Body is Ready for the chassis

8am tomorrow I'll bring the chassis over to the shop to reunite body and chassis after slightly more than eighteen months of separation. The body came off the chassis on December 23, 2009. It's scheduled to go back on the refreshed chassis tomorrow, May 27, 2011. This is the longest this car has been off the road in the fifteen years I've owned it. 

 The hood was the last major panel to be finished. Today Ron sprayed the black on the back side. On the right side as you look at it is the modification he did for extra clearance for the brake booster. He modeled it after the factory indentation on the left side. 

Yesterday the engine bay was painted black.

The wheel wells were all painted yesterday with a bedliner type paint. 

 The car is now sitting by the two post lift, ready to have the dolly removed and the chassis put in it's place.

Along with the wheel wells, the front grill area, and the two openings below the headlights were also painted black.

Three Days

Today Ron finished the cutting and polishing on the big panels - doors, hood, trunk lid, deck lid. He also started masking the body for the black paint. The car should move on to the lift tomorrow, have the masking finished, and get the engine bay sprayed, along with the wheel wells and nose of the car. The hood also needs the back side sprayed black. If that gets done tomorrow, and it dries well Thursday, we should be set for marrying the body and chassis Friday.

 A shot of the doors, with the car to the left and the other panels to the rear.

 Driver's door looking good.

 Trunk lid with hood to the left and deck lid to the right.

Car with the masking for blackout starting. The red below the headlight area will go black, along with the grill opening.

Four Days - we hope

Chris says Wednesday we'll know if we're going to make Friday. Still to do on the body is paint the blackout in the wheelwells, paint the engine bay, and black out the eyebrows on the nose and the area behind the grille. The hood, trunk lid, doors, and deck lid still need final wet sanding and polishing, and the bottom of the hood also gets painted black. The weatherstripping also needs to be installed on those parts.

 Here's Ron polishing the paint after the final wet sand with 2500 grit.

One shot of the car all polished.  

Another shot with exposure closer to the paint color. 

All done but the clean-up

Installed the LS1 intake on the motor tonight and found it only requires 89 inch lbs of torque. Ugh - not much past finger tight. Glad I bought an inch-pound torque wrench last month. Touched up the paint on the battery tray and the rollbar mounts. All that's left I hope is to give it a final wash before bringing it over to the shop.

Tailpipes are wrapped with a fiberglass wrap and hit with high temp coating. One fire due to hot tailpipes is enough.

Still have a couple accessories to mount but will get that later. Everything torqued from head to toe.

Chassis Progress

I've been working this past week to finish up the chassis in hopes of dropping the body on it next Friday. Today was a full day of working through the checklist. Headers are installed and torqued down, as is the water pump, water neck, and power steering pump bracket. Transmission is bolted to the engine with all the bolts, and torqued, and the exhaust is all properly hung and tightened up, save for the band clamps. All the exhaust hangers were treated to a vinegar bath to remove the rust, hit with metal prep, then painted with high temp paint.

I've been trying to mate the truck fuel injectors to the LS1 intake. I picked up some o-rings and found they were too big. Turns out my orings were fine, but the cap on the injector was bottoming out on the fuel injector boss. A few turns of a 1/2 drill bit by hand in each boss, and they were opened up sufficient for the injectors to properly mount. Now I just need to get some AN-8 nipples welded to the fuel line to remake the crossover, and need to make some brackets to bolt the fuel rails to the manifold.  The intake also needs to be bolted down and torqued after I get fresh intake gaskets.

About the biggest mandatory item is to get the transmission cooler lines run. Nice to do would be to mount up the power steering high pressure lines and the power steering cooler. Five more days to go. I might even get a chance to clean up the garage a little before the homecoming.

Still Not Pretty

I got some more pictures from Chris yesterday of Ron's color sanding of the body and other panels. Monday will be some wet sanding at 2500 grit, then the cutting and polishing to restore the luster.

Here's the start of the color sanding of the deck lid.

 Here's the panels after the machine sanding

 The white shop rags aren't staying so white with the red dust from the color sanding.

 Here's the body after wet sanding

 Wet sanded through 2000 grit.

 Shot of the passenger side wet sanded through 2000 grit.

 Front side of the car wet sanded through 2000 grit.

Left side sanded with DA to 1500 grit, back wet sanded to 2000 grit. 

Left side wet sanded at 1500, right side machine sanded.



Not Pretty

After the shiney new paint last week, things took a turn towards ugly today. Ron started on the color sanding. Things will be better tomorrow, but all that shine was replaced with dull as the paint was knocked down with 1000 grit paper on a da sander, followed by 1500 grit.

Here's the start of the 1000 grit.

The whole car knocked down in 1000 grit, starting on the 1500 grit.

I've got another week to finish the chassis. I received some small parts in from Summit today, will be back on it tonight, hope to be ready in two days and have the week to clean things up and organize for the homecoming.

PS - while still shiney, she made it in the Orange County Register on Wednesday, slide 11 of the album.  http://www.ocregister.com/news/womack-300891-shop-national.html