Well, slow go on anything new. I ordered a factory AM/FM Cassette, the correct radio that is supposed to be in this truck, but it came in as a normal old style AM/FM with no digital display or ETR. Waiting to see if they dig up a correct radio or not. Sometimes it is so discouraging, you talk to the counter person, fax them a picture of it, explain what it is and how it differs from previous years, and still get an incorrect item.
The last few nights I drove the truck home, and I gotta say, she is running rougher and rougher. She'll almost die out coming to a stop unless you two foot it. On first start up it feels like she's missing on a few cylinders. Once you get going though she does run like a top, I'm fearful an engine rebuild and tranny swap might be closer than I had originally thought.
I did take some time and sanded my donor hood down with 80, what I thought was a perfect hood. I found a few dents and one fairly decent sized wave in it though. I tried my hand at some mud work, and quickly remembered why I run the office of a body shop, and own the place, verses being a body man. Now I can prime and paint when I have to, and I can turn a wrench and swap parts easy enough, but I am not sure I could fix a little one hour dent in one wipe to save my life. None the less I did get the dents fixed and prepped it for primer. Shot some wash primer on it since I had a lot of bare metal, then layered on some high build primer. Amazing when you get your first wet coat of primer, how you then find two more dents... I was past the point of no return though. I hammered on about 4 coats, unreduced so it would really be high build.
It was fun playing with our new primer gun though. We got a new 3m "disposable" primer gun. It has plastic heads on it that you just use for a few weeks, pop it off and toss it and install another plastic head. It uses the PPS system, which is also new to me, and I must say I think I like that. Sorta neat to mix up the product, spray it out, and then just lay the container of whatever is leftover to the side and let it harden up and toss it in the trash. I think it'll save us big time on our waste disposal.
Waiting on my body man to get his race cars roof sanded (dirt track) so I can paint it and my new core support at the same time. I'm cheating a bit on his top and my support, going old school and putting an epoxy sealer on them and then going single stage enamel black.
And, a few pictures because that is the fun part, right? And no I did not use the paint booth to spray the primer, you know how bad that kills my filter!!
