60Patrol

And.... this was NOT the color I wanted. I was looking for an olive drab / army green. This was "art deco green". It would look nice on a 1950's caddy or maybe a vintage bike, but not the truck that I had been sanding and prepping for the past year.
And after dropping $400 on just the color, I wasn't too keen to order more. But... after a bunch of hand-wringing, looking at the weather, and a couple antacid's, I finally sucked it up and drove over to PPG. $400 for another 1/2 gallon and this time seeing the swatch in person. I called and talked to Barry @ SPI again, and he suggested that since I had just painted, I could tack and repaint the next day, which I did:
And the difference between the two greens:

It still wasn't the exact color I was going for, but after all that, I've decided it's the best darn color in the world....

I ended up going with a matte clear coat. I didn't want the shiny look, and SPI offered a matte clear. This comes with a couple really big restrictions: Two clear coats only. Can't be waxed, polished/buffed. Any damage requires a full panel repaint, since it can't be blended. It's not as strong as regular clear coat either. I didn't realize this was the case until after I bought it, but decided the look was still worth it.

To my shock, I was able to lay on two color coats and two clear coats on without a single drip, bug, dust spot, or fisheyes. The ghetto paint booth worked better than I expected!

There was only one notable exception - my hose bumped the very front of my hood on my last clear coat. It looks like very mild road rash, and the process to fix it is too painful to bear at the moment - it'd require sanding everything back down to the color, blocking it out, and repainting color + clear.

I'm moving next door!!!

Outstanding work and write up. The pictures are great and your descriptions at every step are very entertaining to read.

Congratulations!

To anybody reading this, go back a couple of pages so you don't miss anything.

I'm moving next door!!!

Outstanding work and write up. The pictures are great and your descriptions at every step are very entertaining to read.

Thanks Esteban! That's big compliment!


The doors caused me a lot of heartache.

I screwed up when I painted the base on the doors. SPI sells their matte clear hardner in a standard 1 quart metal container with a blue label. By happenstance, PPG sells their reducer in the same standard 1 quart metal container, also with a blue label. And... you can see where this is going... Yup... sure enough... I mixed it up wrong and didn't realize until was done and went to clean the gun.

I ended up with this mess:
Where it didn't lift, it was "sticky" and didn't cure, even after 24 hours. I was trying to avoid having to sand back down and repaint, but eventually realized that it was unavoidable:
To my horror, when I painted again, this time with the correct reducer, it happened a second time:
Finally, I sanded down the whole door with 220 and then 400. Took hours to finely sand it down to not go too far but still get all the offending paint:
And... 3rd time's a charm:

I like the color! Thanks for the write up! It looks awesome!

John

Finally, reassembly day comes. For those keeping track, and I hope you're not it was 13 months from the first sanding picture to this reassembly. Good thing I wasn't in a hurry....

First the bib:
And then the quarter panels:
I had help and a lot of blue tape to help get things lined up without scratching.
I had purchased some welting gaskets that were supposed to fit my '67 for the front quarter panels and the bib, but they didn't fit, so I ended up making my own with some rubber from McMaster.

And finally the hood.

Before I reattached the hood, I used some universal under hood insulation in an attempt to absorb some engine noise.
No idea if it'll make a difference in noise while driving, but I figured now's the time to get it in.

And then I added on the hood. The hood required some pretty specific bolts (as did the dash) to be ordered in, so took a few extra days:
I never had the original hardware for the hood catch, so I'm likely going to go with some rubber hold downs on the sides.

Lastly, the side doors and rear doors were re-attached.

Next up: reassembly of the pedals. I should have cleaned things up before taking the picture....
Yes, It appears they should have been dipped and zinc coated. But they had been painted at this point, and I like the look anyway. I am having a slight problem with the gas pedal sticking, presumably because of the paint, but I'm hoping that'll work itself out. I added heat shrink around the spring behind the pedal to keep the paint from scratching up.

I still need to finish up the "cruise control" or whatever the throttle control is called. I'm likely going to repurpose a standard choke cable.

I ended up doing the same trick with the heat shrink on the side air vents - a 1/2" long piece where the handle meets the body.

I reassembled the dash. I had painted the steering wheel hub, steering column, and blinker assembly and shot clear on top of it. All the other parts were painted in the same process as the truck.

I dressed up the steering wheel itself with an $8 rubber wrap off ebay, and my daughter steel-wooled up the chrome parts on the horn.

I still plan on restoring the gauges myself, but I decided I need to hold off on that sub-project for now.
The dash screws (not shown in these pics0 I was able to get from Fastenal: Eight 1/4"-28 x 3/4" oval screws and two 1/4"-28 x 3/4" pan head screws (Edit: I later realized these should be 1/4"-28 x ~1/2" truss head...).

I'm very happy with how the dash came out - it looks almost presentable.

All the screws that needed to be black or body colored were painted separately:
I couldn't bring myself to spend the small fortune they want for plastic philips screwdrivers, so I sprayed the end of one of my normal ones with plasti-dip, and I was able to get them in without scratching. For socket head screws, I used a cotton ball stuffed inside a slightly larger socket.