1931 Ford Restoration Diary

I finished the paint-a-thon. I did all the masking for the upper body and window reveals, and sprayed them in gloss black. The spraying was tricky, because there were a lot of different areas of the car to be painted, and I had to keep dragging the ladder around, taking care not to bump into the wet paint.
After the paint dried a few hours I removed all the masking tape and paper, two big garbage bags full. The paint job looks quite handsome. In a day or two, after it has fully dried, I will hang the doors.

I painted the door jambs in semi-gloss maroon, and the next day I masked and painted the lower body and the window reveals in gloss maroon. No disasters, except that I used a bit more paint than I expected, and I may not have quite enough maroon paint left for the hood. The stuff is insanely expensive, so I would hate to have to order another quart. Tomorrow I will do more masking, and hopefully paint the upper body in gloss black.

I sprayed epoxy primer on the top moldings, and after it dried, I installed them. Nailing them in place was tricky, because one mis-aimed blow of the hammer could have damaged one of the moldings, and it could not be removed without possibly damaging the surrounding sheet metal or fabric roof top material.  (And of course I would have had to order a new molding strip, drill all the holes in it, and paint it, losing a week or two of time…)
Once the moldings were installed, I carefully cleaned off the entire car body. This was sort of tedious because I had used a butyl rubber caulk (with the consistency of fresh bubble gum) for the roof moldings, and every bit that had oozed out from under the moldings had to be removed.
Once that was done, I masked all the parts of the car that were not getting painted. This had to be carefully done to keep any overspray from getting on the dashboard, engine compartment, front seat, etc.
After the car was masked, I sprayed the entire exterior with a sealer coat of epoxy primer, to cover up the light gray filler-surfacer. Finally, after the epoxy had dried a couple of hours, I painted the rear wheel wells in semi-gloss black.
Three more colors will have to be applied. After each color is sprayed, it will have to dry overnight and get masked before the next color can be sprayed. Hopefully this will all get done during the next week.

I sanded the wheel wells and a couple of other places that still needed it. The trickiest place was inside the rain gutters. To reach inside them, I took a sanding sponge and cut it into a L-shape that would fit inside.
The next step is to start cleaning everything, including the garage floor. Unfortunately we are having another heat wave, which makes it hard to work in the garage except in the morning.

I got the sanding almost done. All the exterior areas are finished, and all that remains is the rear wheel wells and part of the door jambs.
I also finished drilling all the nail holes through the roof molding strips, sanded them smooth, and applied the chromate metal treatment to them. Once I spray them with primer they will be ready to install.

I finished masking the body, and sprayed a coat of epoxy primer on several spots where I had sanded all the way through the primer-surfacer (or even to the metal).  As soon as that had dried,  I sprayed a couple of coats of primer-surfacer everywhere.

Then I started wet-sanding the entire body. Wet-sanding is not at all unpleasant. It does not involve nasty chemicals, foul odors, loud noises, heavy lifting, special clothing, dust, etc. It’s just somewhat boring, and you tend to slowly sand the skin off of your fingertips. You also have to be careful not to overdo it and sand all the way through the primer. I am about halfway finished. Hopefully I will be done in the 3 or 4 days.

Once the wet-sanding is finished, I need to decide how to deal with the aluminum molding strips that go around the edge of the roof fabric.  I can install them before painting the body, or paint them separately and install them afterwards.  There are advantages and disadvantages to either approach.  In any case, I first need to finish preparing the moldings: cutting each piece to the correct length, drilling nail holes, sanding them, and priming them.  I have ordered some special zinc chromate aluminum primer, and some butyl rubber caulk that was recommended for sealing the molding.

I’m just about finished sanding the coat of filler-surfacer that I had put on the body last fall. I touched up a few more tiny dings and scratches that had evaded detection until now.
In a couple of days I should be able to start masking the body. That will be complicated, since I have to keep paint away from the engine, interior, underside, drivetrain, wheels, etc. Once it is all masked I will spray on one last coat of filler-surfacer and wet-sand everything. Then it will be ready for the finish coats.

The body will take longer than I expected to get ready for painting. I had given it a first coat of primer last fall, and over last weekend I block-sanded most of the open areas. That revealed a bunch of high and low spots that will need an additional coat of primer. I also discovered a couple of small dents that I hadn’t noticed in three years of working on the body, which needed a bit of feather-fill to fix them up. Also, there are lots and lots of moldings and other oddly-shaped areas that will need careful, tedious sanding. Ironically, the areas that I had done a bunch of metalworking on (like part of the roof) were OK. It was the areas that I had assumed were fine which had subtle irregularities.

Hopefully by the end of the month I will have all the sanding done, and the body ready to paint.

I also repaired a broken mounting stud on the stainless steel trim strip that goes just behind the hood.

Over the last week I finished painting the passenger-side doors.  It went more quickly and easily than the first two.

Now I need to have a look at the rest of the body and figure out what to do next.  It got its first coat of primer-surfacer last September, and I did a little bit of sanding last fall.  It will need a lot more sanding, and probably some more primer in some places.  Hopefully I can finish all of that by the end of June.

During the last week or two, I started working on the two passenger-side doors.  There were a couple of low spots on them, a bit too low to be taken care of by the primer-surfacer, so I put a thin layer of feather-fill on those areas.  Then I applied a thick coat of primer-surfacer, and started block-sanding the main flat areas of the doors.  I cut all the way through the primer-surfacer in a few places, so I put one one more coat.  After that, I was able to finish the block-sanding.  I still need to wet-sand all the moldings and reveals on the upper portion of the doors.  After that, I need to do the same exact things I did to the first two doors: spray a sealer coat of epoxy primer, paint the edges with semi-gloss maroon, paint the outer surfaces with maroon, apply a bunch of masking tape, and paint the trim areas with black.