Away She Goes!

Wow, my second blog entry is in May.  The year is nearly half gone already and I've only done TWO blog entries?!  What is the world coming to?

Well, better late than never I always say.  So.... what have I been up to all this time?  Oh LOADS of stuff.  Well not really.  In my infinite wisdom, I went skeet shooting with some friends and we had a great time.  We fired off about 600 rounds at various insurgent flying targets during the three or so hours of our little "war on clay" but the only shock and awe I got out of the deal about 3 days later was a bum shoulder since none of the shotguns had any kind of recoil pad, nor did my T-Shirt.

Fast forward 2 months of my whining and visits to my favorite physical therapist and chiropractor to around the middle of March when I decided to get the heck back in the shop.  I had already welded a rod into the passenger side door to close the gap and so continued on with the driver side door which got the same treatment:

1/8" welding rod welded in place.

Ground down the welds

The new gap.

Next I decided to take some of the advice by SteveA from the VMF.  He had previously come over and showed me how to feel the metal and described that the only way to really make the flat spots from the indents disappear is by skinning the entire rear quarter:

In the beginning

First application of filler.

Sanded down with "idiot board".

Using some guide coat.

Sanded and low areas filled until guide coat is gone and then do it again a few more times.

In actuality it feels like it would be fine with a couple of coats of glazing putty.  However, just doing this small section of the car made me realize A) I don't have enough room in my shop to comfortably be able to get in the positions I needed to do a good job sanding.  B) I have horrible lighting and have trouble seeing details of what I'm doing.  C) The dust is overwhelming and all the stuff stored in all the nooks and crannies of my garage were getting a coat of powdered polyester filler.  And D) the smell of the polyester resin lingered in the house for a couple of days after doing a job.  All of these things gave me pause so I called SteveA to ask him for his help and he was kind enough to agree to ready the car for paint for me.  He had some other cars already in his shop so I waited about another month until just this week, he called me and said he was ready.  WooHoo!  So, I hooked a tow strap between Ol' Rusty and my Honda Pilot and towed it up out of the hole I call a garage.  I then rented a UHaul auto transport and my brother was a trooper and provided the service of his pristine 1970 Ford F150 to pull it.  Finally, we hauled it over to SteveA's shop about 30 miles away.

Ready to load.

Loaded up behind a workin' man's truck.

Unloading into her new home for the next few weeks.

I should note that she's only getting prepped for paint since I don't have the budget for paint yet.  Paint will be in another 6 months or so. SteveA has graciously agreed to do the job in two phases.

Now I once again have an empty garage bay.  Well, relatively empty.  Hmm... what should I do now?  That big rusty hunk of cast iron on the orange engine stand might provide a project or two...

An empty nest.