Painting the Engine Bay

[John69RR]

Well the 5-12’s that I’ve been working since September are finally over. I can get back to a somewhat normal life. I hope to make it to Vegas for the MATS this March. Here is what has been going on recently since I finally got some time off from work. I haven’t posted much but I have been keeping up with this site.

When I started this project I had every intention of finishing in a reasonable amount of time. As you can tell by the date stamp on the pictures it has already been a year. I encountered several setbacks during this project, new A/C & heat, dishwasher and washer & dryer. Another setback was that I am not a paint & body guy. A friend at work was advising me as I went along. I learned a lot but I don’t think I would take on the body panels. The white on the left shock tower is actually paint. When you check the battery cell levels be sure to put the caps back on BEFORE going for a ride! The painter determined that the white was added to “tone down” the yellow. When the car was painted in 1993 I did not remove the K member and believe that was the reason for poor adhesion near the frame rails. This time the WHOLE compartment was taken apart.

 

[John69RR]

More sanding and prep work.

 

[John69RR]

Well, here it is June. The painter and I worked for about 2 days to get the car ready to paint. I’ve never used a high build primer before. After watching this guy work I’ll stick to the mechanical side. We sprayed the primer, blocked, primered again, high build primer next etc… We finally got to the paint. We painted the white as before so the yellow would match the rest of the car. We painted it in my garage. I am proud to say that Sammy did an excellent job. There are no runs and most surprising is the fact that not one single bug screwed up this paint job. The fumes from the paint weren’t too bad. The fumes from the clear however were unbearable. A respirator is a must!

 

[John69RR]

It is finally Lemon Twist Yellow again!!!

 

[John69RR]

A few days later I prepared the radiator support for the black. Going in the garage at night and having a light in the engine bay allowed me to see all the little places where the black could have leaked through.

 

[roadrunnerh]

Great job! Looks beautiful! :cheers:

 

[John69RR]

As long as I had the heater box and A/C out I decided to paint the dash panels, switch plate and re-do the temperature controls. Thanks Mac for the tip on the switch plate. I stripped the old paint off, primered it the spayed it with Satin Black. My daughter painted all the white trim on the switch plate and temperature controller. The TEMP and FAN letters are decals. The lower dash pad is originally green and had been painted black sometime in its past. There were a few places where the green was showing through. I used the SEM LANDAU BLACK to paint them. Those little magnetic socket inserts made re-installing the dash pad easy.

 

[John69RR]

I decided to add stereo speakers to the front dash. Since I do not have a 3 speaker dash I had to fabricate a plate to fit the 2 speakers and still fit the factory speaker support. To help eliminate any speaker vibration I used the spray Plasti-Dip on the plate. When you re-install the speaker plate it needs to go in a certain way so the plate does not interfere with the dash vent retainers.

 

[John69RR]

Installing the map light was a breeze. I found it at a junkyard a while back. Purple wire to the fuse box and the 2 yellow wires to the door switches.

 

[John69RR]

Here are the pics of the Temperature Controller and Switch Plate. Once again, thanks Mac for the painting tip. The Satin Black turned out great.

 

[John69RR]

The wiper motor came from Passion4Mopars in Tennessee. I chose to go with the powder coated housing vs the plated one. Simply put, it was a matter of economics.

 

[Roadcuda]

Great pics and descriptions John! And it looks great! I remember that you had started this project, but for some reason I thought that you had already finished it. And I think it's great that your daughter is helping you with some of the detail work.

 

[mcmopar]

Nicely done - and thanks for the tip on the magentic socket inserts. I can see those coming in handy one day.

 

[george68hemirr]

johnny....your runner is coming along nicely...sweet

 

[John69RR]

Thanks for the compliments.

 

[Jim S.]

Great job Thanks for posting. A lot of good information there..

 

[mac]

very, very nice. :cool:

 

[BBillyC]

Keep up the committment. Sometimes it gets pretty tough to stay at it but with every step you get a little closer. Your bird is looking great. congrats for hangin in there.

 

[69hemibeep]

Looking great John, you have less that 2 months

 

[Basketcase]

Beautiful John! I must say I like the powder coated wiper motor myself.