Itinerant Air-Cooled Prep III
Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 3:53 pm
Just filling in this 2014 Itinerary Forum with nothing more than my chores . . . but wait! There's a lesson here.
The culmination of the wheel bearing repack ushered in the Memorial Day Weekend. A whole new music event came wafting from the park down the block, this time, the Beatles in the morning. They did a pretty fair job, too, they maintained a tight fealty to the original songs, and the vocals did their very best. From inside the Law Firm, you'd think they were the real thing.
I decided to give a crack at some Mexican Body Work which often includes trees and ropes:
In late July of 2010, the BobD was hit by a what? sixteen year-old in her parents' New Beetle ( that was a whole story in itself, isn't here somewhere? ), and the impact bonked in the left rear bumper bracket and made the outside corner curl up. Grabbed a come-along and two pieces of wood to fill the bracket where the strap came down. Tightened the strap with the ebrake set firmly.
Started the engine and pulled in 1st gear a little bit. Measured the bracket against the right side. Look for the red/green highlights at the bolt holes:
Finally was the same.
Added another 3/8" just in case the bracket might spring back when the tension was released. Bent corners and did a little hammering here and there, and finally had two identically dimensioned brackets:
This was amusing some of the passers-by.
"Hey buddy! There's a tree stuck to your bumper."
"Hey, that's not the stump, you hooked up the whole tree."
"Who's winning?"
After all that, I thought it best to paint the brackets, might have splintered the paint here and there with all that bending. What the heck, let's paint the bumper/muffler shield too, it is beginning to show some rust at the mounting holes. Took all afternoon to strip, sand, prime and paint:
Then, what the heck, let's sand, prime and paint the rear bumper!
Next day, the front bumper! ( looks good without a bumper, actually . . .tightens up the appearance):
While waiting for the paint to dry, I touched up every single little peck or scratch all over the car! Even did the inside edges of the sliding door and hatch! Did the entire gutter edge! Isn't this like almost perfect?
No. So very no.
All three of my Sherwin Williams acrylic enamel L-90D spray cans apparently lack hardener. We are at the end of the Memorial Day weekend, and not only have hours of prep been for naught, but I have a sticky mess everywhere. Rear bumper, front bumper, rear brackets, license plate bracket, carriage bolt heads, and washers, sliding door edge, entire gutter edge, and every touch up in the interior is sticky. Paint is stuck to the sliding door gasket where I had shut it after the usual four hours of drying time.
This morning, jackstar dropped by in the middle of Mad Chemist Run Amok. I had ripped the nozzle out of the Sherwin Williams Acrylic Enamel l-90D spray can, set up a little bottle with a spray canister and sprayed 4 ounces of L-90D into the bottle, added an ounce of urethane reducer (can you use that?), an ounce of some Greek paint hardener (sheer guesswork here, the instructions were in indecipherable squiggles, but I spied some numbers that looked like 4:1:1), and shook the bottle/spray canister and doused myself but good.
"Do not shake after mixing," reads the side of the spray canister, "paint will spill from the vent."
" Oh."
Stole the still-"drying" sticky front bumper off the water cooler in the Law Firm, threw it on a bench in the back yard and started spraying this potion, this concoction, this leaking mess, and I praaaayed that the hardener would somehow leach down and dry the paint. Touched up every touch up. Repainted all bumper bolts. Left the brackets be. Still praying that the paint dries.
Watching for paint to dry,
Colin
(the lesson? check paint before painting)
The culmination of the wheel bearing repack ushered in the Memorial Day Weekend. A whole new music event came wafting from the park down the block, this time, the Beatles in the morning. They did a pretty fair job, too, they maintained a tight fealty to the original songs, and the vocals did their very best. From inside the Law Firm, you'd think they were the real thing.
I decided to give a crack at some Mexican Body Work which often includes trees and ropes:
In late July of 2010, the BobD was hit by a what? sixteen year-old in her parents' New Beetle ( that was a whole story in itself, isn't here somewhere? ), and the impact bonked in the left rear bumper bracket and made the outside corner curl up. Grabbed a come-along and two pieces of wood to fill the bracket where the strap came down. Tightened the strap with the ebrake set firmly.
Started the engine and pulled in 1st gear a little bit. Measured the bracket against the right side. Look for the red/green highlights at the bolt holes:
Finally was the same.
Added another 3/8" just in case the bracket might spring back when the tension was released. Bent corners and did a little hammering here and there, and finally had two identically dimensioned brackets:
This was amusing some of the passers-by.
"Hey buddy! There's a tree stuck to your bumper."
"Hey, that's not the stump, you hooked up the whole tree."
"Who's winning?"
After all that, I thought it best to paint the brackets, might have splintered the paint here and there with all that bending. What the heck, let's paint the bumper/muffler shield too, it is beginning to show some rust at the mounting holes. Took all afternoon to strip, sand, prime and paint:
Then, what the heck, let's sand, prime and paint the rear bumper!
Next day, the front bumper! ( looks good without a bumper, actually . . .tightens up the appearance):
While waiting for the paint to dry, I touched up every single little peck or scratch all over the car! Even did the inside edges of the sliding door and hatch! Did the entire gutter edge! Isn't this like almost perfect?
No. So very no.
All three of my Sherwin Williams acrylic enamel L-90D spray cans apparently lack hardener. We are at the end of the Memorial Day weekend, and not only have hours of prep been for naught, but I have a sticky mess everywhere. Rear bumper, front bumper, rear brackets, license plate bracket, carriage bolt heads, and washers, sliding door edge, entire gutter edge, and every touch up in the interior is sticky. Paint is stuck to the sliding door gasket where I had shut it after the usual four hours of drying time.
This morning, jackstar dropped by in the middle of Mad Chemist Run Amok. I had ripped the nozzle out of the Sherwin Williams Acrylic Enamel l-90D spray can, set up a little bottle with a spray canister and sprayed 4 ounces of L-90D into the bottle, added an ounce of urethane reducer (can you use that?), an ounce of some Greek paint hardener (sheer guesswork here, the instructions were in indecipherable squiggles, but I spied some numbers that looked like 4:1:1), and shook the bottle/spray canister and doused myself but good.
"Do not shake after mixing," reads the side of the spray canister, "paint will spill from the vent."
" Oh."
Stole the still-"drying" sticky front bumper off the water cooler in the Law Firm, threw it on a bench in the back yard and started spraying this potion, this concoction, this leaking mess, and I praaaayed that the hardener would somehow leach down and dry the paint. Touched up every touch up. Repainted all bumper bolts. Left the brackets be. Still praying that the paint dries.
Watching for paint to dry,
Colin
(the lesson? check paint before painting)
