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nakman's 60 build

nakman

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It got windy as expected, and the plastic on the engine wound up blowing onto the wet paint. But it kinda looks cool, and I'm just going to scratch this up anyway every time I put the hood rest away, so whatevs. at least it's blue.

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The rest of the parts came out pretty nice, all but that fender. In hindsight I am thinking I should have sprayed that big sanded area with primer, just to even things out more, because I ended up with a big funky spot that catches the light differently. It's got about 6 coats of paint on it, so maybe I'll be able to just work it flat later with find sandpaper. The more it dries the better it looks, we'll see. worst case I can fix it again later, even bolted to the truck. Need to keep moving!

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Now I'm going to sand the rest of the roof, and work on masking off all the door openings. If I can get that ready by 4:00 or so, I'll be able to pull these parts out into the back yard somewhere, then bring the 60 back in the garage & paint it before it gets too cold. I think I can mask it in time, just not sure at this moment how to store those other parts that are sure to still be tacky.
 

nakman

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long day... but there's a blue 60 parked in the garage now. thanks again Bruce for coming over tonight to help with the final prep and masking. Few spots here and there that could be better, but overall I think it looks pretty sweet. Can't wait to start bolting stuff back on!

So only things left to paint at this point are the tailgate, inside of the rear hatch, front doors, and gas door. I ran out of warm week though, have a bunch of real work lined up for tomorrow already, so it may be next week before we can back to the painting. that's ok though, as with the body painted I have a ton more stuff I can do.

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Notyourmomslx450

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Man i like that color! Looking good Tim!!
 

nakman

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Thank you, appreciate all the encouragement guys! this is a ton of work, but I think I've finally turned the corner here. @subzali Matt this is what that seam sealer fender area came out like. Should be ok to go now at least for another 20-30 years.

Before:

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After:

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I pulled all the tape and plastic, had to move the 60 to the driveway as I've got to install a rack at noon.

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nakman

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I also painted up a couple dozen new bolts, main plan is to use those for the doors and anywhere else the need for a pretty bolt head comes up.

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So for example I used a few of those to put that support piece in front of the radiator back on. I also slapped the fenders back on.

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That's it for a bit, I need to slow down probably as I realized that I forgot to put the down spouts back in before I put the fenders on :doh: also I bought a 2nd battery tray, and it'll be easier to add the riv nut in the fender for that with the fender off. I'll get back into it this evening, need to pretend to work for a while. :)
 

MountainGoat

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That looks awesome Tim! She's gonna be a beaut.
 

bh4rnnr

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Looking good Tim! Lots of progress. When's the first trail ride?


:beer::beer:
 

DouglasVB

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Wow! Gorgeous work, Tim!
 

nakman

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Thanks guys! Hoping to get the last bits painted today while it's still sorta warm... then I can start poking around on the assembly this week when it's cold out. I am going to bolt up all the other painted panels today just to get them out of the garage, back patio, tramp, etc. before it snows. I think my only notable improvement from the weekend so far is I installed my 2nd battery tray & relocated the coolant overflow bottle. Figured this is a good time to run some power to the back, while all the carpet is out, etc.

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Perry I'm hoping to have this driving again in a week- then bolt up all the bumpers, etc. should be ready to go by Thanksgiving.
 

nakman

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Well some good and bad today. Mostly good though. I managed to get one back door bolted on, the rear vents screwed on, put the down spout back in so the fenders are bolted on for good now. Also installed that lower valence, and the hood. Nice to have a hand for a few of the little things...

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But hey the colors of the parts all match, so that's good, and the lines seem to line up really nice. Actually got the hood adjusted a lot better than it was before too.

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nakman

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My friend Ron stopped by to inspect... who just got done finishing up his Bronco. Was really tough to not get distracted checking it out, his stuff is super killer. He's out doing short cruises, said he's put about 40 miles now on the engine rebuild. so pretty...

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Back to the 60- Ron helped me unbolt a few things from the tailgate, then wisely took off before the sanding commenced. I then prepped the tailgate and hatch, and both front doors. Took forever, and was losing sun/heat while still working on getting everything clean. I thought I wiped everything down really well but the fish eyes are the worst of the bunch, reminded me of when I painted my 40 trailer earlier this year. The tailgate and hatch look alright, but there's fisheye in the door jam areas, and the driver's door just looked terrible. I keep thinking putting more paint on top of paint is going to fix something... it doesn't.

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Jenny Cruiser

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I like how he did the rear wheel wells on that Bronco. Have you tried spraying a little sealer on top of your problem areas before you try to recoat them?
 

nakman

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yeah he took a second set of front fenders, cut the flares off then grafted in those fender flares to the back, which had already been cut. Pretty nice solution! Like 40's, so many of those early broncos got all hacked up in back.


What kind of sealer? I did put new seam sealer down on a few spots, but that's different. Anyway so tonight I doused a rag with lacquer thinner and just went to town on the drips, took off most of the paint and did my best to leave a clean transition.. . if I do this again I think I'll just do the whole panel as it was tough to not leave lines, plus I left a bunch of lint behind as it was pretty much impossible not to. Should try a different rag I guess.

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I wound up doing this to the jams on both sides of both doors, as they had fish eyes on them also. Then I brewed up a new batch of paint and went for it.

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Ok I can live with that. There's a few little blems if you look hard, one little hair, but for the most part it's pretty clean. It's as nice as any of the other doors, and dang it I'm so happy to not have to sand all those drips down later. Of course I learn this on my last piece, but no doubt I'll remember this on the next paint project. I really just need to find a way to get the parts cleaner beforehand.. like going slower, and taking more time to clean, and not trying to get it sprayed before dinner and it's getting cold and you didn't go to the store like you said you would and it's getting dark and it's almost wintertime. Yeah, less of that next time.

But dang it this is why I wanted a paint booth in my garage. That little space heater is a champ it's still like 70 out there, and other than the floor there's really not that much overspray. I wound up turning the fan in the door down to low for this latch batch, as I didn't want to suck in as much cold air, and it still felt ok fume-wise... not something I'd want to do daily but heck for one week to paint a truck I'm calling this a success. The painting's done. Unless I run into some issue, create an issue, or find some serious error, I'm done painting for a while.
 

MDH33

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Looking great Tim, I like the color. Looks like it could have been an original 60 color, kind of like a blend between the light and dark blue metallic.

Can you describe a little about what was involved with the fender removal? I'm planning to get my front fenders, valence and hood resprayed to correct some rock chips and fading. I still have all the smog gear under the hood too.

Cheers,
 

nakman

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thanks Martin, yeah I like the color, though was hoping for a little darker the pictures taken in the garage at night are what I was originally shooting for, but in the day it's a lighter blue. But yes definitely looks like an original 60 color, and way better than the 2-tone we had before, so still happy.

Removing that fender wasn't so hard, just a bunch of screws. Take the lights off, pull all the stuff off the inside of the fender, pull all the wires out, unhook the hood latch cable and pull that out, etc. Remove the carb fan, take the grill off to access the front valence screws- there are 3 per side the bottom one you can do with a ratcheting wrench, the other two I found a super long extension and 10mm was the best way. There must be 14 bolts inside the innder fender accessed from the tire, the hardest of those were ones where there had been generous amounts of undercoating applied, and the ones in back were pretty rusty coming out, I had to pound on a real crispy 12mm wrench to get them started, even used a flare wrench a couple of times, before I could switch to any type of socket. I think the hardest bolts were from inside the engine bay along the fire wall as the seam sealer is pretty much in the way on all of them, and there's barely any access for a wrench. So getting the right angle on that stuff with a utility knife to cut it back to access the bolt heads was a pain, and then those bolts were all really tight to get to break free so again having an open end wrench that fits nice and crisp was key, then I was able to bust them free.

But once you think you have all the bolts out just start to wiggle it free.. and where it binds up will show you another bolt you missed, which is probably around the firewall somewhere. I ran a tap back into most of the threads in the truck so hoping for a smoother install, I also have 10-15 extra holes in each side on the inner fender which are no longer serving any purpose, some were drilled with self-tapping screws, others threaded, like I don't have any smog stuff anymore so there's some missing pieces for that. I am planning to just fill those up with random bolts and screws then I'll reapply the undercoating, would like to get it to where the tires don't fling water into the engine bay, would be my first truck ever with that feature.
 

nakman

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Wasn't too sure what to do about the grill emblem, other than I didn't want to take on another huge project. So my solution was to just sand it down, rattle can it black, then hand paint the letters at night while I shopped for parts. I found some appliance paint at Home Depot, which is basically like painting with white out... but a couple coats later it actually doesn't look so bad, and I figure once it's behind a bumper and splattered with dead bugs it'll blend right in.

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I did buy a new grill though.

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Then I used up the rest of my per diem time to put the light surrounds back on, added some 62-style mirrors, and put on the rear emblems. I had a guy walk buy last week and actually shout "nice jeep" from the sidewalk... so hopefully a couple shiny Land Cruiser emblems will do their job, and I anticipate a nice apology next time he walks by. Here are the driveway pics showing where we're at today:

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nakman

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Well it's been a busy couple of days here business-wise, so not a lot of action on the 60. But today I did make time to get the lights installed, for some reason one of the side marker lights in front isn't working and I can't remember if that worked before, I'll dig into that when I have more time. Looking more like a Cruiser though with some lights added.

Oh, and Rusty came by yesterday to make sure we're still a go for Friday's windshield install, and also told me to flip the truck around so the front gets in the sun a little more. The paint will be a week old tomorrow.. which is around the right amount of time to wait for window installs or else the primer they use will eat the fresh paint.

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I also received a package from Cruiser Outfitters with some new bits for the hood, so I installed new side pads and a new grommet and clip for the hood prop. This hood has never had it so good.
 
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