Working Man's Burbon

[Ol Blue K20]

Yeah! Progress.

[pwdcougar]

Excellent!

[HO455]

Now some tangible progress! But wait there's more! The rear wheel is at the wheel shop and they feel confident they can repair it. Fingers crossed!

More photos and information to follow.

[pwdcougar]

What did you use for a replacement panel?

[FLYNAVY30]

indeed....what did you use as a panel!?!

[HO455]

I didn't get a chance to talk with the body tech but, the estimator said they cut some pieces from the long bed side panel to replace the worst spots and the rest they hammer and dollied out. She decided against replacing the whole panel with the bed side panel (As originally planned) as there were too many differences. I will post the differences after I get to talk with the tech.
There will be more photos for me to post once they get time to send them to me.

There are some other things I am having fixed while there. A couple of rust bubbles on the other quarterpanel and a crack in the paint on the front edge of the hood. The biggest item is where the windshield tech gouged the paint just under the lip of the seal and it bloomed in to a nice rust flower. (It only took 4 tries for them to get the windshield to quit leaking.) I hope it goes better this time as the windshield will have to come out to fix it.

[kev2809]

well it looks like it turned out great. nice to see some progress

[HO455]

Thanks Kev. It was in the booth getting some green paint today!
White paint tomorrow. Windshield reinstalled on Wednesday or Thursday. I should be able to pick it up on Saturday.

[Ol Blue K20]

Originally Posted by HO455

Thanks Kev. It was in the booth getting some green paint today!
White paint tomorrow. Windshield reinstalled on Wednesday or Thursday. I should be able to pick it up on Saturday.

Nice! I'm glad it's working out for you thus far.

[HO455]

Well I wish it had gone my way on Saturday. Unfortunately I had to express my disappointment with the work done around the top wheel well. Fortunately the owner of the shop saw my side and the truck is back in the shop for some more work. And the wheel shop is also still working on the wheel.

[pwdcougar]

Wow! I guess this is why I’ve been working on this exact spot on my truck for 3 years!

[HO455]

I was okay with upper curve not being perfect (purple line) since the other side isn't perfect either. And the area in the yellow circle I could live with too but the rest was too much

[Average Joe]

Wow!

Some excitement here since the last time I checked in. You have horrible luck my friend. ��

I hope the body shop takes care of you. I bet it’s been tough going without the WMB!

[HO455]

And that luck keeps holding. Thursday the wheel shop called and said they finished the repairs but "The clear coat reacted with the existing paint on the wheel". After seeing the wheel I don't believe that. They had tint in the clear or used a dirty paint cup when they shot the clear. I've never seen such perfectly even blemish free paint reaction. The wheel is now kinda golden bronze colored.
To fix this I had to bring a front wheel in so they can remove the paint on both and try to match the color and then re-coated both wheels. That way if it doesn't come out perfect at least I will have two wheels that match on each side.
The upside is the repairs to the gouges came out really nice but, why is it always so hard.

[HO455]

Got the truck back!

It looks much better this time. I'm still waiting for the wheels at this point so haven't been driving it. It's got 4 different sized tires on it.

The next picture is interesting since it shows how well my POR15 coating worked. If anyone has looked at the first pages of the WMB repairs it shows how I sprayed POR15 into every void I could. I wish I could have been there when they opened up the quarter panel and seen first hand how it looked. I believe the line of uncoated metal on the very bottom was caused by that area being full of dirt and debris and the POR15 stuck to it and not the panels.

They found a rotten place (Inconceivable!) on the inner fender well and repaired it.

I had them pull the windshield and do some repairs to damage caused by previous windshield sealing attempts. Over all the window frame looked good. Previously when we got heavy rain the I would get water drips on the passenger side. This week we've had some pretty heavy rain and no leaks!

[pwdcougar]

The body work looks much better now!

[kev2809]

good thing it had to go back or they wouldn't have seen that inner rot. blessing in disguise.

looks great

[HO455]

Actually they caught that the first time but, I didn't get the photos until yesterday.
I also had them repair some rust bubbles on the other side. And repair paint chips on the front of the hood.
On the wheel repair the shop called and said it would be $1020. For the repair and re-coating both wheels. I told them the second wheel was on them and they would have to argue with the insurance company. So at the present I'm waiting for a call from someone on how that will get solved. If it goes on too long I may throw the snow tires on the WBM and start driving it.
The wheel shop only charged me $197 last time they repaired the wheel.

[HO455]

Originally Posted by pwdcougar

The body work looks much better now!

Thank you.

[BigBird05]

My body man said different clears come out different colors.

[HO455]

Happy New Year everyone!
The holidays have been weird this year. The old lady got sick at work on the 22nd and they made her get Covid test. That took several days to get the results on so we spent Christmas in lock down. Test came back negative. Whew!
We've been having a long stretch of cold weather with some snow flurries every other day or so. Nothing more than an inch or two at a time fortunately it has been just warm enough in the afternoons to melt. It's been in the 20's at night which around here folks think is the end of the world. All of this leads to my New Year morning (Cue photo now). It's hard to tell from the picture but it appears that the glass is pushed out at the bottom. I believe there may have been water behind the mirror and when it froze last night it pushed out on the mirror and broke it.
I also got a package from member PJMoreland I am excited about, more to come on that

[HO455]

Originally Posted by BigBird05

My body man said different clears come out different colors.

That's what makes this whole thing so frustrating. If the only thing you do is refinsh wheels there should be no confusion about what clear coat your using. It's not like they were shooting a coat of red pearlized clear to color match the red base color a 2012 Mazda 3 and then grabbed that pot by accident and shot the wheel. Then they have the audacity want to charge me to make it right. I will have to deal with them this week which I'm not looking forward to. Grrrrrrr. More New Year joy!

[HO455]

Yesterday I believe I saw confirmation of the frozen water theory for my broken mirror.
It was a dry day and I had the WMB parked on an incline so the door wanted to swing open on its own. Once open I noticed water oozing from the cracked part of the glass.
I'm going to see the bright side and use this as an opportunity to get mirrors that don't vibrate at highway speeds. And hopefully those won't whistle as much either.

Now the question is whether to go with stainless or white replacements?

[HO455]

I go over and help a friend install a rear-end in his GTO, an he pays me back by modifying the door handle on the WMB.
Fix or replace? That's today's question.

[crakarjax]

Originally Posted by HO455

I go over and help a friend install a rear-end in his GTO, an he pays me back by modifying the door handle on the WMB.
Fix or replace? That's today's question.

This happened to mine as well, the fix was pretty easy and it's held up several years now. There are a couple metal tabs inside the handle that I bent back over to ensure the button didn't pop in too far, if I recall.