1931 Ford Restoration Diary

I sprayed on the black trim coat, which took more paint than I expected.  It was chilly, so I left the doors in the sun for a day to dry well.  Then I mounted them back on the car, and removed the other set to start working on them.

The two doors I am working on needed one final coat of primer-surfacer. Once I took care of that, I was able to wet-sand them. That took a while, because of all the moldings, nooks and crannies, etc. Now that the doors were ready to paint, I did some improvements to the plastic painting tent in my garage. I added a back wall and a ventilation fan with a filter. Then a couple of days ago I sprayed the doors with a coat of epoxy primer to serve as a sealer. The following day I painted the edges with a maroon semi-gloss paint mix. Today, after the edges had dried, I masked them off and sprayed the outer surfaces with gloss maroon paint. Tomorrow, when that is dry, I will do more masking and spray the moldings and window frame with gloss black paint.

Once these doors are done, I will repeat the exact same process with the two passenger-side doors.

I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks (including vacation), so a huge amount of progress. But it got warm quicker than I expected, so it’s time to get back to painting.

I made a form to bend the roof molding and I bent it to the correct shape.  It came out OK, just a few wrinkles on the inner edge that nobody will ever see.  Just before the roof area gets its final coat of paint, I will nail it in place.

In the last week or so I block-sanded two doors, sprayed on another coat of primer-surfacer, and blocked them again. They will need one more coat of primer before getting their final wet-sanding.

In a few days the two doors should be ready for the finish painting. The masking and finish painting will be sort of complicated, because there will be three colors: Semi-gloss maroon for the edges, gloss maroon for the main part of the door and the window reveal, and gloss black for the upper part.

I’ve still been pretty busy, with not much free time. I was able to do another application of epoxy to the steering wheel. I’ve gotten better at it, and probably after one or two more applications I’ll be done.

The next thing I plan to do is bending the moldings that go around the edge of the fabric roof insert.  The weather is getting warmer, so after that, I can probably resume getting the body and doors ready for painting.

We had nice weather last weekend, so I actually took the car out on the road, driving around a nearby residential cul-de-sac. It ran (and stopped) OK, but the lack of a windshield make it harder to go faster than about 30 MPH.

Lots of work and travel the last 2-3 weeks. About all I did was some more work on filling the cracks in the steering wheel. It’s a rather tedious and messy job, since the epoxy paste is so sticky. It also takes a long time to dry, over 24 hours, which makes the job even slower.

I got the front seat all finished. It looks quite nice. I installed it so I could have the pleasure of sitting in the car and actually driving up and down the driveway. When the weather gets warmer and I am ready to resume painting, I’ll have to remove it again.

I also started work on the back seat. I got the backrest out of the attic, removed the crumbling, mouldering original fabric (the only remaining original material on any of the seats), separated the frame and springs, and cleaned them off. The wooden frame is in perfect shape, and can be re-used as-is. However, the springs got rather rusted on one corner, and I will have to reinforce one section of particularly rusty wire.

I was given a 50’s GM fuel filter, the kind with a little glass bowl to hold the filter element. I hooked it up to gas tank fuel valve, and made a proper metal fuel line to go to the carb. It is not “correct”, but it does have a period look, and looks much nicer than the rubber hose and modern plastic filter I had been using.

The new spring for the front seat arrived, and I have been upholstering the seat. There’s a lot of trial-and-error involved. I have removed and re-tacked several places 3 or 4 times. If I ever do another upholstery job on a seat like this, I’ll be able to do it in a quarter of the time.

I talked to the spring makers, and they agreed to custom-make a spring based on my original if I sent it to them.  So I boxed it up and sent it, along with the incorrect new one that I had received.

I brazed one spot on the backrest spring where a sheet metal strip had broken, cleaned the spring up, and spray-painted it black.  The weather has been especially freezing, so the paint (which was supposed to dry in 12 minutes) took all day to dry.

I mixed up a second batch of epoxy and continued filling in cracks in the steering wheel.  It’s rather tedious and messy work, and there are a lot of cracks to fill.  It will probably take several more sessions to finish the job. After that I will need to sand it all smooth and touch up any places I missed.

Exactly a week after I ordered the interior kit, the UPS guy dropped off two giant boxes, with the kit inside. They managed to make it in about three working days!  I spent some time going through all the pieces to make sure everything was in order.  It is well made, and the mohair fabric is very nice.  I am still not sure what to do about the front seat spring.  Next week I will talk to the vendor to see how much it might cost to have one custom-made based on my original spring.

I was never really satisfied with the color of the special high-temperature paint that I had used a couple of years ago to paint the exhaust manifold. It was supposed to to look like unpainted cast iron, but it had more of a flat tan color. Last fall at a swap meed I bought a can of a different brand of exhaust paint, which seemed to have a more suitable color. Last weekend I took off the exhaust manifold, bead-blasted off the old paint, and re-painted it. The new paint was a lot better, looking almost exactly like the raw iron.

I also used my Dremel tool to slightly open up the cracks in the steering wheel, so that the epoxy putty would bond better.  I mixed up a bit of the epoxy and filled a few of the cracks.  Once the epoxy dries I will see now good it looks.  The putty was rather messy and sticky, and I’ll have to do some some sanding after all the cracks are filled.

I put the seat cushion frame together, and did some final work on it with the router, rounding the edges, etc. It looks fabulous. I also got a reproduction seat base spring. It is well-made, but it is a bit lower and shallower than the original, and I am not 100% sure if it will work well and if the seat upholstery will fit properly over it. But the only practical alternative is to have a reproduction spring custom-made, which would surely be expensive.

I ordered the upholstery kit in green mohair, just like the original (and frightfully expensive). It should arrive in 3 weeks or so, and then I will see how everything goes together.

While I am waiting for the upholstery, I might start trying to repair the cracks in the steering wheel with epoxy putty. But with the Christmas season upon us, I won’t be spending a lot of time on the car…