Gerahead's 71 Dart

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This passed weekend I finished the stripping of the interior. This is when I realized how loucky I am to have a very solid platform to work from. I wore out a knotted wire wheel and burned up a Harbor Fright angle grinder on the process. The benefit of frequently flipping the wire wheel cannot be over stated. The only problems that I found were a few pin holes in the dirver's side rear foot well when I got every thing stripped (black circles). Welded em up and ready to go. Gave it a good covering of POR like the rear section and then a couple of good coats of epoxy. I'm starting to feel like I am actually accomplishing something. :toothy10: Next is the trunk area. I am sure my neighbors will appreciate the relief from the grinding.

I noticed while I was taking a breather, that the cowl vent has been pushed in in the middle of the vent louvers. Anyone had a similar problem that they dealt with successfully?
 
The before and after of the wire wheels. Cheaper isn't always better, you just buy more of 'em.

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driver's rear pinholes 2.JPG


interior POR-15d 3.JPG


interior in epoxy 2.JPG
 
It has been a while since I have done anything substantial on the project. During my mock-up build, I found that the pass side bumper bracket (the straight one) was bent. The bumper just would not fit like it should. Anyone need confirmation that a mock up is a good idea? since I don't have a press, I made note of the need to fix and moved on.

Last night I had some time to spend on it so I broke out the caveman tools. I dug up a length of chain and a couple of scrap pieces of 2x2 square tubing. I set the bracket on the pad of my frame jack with the U-shape of the bracket pointed up. I wrapped the chain underthe frame of the jack and passed it through a piece of the tubing on each end of the bracket. I put the tubing across the top of the bracket so it distributed teh load flatly across the width. I used some 7/16 bolts to form a loop at the ends. With the chain loops centered, I started pumping the jack. It took a couple of attempts to stop and check the progress, but I got it as straight as the driver's side. Now to try the bubmper fit again. Even the little victories seem significant.
 
Got the new bracket test fitted. Near as I can tell with the scrap grill installed. I realized while I was rummaging through my parts for a fender extension, I have acquired duplicates of parts I didn't know I already had :munky2:. Looks like today I will try to inventory the pile to see what else is hiding in there.
 
how crazy was I to think that I would get the inventory done in a day??? I took me almost a week, including the better part of a weekend. I have identified a few more parts that I need, most of them I thought I already had. I did a good job of identifying the parts that I have removed, but what I should have done is started a list then of what the parts were, what condition they were in and numbered boxes where they could be located. I found a couple of parts that I have forgotten how they are installed. These were parts I pulled from boneyard donors and believed that I would never forget how they were installed. Luckily a co-worker has a 71 Dart like mine. I am going to pay him a visit and shoot a ton of pix. They will have to fill in for the pre-disassembly photos that I don't have. I found that my storage shed is not mouse proof and those little bastards really like fiberglass insulation. All of the kick panel insulators and roof liner that I had saved for patterns were destroyed. Another lesson learned.

Back to the wire wheel and the trunk! L8r dudes.
 
Really nice to see the progress. I am just in the blowtorch-the-sound-deadener-off stage and can't wait to rust proof the interior. Thanks for the inspiration.
 
brewil said:
Really nice to see the progress. I am just in the blowtorch-the-sound-deadener-off stage and can't wait to rust proof the interior. Thanks for the inspiration.
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After the trunk is done, that will be next for me. My process will be different. I am going to try the heat gun and pneumatic scraper route. I can put up with the noise a lot easier than the smell and soot. My neighbors might have a differing opinion, but that's the way it is. This is the worst stage and it can be difficult to motivate myself to go dive into the pool of dust. The pay off is when you see it recoated, if just in primer, knowing that you are making progress. Thanks.
 
mopardude318 said:
Nice work man! Keep us updated! more pics too!
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I will be posting the pix as I make progress. From other people's projects, I personally find them very interesting . I often notice something in the pix that wasn't even being highlighted that is of interest. Thanks.
 
While sorting through the inventory on Sunday, I decided to try to figure out which headliner bow went in which position. Got them sorted longest to shortest and took some rough measurements across the roof to see which might fit whre. All of the bows were too short to fit in any of the positions. WTF! Didn't take the liner out, but there is no way that these things can shrink. Add another item to my boneyard shopping list. Anyone have a cheat sheet with the color codes of the headliners from their projects? Thanks. L8r.
 
Great project you have going. I look forward to seeing more of your progress. I to have a 71. Maybe one of these days I will start my Restore thread.
As far as the headliner bows, Mine seemed short also, maybe its the water? jk

Good luck.
 
(After the trunk is done, that will be next for me. My process will be different. I am going to try the heat gun and pneumatic scraper route. I can put up with the noise a lot easier than the smell and soot. My neighbors might have a differing opinion, but that's the way it is. This is the worst stage and it can be difficult to motivate myself to go dive into the pool of dust. The pay off is when you see it recoated, if just in primer, knowing that you are making progress. Thanks. )

My knuckles are still raw from manually doing it with the propane torch and scraper. I have the really thick sheets which goes all gooey. I'll take a pic of the Valiant Charger when it's clean and post for you.
 
brewil,
There is very little undercoating on my car. I may not have to spend too much time removing it since most of it it in the wheel wells and outside near the rocker panels. Most of the underside seems to be just a black primer over most of the undercarriage and inside. There is a very straight line around the inside of the car at the same level. These cars must have been dipped in a primer/rust preventer tank. Too bad they didn't submerge them all the way. Looking forward to seeing the pix. L8r.

Jim
 
I spent most of today working in the trunk. What a mess. I will be glad when this part of the project is over. It has been hot and humid here lately, so grinding away the paint and rust has made for a really attractive complexion.

I have decided that I am only going to grind away the paint on the floor of the trunk and areas where there is surface rust or where the paint has been scratched through. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not a Barrett-Jackhole restoration! I am going to just degrease and scuff the original factory paint that is in good shape before I squirt the epoxy. The floor is in better shape than the before photos would indicate. I power washed it last fall and it removed a lot of the seam sealer and the unprotected sheet metal surface rusted afterward. I discovered a couple of pinholes in the spare tire well. It had been covered on the bottom with a hardened undercoating and there were a few surprises when I got that stuff removed. I will try to weld them up and see what happens. Otherwise, it is still in pretty good shape.

I got steel ordered last Thursday to build a rotisserie. I am stoked! :cheers: The steel will probably be here later this week. I am really looking forward to building it and being able to work on it standing up, or sitting down. I am getting so tire of crawling around inside this thing. It will make the work that I have left so much easier to do. Plus I will have it for the next projects on the waiting list.

Here are a couple of before and after shots of the work from this weekend. Still need to get the epoxy on, but that should happen in the next few days. L8r.

Jim

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I spent last night going over the portions of the trunk that I didn't cover with the wire wheel. I scuffed it up by hand with a Scotch Brite pad and a whole ton of elbow grease. So now I am all set to shoot the epoxy primer on the trunk. I decided to wait on welding up the pinholes in the spare tire well until I get my rotisserie assembled. It will be much easier on my back to do that standing up. I hope that one of you guys that has been through this procedure before can tell me that I tackled the worst part of a restoration first! L8r.

Jim
 
I spent the better part of the weekend getting the trunk cleaned and in primer :cheers:. I finished cleaning up the area around the wheel tubs and then I etched them with POR's metal prep. While I was at it and since I had the deck lid off anyway, I ground out all of the seam sealer around the edge of the deck lid, welded the holes for the edge trim shut (I'm not putting the trim back on). I then etched the bare metal at the same time as the trunk, painted the bare metal with POR-15 gray and then applied a couple of good coats of epoxy primer. This stuff sure is a lot of work, but when you see it with the primer on it, it is all worth while. The underside is next, but not until I get the steel and build my rotisserie. It sure would have made painting the trunk easier!

Deck Lid Seam Cleaned Up.JPG


Deck Lid Trim Holes Welded Shut.JPG


Trim Holes in Deck Lid.JPG


Left Runk After Priming With Epoxy.JPG


Rt Rear Tunk After Epoxy.JPG


Trunk After Epoxy.JPG
 
After getting the trunk coated in epoxy primer, my obsessive tendencies surfaced. I had never noticed it before, but there were a couple of small creases in the end of the left rear quarter panel, under the extension cap. I have no idea how I missed them, but they could not stay. I spent the better part of Tuesday night with a hammer and dolly eradicating the demons! Without really anything to go by, except the appearance of the right side of the car, I hammered on dolly, off dolly, every which way until I got the area pretty smooth. All of this for a part of the car that will never show.#-oThe attached pictures show the before and after versions of the panel. The after version doesn't really show it very well, but the area has compound curves in it and it is really a lot smoother than the picture shows.

I think I also figured out why there is a large difference in the cost of body hammers and dollys between the cheap Chinese tools and the others. The surface finish on the "finished" surfaces if the imported versions is incredible. The flat surface on the heel dolly from my set (yeah, I admit it) was actually concave! These surfaces are supposed to be smooth or the imperfections can be transferred to the metal being worked. I can't even guess how much time I spent on the hammer faces and a couple of the dollys to get them smoothed. Originally, they looked like they had been surfaced with #10 grit. Would have been pretty good if I was trying to shrink, I guess. Still have a lot more work to do to smooth them out some more.

I hope to get the rest of the inside of the deck lid sanded and primed this weekend. The incredible humidity is back, making it really miserable out in the garage. L8r.

Jim
 
Well, I didn't get to the trunk lid last weekend. I had to replace some sprinkler system valves on Sunday. It was so f'ing hot and humid, that by the time I got done, I just didn't have the energy left to go back out in that crap to go to work. When I build my Garage Hahal, it is going to be air conditioned as well as heated!

Thumped around on the deck lid evenings during the week. Got it all stripped and then went over all of the bare metal with a red Scotchbrite pad before priming it. Once it was all stripped, I found a few places where I had to see if I could straighten the metal a little better. I need to get my meds checked!

I am going to dive into the rear tailight panel next so that I can get the area where I will be attaching the rotisserie cleaned up ahead of time before I hang it.

I will be putting this project on hold temporarilty. I am planning to take the Comet racing this weekend. So I will be spending the free time (?) I have this week in the evenings, getting my stuff together to go kick some asphalt! A guy just doesn't have the time he needs to get all the stuff done that needs it. L8r.

Jim
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Thanks DarTT and mopardude318. I am gaining a whole new appreciation for the work done by the guys who do this stuff every day! I have pretty much convinced myself that I have done the worst of it by getting the trunk stripped. In comparison, the rest should be a walk in the park. I'll just keep plugging away as I have time. L8r.

Jim
 
Your constant reference to OCD tendencies while working on your Mopar is a problem most of us share. I really dig the work you have done. Thanks for all the great info. klmetal
 
The Labor Day weekend at the track was a mixed bag of results. The weather was very cool, even for this time of year. The net result is that the Comet ran 0.3 quicker than it did over the 4th of July weekend at the same track, with the same tune-up! The bad thing is that when the eliminations started, I had the absolute worst reaction time of the weekend and ended up a first round runner-up! Damn :angry7: The up side is that I got home early and had plenty of time to get everything put away.

........Now Dart progress. I started sanding on the outside of the deck lid on Sunday afternoon, since I didn't feel obligated to spend prime weekend time watching the local NFL team stumble over their units. My plan was to use a DA with 80 grit discs to peel away the paint on the outer surface. I am now rethinking that strategy. I spent 2-1/2 hours on it and didn't even get half of the top surface down to bare steel. My original plan had been to sand all the old paint and bomb primer off the car. At this rate, I will not live long enough to complete the job! I will be trying two alternatives. Plus a modification to the current process. I noticed that the pad for the DA is concave toward the center of the pad, so I was only effectively using the outer circumference of the disc to sand. I am going to find a flatter pad to see how much it improves the process. I am also going to try ditching the DA in favor of a conventional disc sander with and without a coarser grit on the disc. I will at least use this to knock down to the first layer of primer this way. I found that under the bomb primer, there are two good coats of paint with primer and sealer on the first coat. I am also going to try one of the fiber abrasive cups on my offset grinder. That may work even better than the disc sander because there is less chance of boogering up the sheet metal if I get careless.........not that there is a chance of that happening. I'll let you all know how the experiment plays out. L8r.

Jim
 
I ended up finishing off the deck lid with a 3M spun fiber disc. I used this on the remainder of the deck lid to remove most of the remaining paint. I was careful not to get into the substrate metal, using only the weight of the grinder to encourage the process. If I started to see sparks fly..........I dialed it back. The smooth clean area on the first deck lid photo is all that I got done in 2-1/2 hours with a DA. At that rate, I wouldn't live long enough to finish this project. After working it over with the disc, I used a wheel made of a similar material, but not as coarse to knock down some of the areas that still had paint. It also worked well to clean out the curve at the edge of the lid. Then I went over the whole thing again with the DA, first with 80-grit and then again with 150. After a good bath in wax and grease remover...........2 coats of epoxy primer. Now on to the next task.
 
Looking good gerahead. I was using my DA with the same results, s-l-o-w-w-w-l-y. Now, I use the 3m disc all the time. I use my air die grinder with the disc attached. My compressor can't keep up to well thou. I need a bigger compressor in the futher. But still done the whole trunk in 2 hours. On the hood I had it dipped trying to save time. But the guy got sick and did not get it done for 4 weeks. I could have alreay had it ready to put on the car. But I got it back yesterday then DA with 120, epoxy primed the top. Now this weekend I will do the bottom and hope to have it on the car by Sunday. Keep up the great work.
 
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