'55 car rust repair painting appendix

[Daves55Sedan]

To finish this project, here is what needed to be painted with enamel overcoat:
Under the car; inner rockers and attaching floor support gussets and adjacent floor area between the rockers and car frame (both sides of car). Not just the patched areas, all of the entire length of the rockers. Also both rear wheelwells, inner quarter panels and the adjacent floor area between the car frame and inner quarters. (all of this would be metallic blue Dupont Chroma-base enamel).
Inside the car; entire car interior floor and trunk floor including backside of rear fenders in the trunk area. Also, all the doorjambs along with the rain gutter would be sprayed at one time as a unit. (all of this would be metallic blue Dupont Chroma-base enamel).
Car exterior (Ditzler aqua acrylic enamel); Rear portion of both outer rocker panels (under back doors), a portion of right side rear quarter and all of the left side rear quarter under the body side trim, and the car tailpan. Portions of the rear doorjambs at the two-tone separation line would also be painted simultaneously with the adjacent rear quarter panel.
Car exterior (metallic blue Dupont Chroma-base enamel); Front strip along the nose of the hood behind the grille trim strip and a portion of front fender adjacent to front of hood. A portion at top rear of both front fenders above Fairlane trim line. All along the bottom of the trunk lid and several other small areas on the trunk lid.
Overview:
This car came from the factory painted metallic Banner blue poly. It was a very dark blue and was hideous after having been beaten by the elements for decades. I did not like the color and selected the Dupont Chroma-base Atlanta metallic blue back in 1992 for the re-paint. It is a light shade of blue and gives the impression of a silver background with transparent blue overcoat. However, this paint is meant to be used with clearcoat over the enamel. The aqua is a early '90's Ford color somewhat resembling a cross between aquatone blue and seasprite green. This was mixed by a Ditzler distributor back then (now PPG). It is an acrylic enamel. At the time when I painted the car in 1992, I clearcoated the entire car (both colors).
For this project, (summer 2017) I had a couple of aerosol cans of the Dupont Chroma-Base metallic blue which I had planned to use solely for the doorjambs and rain-gutters. The aerosol cans have an activator feature at the bottom of the can which is manually activated immediately prior to using the paint. Once the activator is mixed in the rattle can the paint has a maximum useable life of 12 hours. Thus there would be no messing around once pandoras box was opened, all the spraying had to be done at once, which means every consideration for all the masking and final wiping off surfaces with laquer thinner had to be completely done prior to "popping the tab" at the bottom of the can. I also had a quart can of Chroma-base which would be used for the undercarriage and floor mostly and possibly some other small spots on the car exterior that needed paint patching. I planned to use my new Harbor Freight 6 oz detail gun and my cheap home-made air compressor and air tank assembly for spraying the undercarriage, car floor and trunk floor. I had two aerosol cans of aqua acrylic enamel for the outer rockers, rear quarters and tailpan which would all be done at one time. If I ran out of the spray cans, I also had an old quart of Ditzler the exact same color and a full gallon can of PPG Omni MR186 reducer, but it turned out that it was not needed. I also have two aerosol cans of Dupont clearcoat but do not plan to use them for any of the paint patches.
Dupont "Chroma-base" enamel is an old product and I am not aware if it is as popular as it was years ago. I used it because that is what was used when the car was repainted in 1992. It requires a half-and-half mixture of the base paint with the "activator". The activator comes in different ambient temperature ranges. I had cans of both low and medium temperature activator. I used the medium temp when the painting was being done (during the 90 plus degree temperatures we had this summer [2017] when the humidity was spectacularly LOW.) It was PERFECT weather for painting of this type. There was no breeze, so the garage door was wide open during the spraying. I did not clearcoat over the Chroma-base, since most of the re-paint areas are either under the car, or hidden under floorcoverings, however, this paint is meant to be used with a clearcoat overcoat. Little areas on the exterior of the car that were patch-painted do not appear to match the old paint due to the lack of shine where the new paint patches were not clearcoated.

[Daves55Sedan]

STAGE 1; under the car, I used a long roll of brown packaging paper to mask off the car frame from overspray so that paint would not get on the black frame. I used plastic grocery bags to wrap around the black body-to-frame support gussets and taped them to the paper. The areas under the car to be painted were all the inner rockers and portion of the car floor between the frame and rockers from the very front to rear of the car.
The exposed side of the inner rocker panels were primered using an aerosol can, overcoated with base enamel, then sealed at the seams with "Black-Jack" roofing cement (caulk) after the primer was dry. Then, the caulk was primered over again. Then it was sprayed over again with another coat of base enamel (to make it look like it did when it came from the factory). I used a cheap 6 oz detail spray gun from Harbor freight to paint the undercarriage. The car frame was raised up only about 12 inches higher than it's normal position and the little detail gun could be maneuvered in the space between the frame and inner rockers sufficiently to coat everything well. This could not have been done using my big HVLP siphon sprayer. After the enamel overcoat was dry, I removed all the paper from the car frame.
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STAGE 2; topside of the car floor and trunk floor. The interior of the car was gutted (seats and floorcoverings removed). The dashboard and firewall insulator were taped off as I intended to paint the entire car floor. I masked off the aqua portion of the door sills because they were later going to be re-painted with new aqua enamel. The trunk floor was also cleaned out, sanded down and patch primered where needed as there was some patching and paint scratches here. I had previously removed the trunk lid for some rust repair which allowed more ease of access to the work on the trunk floor. All areas of the floor that required sanding were buffed with steel wool, primered and buffed again. I vacuumed out the floors, then wiped everything down with a soft cloth dipped in lacquer thinner. The cheap Harbor Freight spray gun worked very well for spraying all the car floor and trunk floor simultaneously. The only problem with a small gun like this is that you have to refill often when painting large areas like this. I also did my best to get another good coat of paint on the backside of the rear fenders and all over the top side of the wheelwells while spraying the trunk. I was able to get a good coat on the backside of the taillight flanges and the area below that using the cheap detail gun. I could not have asked for better weather conditions to do the undercarriage and the topside of the floors as it was upper 80's-low 90's and the humidity was miraculously low which is very unusual here at this time of year. Additionally, the air tank did not seem to condensate much when the compressor first started. But I did keep checking the water separator/filter throughout the painting process and there was only a few drops of water to be drained out of the filter. I considered the excellent weather conditions and how well the paint turned out to be a blessing. Perhaps God's reward for my long and arduous hours of labor.
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[Daves55Sedan]

STAGE 3; Doorjambs & rain gutter. The doorjambs needed wet sanding in some areas, mostly buffing out with fine steel wool, spot primering with cheap aerosol spray and final buffing of primered areas with fine steel wool. The old paint on the outer lip of the rain gutters was chipped in many places and required a lot of sanding and primering. Painting of the inside of the car doorjambs and the bottom and outer lip of the rain gutter all the way around the car would be done using an aerosol can of Chroma-base with a built-in activator compartment. All of the prep work, masking and cleaning must be complete prior to using one of these aerosol cans because there wouldn't be enough time to transfer masking from one side of the car to the other within the activated paint life expectancy. I used newspapers, plastic drop-cloths and plastic trash-bags (cut up) to mask off areas where I didn't want paint to be sprayed. It took about 6 hours to cut materials and do all the taping for two doors on one side of the car. Basically, just the masking off for the doorjambs was a two day project. Most of the inside of the doorjambs needed to be done with the metallic blue, but some areas needed to be painted with the aqua enamel in keeping with the factory two-tone paint separation lines. Portions of both areas had rust damage that was repaired that prompted my decision to go ahead and re-finish the entire doorjambs (both colors where applicable). This meant that masking of the doorjambs was a two part process.
First, the aqua portion of the right & left rear doorjambs needed to be masked off from the two-tone separation line to a point far enough out to prevent overspray on outer surfaces of the car. In addition, The door openings of all four doors needed to be masked shut. For the first stage of the doorjamb masking, the blue masking tape was applied to the windlace then down along the paint separation line at the doorsill step plate. For the second stage of the masking off of the rear doorjambs, all the taping at the windlace was peeled off and moved out to the two-tone paint separation line in preparation for the aqua paint at the back of the doorjambs, sill plates and outer rocker panels. I had to mask off the top of the car beyond the rain gutter as the outer and underneath portions of the rain gutter would be painted with the metallic blue at the same time as the doorjambs. I set a strip of luan plywood in the rain gutter to block any overspray and rolled the car cover up behind it, then masked off the front of the top and the windshield. I threw a large plastic drop cloth over the hood to prevent overspray from getting on it. The front of the rain gutter would be painted first, then I moved to each side to do the doorjambs.
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Heres is the right rear doorjamb completely finish painted. Notice how I kept the factory two-tone separation beginning across from the body side trim on the back fender, then down along the curve around the wheelwell and back inward to underneath the door sill step plate. The paint finish in the doorjamb areas turned out very well but the rust repairs, masking and preparation work was very time consuming.
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I started by painting the rain gutter at the front of the car to make sure it got done if nothing else, as it would be almost impossible to paint it with the detail gun while the windshield is installed. If worst comes to worst and I run out of paint somewhere else, I can always get the air compressor and detail gun back out to paint the doorjambs if I run out of aerosol. It turned out that I had plenty of aerosol paint sufficient to spray the entirety of all four doorjambs along with the bottom & sides of the rain gutter. But I used the paint generously and the doorjambs looked brand new as I had taken much effort in cleaning, patch primering, sanding and buffing them with fine steel wool prior to spraying them. I was very pleased with this outcome. Here are some photos of the finished painted doorjambs and raingutters.
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[Daves55Sedan]

STAGE 4; Aqua painted exterior areas: All these areas were done with the use of aerosol cans. In preparation, I cut "skirts" from large cardboard cartons to fit between the undercarriage and the garage floor so that paint overspray would not get onto the car frame or anything else under the car. The rear tires had not yet been put back on the car so I made large cutouts of cardboard to fit into the wheelwells and added "tabs" on the front & back to fit into the areas where the front and rear of the wheelwell meet the outer fender. This was done to prevent aqua overspray from getting on the base metallic blue on the wheelwells or any other part of the undercarriage. All of the masking off of metallic blue areas all around the car adjacent to areas that needed new aqua were done at one time so that all of the aqua could be sprayed at one time to avoid having overspray on already dried areas that were freshly painted.
Photo of right side rear rocker panel patched area after finish painting
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Here is a photo of the right rear quarter after finish painting. I did not paint the entire fender below the trim line. I masked off above that contour line since the patched area was below it. I brought the masking over to the fenderwell outlet and down at an angle to the corner of the outlet. You can't see the masking line unless you get up real close. The painting began at the fenderwell corner and on around to the tailpan in a continuous spraying operation (in the hope that there would be no overspraying on already dried paint had I sprayed the two areas at different times. Besiides, all the masking and carboard skirts were all done so that I could do continous spraying to finish and not need to backtrack.
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Photo of tailpan after finish painting. At time photo was taken, I had already installed my new taillight housings and re-installed the backup lights and rear bumper. I tried to polish out the bumper and it looks okay in the photo, but if look real close, there is little spots in some areas where the chrome is worn away. The paint finish did not come out very good as the spray can valve was spraying unevenly, but it got a couple coats and if someone wanted to they could probably rub it out with rubbing compound and make it smooth. I probably won't ever do it though.
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Moving around to the new left rear quarter panel, I did finish sand the entire panel (new and old) up to the middle of the Fairlane trim line (with the stainless trim strip removed). Here, I taped off just above the center of the trim line where the two colors meet and masked off the top of the rear fender, then I pulled the car cover which was still on top of the car down over the trunk opening. All the masking was done at the back door jamb so that I could complete the spraying of the portion in the door jamb, top of the back door sill and the outer rocker panel under the back door all at one time. This is the only exterior panel that was painted the full height from below the trim line to the bottom of the new panel
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In the same manner as the right side, the left outer rocker was painted at the same time as the rear quarter panel and the portion of the rear doorjamb that needed to be painted aqua.
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STAGE 5; patch painting miscellaneous areas with metallic blue Chroma-base enamel. Some additional masking needed to be done as I had no intention of painting entire body panels. But I will agree that whole panels having flaws that were worked out should have been painted entirely and then clearcoated to match the old paint. I used the little Harbor Freight 6 oz detail gun to do all this work.
A) Trunk lid: The trunk lid had been previously removed from the car prior to painting the floors and had it sitting on a short stepladder. The trunk lid had some holes at the bottom where I had cut out and welded in new pieces of metal and there were random areas at the back and top of the trunk where the old paint cracked and rust was coming through that I had sanded down to bare metal and primered. I did not paint the entire top of the trunk lid. I masked off everything except for the primered spots and painted them with the detail gun. The next day, I moved the trunk lid outside to let the sun bake the enamel down so I could rub out around where the masking was done. I did successfully rub down the masking lines but it still looks awful, probably because I did not clearcoat over the new paint to match the rest of it.
Trunkprim1.JPG pnt-trunklid.JPG

[Daves55Sedan]

B) Top rear of front fenders above Fairlane trim line. These areas of both front fenders had chipped and worn away paint which I had sanded, primered and buffed for new overcoat. I masked off the front fenders and hood, mostly with old used plastic dropcloths. I stuffed newspaper between the front doors and fenders then closed the door to hold the paper, then I pulled a dropcloth over the hood down past the rear corners and closed the hood. I shoved pieces of thin cardboard between the front doors and the top of the cowl so that the back 12 inches of the top rear corner of the front fenders above the Fairlane trim was exposed for painting. After the paint had dried, I buffed out the masking lines to blend the new paint into the old. They turned out really well other than they don't shine like the old clearcoated areas.
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C) Front of hood below the contour line: Rust was bubbling up under the hood nose trim piece, so I removed the trim piece and ground off all the damaged paint. There were some small rustholes that were patched and primered. I had a large dropcloth covering the entire engine and down across the front air deflector and out under the bottom of the hood to the floor (covering the grille, bumper, etc). The plastic dropcloth I used on top of the hood when painting the top of the front fenders was still in place, but too short to extend down to the top of the front contour line. So, I opened the hood and pulled the drop cloth forward and taped it above the contour line. Then closed the hood again with the plastic dropcloth underneath it also still in place. After the new paint dried, I rubbed out the masking line.
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D) Door post patches: In a very few small places where only magnets were used to hold the new metal patch in place for welding, there was a little gap in small spots with nothing behind it. For these areas, I filled the gaps with a batch of JB-Weld epoxy paste which is non-pourous and would not be subject to absorbing moisture. Below is an example where a portion of the passenger side back door had a big rusthole at the back of the doorpost and under the belt moulding where there was no way to hold the new metal in the hole cutout from behind, so I used a magnet and C-clamp to hold it for welding.
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Here on the passenger front door right below the dip in the Fairlane body side trim there was a rusthole that had developed because the sprayed coating on the inside of the door skin became dislodged and formed a pocket for water to sit in. It turned into a 1/2 inch diameter hole, so I cut a scrap piece of metal to fit perfectly flush in the hole and held it on with a magnet on the outside, tack welded it on in two places, removed the magnet and finished welding it all the way around. This patch did not require any type of filler after the weld was ground down flush with the surface of the door skin. The photo below shows the spot after it had been ground down flush and primered over with grey primer.
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Afterward, I removed to interior door upholstery panel and scraped away the corrupted factory sound deadener on the backside of the doorskin, wire-brushed the rusty areas, sprayed Dupli-Color "Rust-Fix" on them. Then I primered them with an aerosol can, brush painted them with "Chroma-Base" enamel. Then I plastered some "Black-Jack" roofing cement over the area with a putty knife to help prevent any further eroding of the old sound deadener.
Yet another rusthole (which I had previously patched in 1992) located at the front door rear post near the belt moulding rusted through again and the hole ended up being a rectangular shape about 3/8 inch wide and 1-1/2 inches high. Again, I cut a new piece of metal to fit flush and held it in place with two magnets for welding. After the new metal patch was welded in place, I sprayed on grey primer, then smoothed over it with a little bit of fiberglass epoxy resin, held in place until dry with blue masking tape. After finish sanding and painting it ended up looking okay.
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I also removed this door upholstery panel and window garnish moulding to expose the backside of the skin at the doorpost. I spayed it with "Rust-Fix", then primer. I was able to get a good coat of enamel over the repaired area using a modelling brush. Hopefully this will protect it from rusting out again.
I am sure that I have saved thousands of dollars by doing all this body work and painting myself and, more importantly, I believe that these patches should stand the test of time since I sealed everything very well in one way or another as appropriate for the location of the patch in question. I can guarantee that the careful attention I put into rust prevention would not have been done by your average professional body repair shop. Thus if I had spent LOTS of money and handed it over to a body shop to do, I would be revisiting these repair locations in a year or two. I need this contraption to last me seven or eight more years (without becoming a total eyesore). After that, I will be dead and won't care if it rusts into oblivion.
I spent less than $200.00 for this entire project (metal, primer, caulk and paint), but I did already have some materials stored up that were used in the project such as the partial 4ft x 8ft sheet of 18gage metal, the Ditzler primer and enamel paint and some Chroma-base paint & activator. But I am happy all that old materials is used up and no longer taking up valuable space. The project began in April and was completed in October, but the reworking of the rain gutter caulk and top rusthole repair was done within that time period (posted separately from the ten part series), and the modifications to the door hinges of both right and left front doors, re-installation and adjustment of both doors was also done within that time period (posted separately from the ten part series). I did not attack the project like a bull in a china shop, I worked at my own pace. It took careful planning and every scrap of ingenuity and determination to put this thing back in structurally acceptable condition again. It is only by the grace of God that I was given those talents at birth, so praise be to God for that. THE END

[Hot Rod Reverend]

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Strong as ox - that is what the metal work looks like to me! Good job, that should last it another life time from your detail work. I would imagine that your repairs would last a whole lot more than 7/8 years.

$200 in materials is a whole lot better than I will ever do. I was amazed at how much money I had been putting into 3M masking tape and sandpaper!

You ought to put these things down in print, or at least archive the work somewhere other than just on the Fordbarn. The next owner would appreciate the effort, and of course all of us here on the barn like looking at your work - thanks again.

[Daves55Sedan]

Originally Posted by Hot Rod Reverend

I was amazed at how much money I had been putting into 3M masking tape and sandpaper!

Funny you mentioned that. I had a roll of the blue masking tape and a very old roll of the sticky yellow tape. Probably 80 percent of the blue tape that I peeled off the roll was re-used two or three times during the process and I ended up peeling the tape off the plastic drop cloths after all the painting was done and taped that used tape back onto the roll. It's still as good as new. I used very little of the yellow, but what was used could not be re-used again. I did buy one 5-pack of each 320 and 400 grit sandpaper and it is ALL re-useable for my many woodwork/re-finishing projects, so I do not claim it as a loss.

Originally Posted by Hot Rod Reverend

You ought to put these things down in print, or at least archive the work somewhere other than just on the Fordbarn. The next owner would appreciate the effort, and of course all of us here on the barn like looking at your work - thanks again.

All of the ten part series and appendix were typed on Microsoft word while the work was ongoing and the file is backed up on a thumb-drive. The file is complete with picture flags at the locations where the photos were inserted that matches the actual digital photo name. When I posted on Fordbarn, I just copy-pasted the text from the file into the forum and then inserted the photos at the "flags" matching that photo name.

The real purpose for creating the file is so that I could make a record of the work each day as it was still in my memory and save it in the file so that I could later post it in case Fordbarners wanted to read it. I have done many other smaller posts in Fordbarn this exact same way and after the text was copied, I just deleted that file out of my computer.
This car will likely still be here when I'm dead and I don't care if it becomes somebody else's headache or if a big earthquake opens up the ground and swallows it up after I'm dead. According to the Scriptures, the dead are "asleep" and they know nothing, see nothing, feel nothing until the trumpet sounds at the Second coming, then they rise from the grave to meet Jesus in the heavens (unless they had been judged wicked). They are not risen until after a thousand years and they are shown the evil of their deeds and then they burn up and perish. If I am judged righteous, I will get to learn more of God's plans that we don't know on earth, so I won't be interested in what happened to the old car. If I am judged wicked, I will soon be devoured by fire and doubt I will be worried to much what happened to the old car. Haha.
Many thanks for your kind words, always!