Idiot + Spray gun + Toxic chemicals = ????

It didn't take me long to find a use for one of my new air tools. Of course it's the one I have ZERO experience with - the Devilbiss JGA spray gun. Turns out this thing is quite popular in the automotive refinishing world. Pretty much the one every painter has in his kit. It's not the absolute pinnacle of technology, but it's reliable, and gets the job done.
Well, now I've got one too, and have no idea how it works - so I figured it out the same way I figure everything else out.

I took it apart.

Turns out it's just a big honkin' airbrush - I've used one of those before. This has a few more knobs to turn, and moves a lot more paint, but has the same basic functions.
So I've decided to use it to paint the interior of the Neon. Originally, I was going to just use a bunch of spray paint from Home Depot, but at $4/can x 24 cans (estimated 12 primer and 12 topcoat) that adds up to almost $100.00 fast. As it turns out, all the stuff to get set up with real automotive enamel, reducer, hardener and safety gear is about the same, but now I'm set up and future jobs will cost significantly less.

But wait - you can't just go blasting paint around the interior of a car can you? You've got to mask off everything you don't want painted, right? Yes, unfortunately you do.
Masking off the inside of a car is no small task, especially if you're a bit obsessive about things - which I most certainly am. You can't imagine how many little nooks and crannies there are inside the passenger compartment of a simple car like a Neon. I'll forgo the play-by-play and just say that it took me nearly a week of working a few hours each night to get ready to paint. Somehow, I also forgot to take pictures of the inside before paint. But here are a few of the outside:







In the 2nd & 3rd pictures you can see the main reason the masking took so long. The white plastic garbage bag sitting on top of the dash contains the entire interior wiring harness for the car. It starts at the driver's side of the dashboard, runs along the left side of the car, splits under the rear passenger seat, continues down both sides of the car, feeding power to all manner of door switches, fuel pumps, and rear window defrosters along the way. Finally terminating at the tail lights and license plate light. I chose to painstakingly (and non-destructively) pull the entire harness all the way forward, and tape it up in a bag so it wouldn't get painted gray. Why? Because I'm nuts I guess...I wrestled with the decision for several evenings before I finally gave in to my obsessive ways. I just couldn't bring myself to paint over it. It seemed so unprofessional and half assed. I just can't do things that way, and I like to think that the attention to detail and extra effort will be noticed when people peer into the car. Especially when I point it out to them.

So now the car is all masked off and I've got all the materials to do the job. But I've never used pro level automotive paint and let me tell you - it's like a freakin' chemistry class. You've gotta mix all this super toxic crap together, and then you've got the added stress of something called "pot life". As it turns out, once you mix the paint, you've set a chemical reaction in motion, and it cannot be reversed or slowed. The paint WILL cure and harden no matter what. That's known as "pot life". Once that paint is mixed, you've got to spray. If you can't spray, you've got to get it out of the gun in a timely manner otherwise your little chemistry experiment will turn to a solid plastic puck in the gun and ruin it. Soothing thoughts eh?

Undeterred, I set off into uncharted territory. Mixing up automotive paint. It sounds easy enough, but it involves measuring out magical amounts of outrageously toxic chemicals to achieve the perfect mixture that will dry to a nice, even coat. Not an operation for the timid...
Luckily the guys at the paint store gave me an idiot-proof formula to eliminate all the confusion. "You take a quart of paint, put a pint of reducer in it, and add 4 oz of hardener - you should be all set bro" Sounds easy enough.
Well bros, a quart of mixed paint is a LOT of paint - like enough to do one coat on an entire car. I realized this just as I was about to mix my first batch. Unfortunately, cutting the formula the shop gave me down to make smaller batches required more math than I cared for. In the end, I had to reverse engineer the formula the shop gave me - using the following logic:
1 quart equals 32 oz. Add 1 pint (16 oz) to that and you get 48 oz. I've been told to add 4 oz of hardener to that amount of paint. Therefore, whatever the ratio of hardener to paint is, will be true no matter how big or small the batch is. I hope.
Simple math tells me that 4 oz is roughly 8.3% of 48 oz.
Let me share something here - I was not a stellar student back in the day. Furthermore, I don't deal with liquid measures on a daily basis. The above operation required that a fairly large chunk of my gray matter be dedicated to the math involved. I could've used a nap afterward.
No matter - now I've got my percentage - all I have to do is mix up the paint.

Along with the unintentionally confusing formula, the shop gave me a bunch of disposable mixing cups with all these measuring lines all over them. While I was mixing up my first batch, I figured I'd use these lines to make sure I added a known amount of paint in order to make my math easier. Halfway through, I realized that around the cup's brim were graduations for a bunch of different formulas - none of them looking like anything I'd need - that is except for the very last one - 2:1+10%. Dammit, dammit, dammit!
Well, I took some consolation in the fact that I was only 1.7% off.

Using the measurements on the cup, I mixed, I sprayed, I succeeded.
Behold!

Looking rearward - The funny looking "wishbone" is the parking brake cables tied together, and strung to the roof to keep them out of my way.


Looking forward


The trunk


Not too shabby for a rookie eh? I'll do a full "Before and After" when I get it all put back together.

Tools of the trade.

This will have nothing to do with the car, but it's "shop news" so I think it qualifies.
Recently, I've had a windfall of tools. Not just any windfall mind you. this is a "grin like an idiot" situation. In the last several weeks, I've acquired a 5 hp, 35 gallon air compressor and a decent kit of tools: 550 lbft, 1/2" impact wrench, 3/8" air ratchet, and a Devilbiss automotive spray gun. Additionally, I managed to find myself with a 90 amp MIG welder. Now, you'll recall that my whole goal in this project is to NOT go broke.
So why am I so happy to have all these expensive new toys? Well, I 've got a bad-ass kit of very capable new tools, and I only had to part with $150.00, and few extra gallons of gas - that's it.

I'm a tenacious bargain hunter, taking pride in never paying full price. I've lost track of the number of items I've purchased at clearance tables, used equipment stores, and even ebay. I'm not hung up on having the newest, fanciest tools. I tend to like proven designs and am willing to let someone else pay the premium price for the fancy stuff, realize it's not what they need and return it to the store, or put it up for sale - at which point I swoop in and pick it up for a steal.

I've been stalking a compressor & tools for several months. You don't dismantle entire cars without some heavy duty tools standing by if you don't have to. I had a few rules that made it difficult to find the perfect setup for a reasonable price: A legitimate 5hp motor, oil lubed compressor, belt drive, and at least a 30 gallon tank. These specs would guarantee a powerful, quiet, and most importantly, reliable compressor.
True, I could just wander down to a big-box tool store, plunk down a paycheck, and walk out with what I needed. On the way home, I could also stop by my attorney's office and pick up the paperwork for my inevitable estrangement.

Nope - I was going to need to find a place where people sold wacky things that you didn't stumble across every day. Sounds like a job for eBay - home of wacky crap for sale. I found plenty of PERFECT compressors and tools for great prices, but guess what happens when you try to ship a 200lb hunk of iron across the country? Back to the attorney...

Enter craigslist - the perfect place to buy crazy-ass things like heavy, second hand compressors. After several failed attempts, I finally found a compressor that met my specs. Better yet - it came with a bunch of tools! Unfortunately it was a good hour's drive north. But the price was right, and eventually I bit the bullet. I drove up and handed a very nice guy named John his money. I loaded up my well-used, but bulletproof compressor and air tools, and drove home - grinning all the while. Similarly spec'd new versions of what I just bought would have cost me at least $600.00. Not bad, not bad....

She's no beauty queen, but she'll work for a long time to come.

So that's the compressor and tools, what about the welder? Well, I paid nothing for the welder. Yep - free.
There's a great section of craigslist titled "barter". This, along with the "free" section are my two favorites. You literally never know what you'll find there - my favorite so far has to be the "Free Milk - 1 Gallon" I don't know the circumstances that brought this about, and it's probably better that way - but I digress.
One day, in the barter section, I found an ad titled "looking for wood carving tools and a dremell or rotary tool - $1" I have multiple Dremel's, so I clicked on the ad. Long story short (for once) this guy needed a Dremel and some bits and had a brand new 90 amp welder to trade for it.

I jumped ALL OVER this deal!

I have no real need for a welder right now, but I've always wanted one. Plus, it can't hurt to have one around if I'm rebuilding cars, right?
In the end, I managed to trade a 25 year-old Dremel and a box of bits that I bought years ago (approximate value - 30.00) for a practically new MIG welder (approximate value - $130.00 - $150.00). I know, I can't explain it either.


I honestly felt bad on the way home from the trade - so I picked up a cheapo "flex shaft" attachment for his "new" Dremel and offered to send it to him.

So that's it - $600 - $700 worth of tools for $150.00. My face hurts from grinning.

Oh, and I've got a few more deals in the works - one for a running, low mileage SOHC motor for the Neon, and another for some powder coating work. Potential cash outlay? $85.00
Owww, my face....

Tar Pits Part 2

So, two weeks or so of picking away at the tar mats for a few hours has left a big gooey mess in my race car. The bulk of the actual tar is gone, but the residue left by heat gun/scraper combo is pretty thick in places. Speaking of the heat gun...I got really tired of holding the gun in place to heat an area, and then heat another area while I scraped the previous area. Well, I guess I didn't get tired of holding the gun so much as I got tired of burning my friggin hand while I was scraping. So I dug up one of my old "third hand" vises and made up this highly sophisticated heat gun stand:


The method is as follows -
1) Point the gun at some tar
2) Wait till it gets a bit shiny & goopy
3) Point the gun at an adjacent bit of tar
4) Scrape previous goopy tar. (don't burn your hand, stupid!)
6) Repeat steps 2 - 4
6a) Explain to your wife why exactly you're meticulously scraping tar off the floor of junk car.

Here's what it looks like right after I finish scraping.




It's not terrible, but it's just a lot of work with a solvent to get it up. To knock it down as much as possible, and to cut down on the amount of nasty chemicals, I put a wire wheel on my trusty old drill and went to work on the dried up tar. This took several more evenings, but the results were worth it:

All that's left now is use a lot of nasty solvent to remove the remaining nasty tar. Knowing this day was coming, I picked up a small can off the aforementioned nasty solvent (GooGone). I put some on a rag and went to work. The results were less than impressive. The solvent softened up the tar, but it packed up on the rag so quickly that it was useless. Not to mention it was a lot of work, and the fumes probably shaved several days off of my life.
I needed something that would save me the work and not clog up as easily as the rag. The drill with the wire wheel was still in the car, for grins, I doused a big area with the solvent and ran the wire wheel across it a few times at full tilt. Holy crap! Power tools and nasty chemicals to the rescue!! It cleaned up great. It slung tar and solvent everywhere, but that cleaned up pretty easily - with yet more solvent. (so I lost a few more days of my life - they probably wouldn't have been much fun anyway) When all was said and done, I scraped about 10lbs of tar off of the floors, and was ready to prep the interior for a fresh coat of paint.
Say goodbye tar...

"Goodbye Tar"

Tar Pits

This post is a bit late since it was originally intended to go up on Labor Day. Well, it didn't. An excruciatingly busy work schedule got in the way. Anyway, here's the post:

Labor Day Weekend!!....time to relax and take it easy. Maybe get a bunch of work done on the car.....Nope - not if you own a house, and have a young'n running around. Out of 72 hours, I literally got 3 hours to work on the car. The rest was spent maintaining said house and tending to the young'n.
You'll notice, I said car...as in singular After sitting for a week and a half, the remains of Blue went away on a rainy Monday morning. So now I'm down to just the white car. After a little more tear-down and preparation, I'll be ready to actually start building a race car.

I've decided that the first thing on the list should be the interior. My plan is to completely strip it, clean it, and paint it a nice gray color - both to keep it cool(er) inside, and cut down on any reflection/glare. Plus, it gives it that 'professional race car' look. I figure, if I can't actually be fast, the car should at least look the business. It's bad enough that I'll likely be bumbling around in last place - I should at least enjoy my surroundings, right?
My goal is to get the paint work done by the time the snow flies so I don't have to suffer through paint fumes in the closed-up garage.

First order of business is to remove the factory-installed soundproofing - more commonly known as Tar Mats. These are literally large sheets of tar that Chrysler laid down on the floors to cut down on road noise. By the time I took these pictures, I had already started stripping the passenger side - but you get the idea.





Here's my personal favorite - can't wait to get to this one. Clearly, the trunk had a leak on this car, since there was about an inch of standing water in the spare tire well when I got it. Which, coincidentally, I think is to blame for a particularly vicious, recent mosquito outbreak in my garage.


Now - I'm under no illusions here. The weight savings gained by removing these mats is maybe 10 lbs. I'm only doing it because I have an entire winter to work on the car before it's debut next year. Well, that and the aforementioned "pro race car look". I can't think of anything cooler, and more purposeful than a properly prepped race car cockpit.

The amount of manual labor involved in removing these things is stupefying. I had really high hopes for one method of removing them that involved smashing up blocks of dry ice and letting it sit on the mats until they pretty much cracked from the extreme cold (-109F). This method had a lot going for it because if done right, the tar mats come off in huge chunks AND, you get the added benefit of having the inside of your car look like the set of a cheesy horror movie for several hours. Failing this, I'm left to remove them with a heat gun, a scraper, and a lot of messy work.
Despite the hope and encouragement offered by this link it was not to be. Apparently, Chrysler had special "ultra stubborn" tar manufactured for the Neons. Very much unlike the huge chunks that came off in the Honda example above, all I got was small chips zinging all over the car every time I hit the mats with a hammer and chisel. While this was plenty amusing, it was hardly progress. More importantly, the hammer and chisel were leaving behind a fairly thick layer of tar that would still have to be addressed - most likely with the previously mentioned heat gun and scraper. It didn't make a lot of sense to pay for dry ice ($9.00/10lb block) only to have to finish the job with the heat gun anyway. In the pic below, the larger black area in the center is the result of 5 lbs of dry ice smashed up and left to sit for 30 minutes, then followed by about 10 deafening minutes smacking it with a hammer and chisel. By contrast, the smaller, cleaner area right next to it is the result of 5 minutes with a heat gun and a putty knife.

So, $4.00 in dry ice, 30 minutes of waiting, and 10 minutes of hammering - only to still need the heat gun, versus $0.00, and 5 minutes with the heat gun - no extra cleanup needed. Looks like the heat gun is going to be busy.

Blue Car - Teardown Pt 2

Next up on the "Teardown To-Do List" is to strip Blue's suspension components. I knew this was going to be a long day, and my Dad was probably still smarting from the last weekend's shenanigans and would likely not return my calls - even if I promised cold beer.

Next victim on the list is my good pal Brent, who always seems to be around to help me out with any loony plan I've concocted. This loony plan was no different, and he willingly joined the mayhem.

The first order of business was to find the perfect place to do the work. We had to consider that when we were done, the resultant shell would be far too heavy to move on our own. Through the wonders of craigslist I had a few people lined up to haul the shell away, but I needed to make sure they could get to the car when I wasn't around - not to mention, I don't like strangers from the interweb wandering around in, and possibly casing my garage.
Much to my wife's and I'm sure my neighbor's dismay, we decided that out in the driveway would be the "perfect" place.

At the top of our driveway, off at an angle, is a little parking spot that will fit one average sized car while still allowing full access to the garage. That's where we decided to put the car. Unfortunately I live right at one of the main intersections in our subdivision, and the decrepit remains of this car would be highly, highly visible. I don't live in a super posh part of town where Homeowner's Associations rule my every move, but I also don't live where it's perfectly acceptable to prop a junked car up on jackstands until the weeds obscure it. We got many second takes, pointing, and general "what the?!" reactions from everyone who drove or walked by.

As with the interior, we had our hands full, and no one else was around to take that many pictures, but we got some decent action shots.

Here are the last shots of Blue with her original suspension intact. This will be the final resting place until she's hauled off to the scrap yard.



The front suspension came off very quickly. Due mostly to the fact that a race car's front end works very hard for a living, and tends to get a lot of routine maintenance. The fasteners were all close to new and in great shape. The only hiccup was due to the accident. The K-member took such a hard hit that it actually broke the internal chassis weld for the main attachment bolt. Without the nut welded in place, the bolt/nut would just spin. Since the nut was hidden in the chassis and never meant to be messed with, there was no way to hold it in place. The K-member was effectively stuck on the car. That's when my handy reciprocating saw (sawzall) went to work...



Five minutes of work with the saw, and the K-member dropped out easy as can be. The front end was done. The rear however, was a different story...



The shot above is of the inboard rear suspension mount - these parts had not been messed with in a VERY long time. Most likely ten years or so, according to Greg. I knew these would be a problem, and for the last few days had been soaking them in my favorite penatrating oil - PB Blaster. I have no idea what's in this stuff, and probably don't want to know. What I do know though, is that it works. All the nuts we needed to get off, came off easily, but the rear mounting bolts were rusted in place and refused to budge - even with some gentle coaxing from Brent and a 10 lb sledgehammer. I didn't want to cut the bolts since they were going to be my spares. Instead we got to play with another of the home mechanic's favorites....

FIRE!!



Didn't matter...We must've torched that thing for 10 minutes. All it did was waste a bunch of propane and provide us with some chuckles as various oil soaked bushings caught fire. The bolts were seized in there, and refused to move. In fact a little more hammering ended up with one of them bent so much it wouldn't come out anyway. Back to the saw...





A few minutes with the saw, and Brent sucessfully liberated the rear suspension. In the shot above, you can see the bolt on the far left. Notice how badly rusted it is.

While Brent was hacking away on the bolts, I tried to free up the equally rusted-in-place outer suspension pivots with the torch.


Nope - no good there either. Now that they're off the car, I'll put them in a vice and see if I can get them out that way. But that's a project for another day.

When all was said and done, we had reduced the car to a mere shell of scrap metal. Time to cover it up and hope that it gets taken away before I get a nasty letter from the city. I'll leave you with the sight that greeted everyone who passed my house for the next week....enjoy!



Thanks to Brent for helping out with the manual labor and for bringing his bad-ass camera, and gorgeous new lens to capture all the madcap fun. Don't get used to pictures of this quality - next time it'll be back to my crappy pictures.

Blue car - Teardown Pt 1

So, a few weeks ago, my Father expressed some interest in helping me work on the Neons. He seemed both sincere and quite sober. I hope he wasn't bluffing, or using reverse psychology. Because one day I ambushed him and asked if he'd help me strip the interior out of the blue car aka: Blue. Foolishly, he said yes.

He came over one Saturday afternoon, and after many hours of wrenching, drinking beer, wrenching some more, scratching our heads, eating some BBQ chicken, yet more wrenching, some cutting, swearing, and at least one episode of "sledge hammering", the interior was barren.

I don't have many pictures of the days events, but here's what I managed to get. They don't quite capture the 8+ hrs of work, but trust me - it was a long day.

BEFORE-ISH


By now we've cut the cage out - which despite all my fretting and planning, was the easiest part of the whole job. We cut in four semi-strategic places and when I jiggled it to see if it would move, it literally collapsed into the center of the car.
By the way, that's my Dad - he's likely wondering where his day went so horribly wrong.
Note that the dash is still in place - this will take us the remainder of our evening to remove.






Done and done! The dash is gone. All that's left is to pull out the wiring harnesses, strip off the suspension and send the shell to the scrap yard.

Easier said than done, I'm afraid...

The Street Car

The Street Car

This is the frame and body that will make up my new race car. It's certainly no show car. It's full history is unknown to me, but it's clearly been sitting outside for quite some time. It was a daily driver in Ohio and has obviously seen several salty winters. All of the suspension fasteners are very rusty, it's got 168,000+ miles and an engine described vaguely as "blown".
To add to the charm, someone has already torn into the engine with reckless abandon and at least one utility knife as every hose you can reach in the engine compartment has been hacked in half.
Inside, it appears that the previous owner drove everywhere shaking an open soda can - pretty nasty.

I'll let the pictures tell the story:


What a looker, huh?

HOT!

Uhhhhhh....where's the rest of the dashboard?

In the trunk of course! What's that thing on the left?
It appears to be a fuzzy shower cap covered in mouse poop. I think I'll burn it to be safe.


At least he took care of the pedals

PEEKABOO!!


I've got my work cut out for me as you can see....