeterred (yet) I sprayed a light guide coat of cheap enamel spray paint on the areas I knew would need some attention, and began sanding. On Tuesday, I sought the advice of one of my employees, who used to be a paint and body tech for GM. He gave some good advice, but also made me realize how much of what I was doing was (potentially) wrong. It seems that the gun pressure was too low on the second and third rounds. Feeling a bit dejected, I vowed to continue forward.
Daniel was unable to help for most of the week due  to work or school obligations, so I plowed ahead on my own, a little each afternoon. Things began to look better as I knocked down the pebble texture, and by Thursday I was beginning to fill in the remaining dimples with glazing putty. I figured one or two rounds around the car would suffice. Wrong again!
With each subsequent circuit around the car, the body began to get smoother and my spirits began to recover. So much so that by yesterday morning (Saturday) I thought that I could give it about one more hour of work and be ready for a final coat of primer. Wrong again!
For every pass of the sanding block, and as I got closer and closer to my work, more blemishes kept

A little sanding and were ready for paint, right?

appearing under my inspection. At first, still full of confidence, I filled what I saw and kept working around. Lost in thought, I had no idea of the time. When I checked and realized I had been at it for three hours, the realization of my reality hit home: I was becoming consumed with fixing every tiny nick, dimple or blemish that appeared. Frustrated, I dropped everything and came home, seeking the wisdom and consolation of the Wise One.
She, for her part, has been more that accommodating these past few weeks as the project has taken up our time. I admitted to her that I was having trouble finding a point were the body was acceptable, and in doing so reminded myself that this was never intended to be a perfect "show car". With that confession, I feel ready to hit it again this morning with a clear stopping point. The plan today is to sand down the last bits of glazing that I did yesterday, clean everything up again, and be ready to paint when Daniel gets off work later this afternoon. We'll see if I can keep to that plan!

Let the sanding begin!

Shiny paint on the new hood

Daniel has asked me numerous times "How long will it take until we can paint." I, in my infinite fatherly wisdom, keep telling him "It takes as long as you want it to take." I also noted that it would be a shame to invest all of this effort into the car only to put a lousy paint job on--which is the first thing anyone will notice. To that end, I've tried to impress upon him the importance of patience with our body work.
We've painted the underside of our new hood and installed it. We've also masked off the engine bay and anywhere paint spray could intrude and ruin our detail work. I began applying bondo to all of the bumps and bruises last week and, just like the rest of the car, I had no idea how beat up the little Mustang was.

Working out 49 years of abuse

The roof obviously served as a nice platform for someone in the past, probably to catch a good view at a drive-in theater. The trunk deck was also pretty wavy, which was not surprising. The rear panel below the trunk lid had been bashed in long ago, and we have spent a bit of time banging and pulling it out to some semblance of original. Our welded quarter panels needed minimal attention, as did the original doors. The entire front clip has been replaced, so there was no need for any repairs other than a couple of small dings on the two fenders. Thank goodness Daniel talked me into buying that new hood!
We've been sanding a little here and there for about a week now. Today (Saturday) I committed Daniel to a steady morning of work while it was still relatively cool, and by doing so we've gotten the body work all but done. There's one final skim coat that I put on to catch a few spots, which I'll sand off in the morning. Daniel has to work until noon, so by the time he gets to the shop I plan to be prepped and ready for primer. If all goes well we should have two or three good coats of filler primer on the car by tomorrow afternoon.

Picking up some steam!

It's been a good few days of progress for Daniel and myself. Daniel can finally see some potential light at the end of this long tunnel, so he's been much more willing to put in time on the project. That definitely makes things go faster!

Front clip going on. Starting to look like a Mustang again!

The swap meet last weekend was something of a disappointment. There were only a couple of Mustang vendors there, so we were unable to get much of our list checked off. We did, however, make one purchase that was unplanned, but I feel was a right one.
We came across a repro hood for $120, and as Daniel and myself stood pondering it, Daniel reminded me that we had a potential four or five hours of work on our original hood to try and make it straight, and surely our time was worth more than the 120 bucks. He made a good case, so I whipped out the cash. I have to agree it was a good decision.

Things look fairly good---from a distance!

We also picked up a 14" rim for a spare, something I had been looking for for quite some time.
We've spent a fair bit of time trying to align all of the body parts. There's an infinite number of adjustments that can be made on both the doors and fenders. This can get really tedious, especially for the second person (Daniel in this case) who is available to occasionally yank this or pull on that. For our particular car, it's made even more difficult because I'm sure the car is twisted and torqued due to the years of abuse she suffered. It also doesn't help using reproduction parts, because they never fit quite right. I was aware of this as I purchased pieces, but justified it by reminding myself (many times) that this is not a show car but a daily driver, and we're on a budget There's still some tweaking to do on the driver's side fender and door, but I'll probably do that myself and spare Daniel the tedious agony!

Details! The headlight buckets are finally back on!

We've got most of the car masked off now, ready for a final run at bodywork then primer. If all goes well (and The Wise One allows us the time) we may be priming by the end of the weekend. Then, it'll be guide coat time---hopefully not too many rounds of that!

Prepping the grille for paint