Project 'Overtime': Pro-Touring 68 Acadian (Nova) with L92 swap

[scherp69]

Well it's been a while since I posted an update. Unfortunately we've been having some family issues (15 year old step daughter!!! need I say more) so haven't had a whole lot of time in the shop.

As for the car, I've sold all the engine parts that I had so now the crate motor is more likely. I see GM is coming out with a LSX 454 soon. That's got me thinking!!!

I sent the arms for my air bar set up to Frank at Prodigy Customs/gpsuperstore.com to have them converted to adjustable ones. Hopefully will have them soon and will post pics. I also ordered a rear sway bar set up. I thought I better get it ordered as I need to drill holes through the rear brace on the M9 housing for the brackets. Once that is done, I can get the housing powder coated.

I got to spend some time in the shop today. I was able to get both gaps between the fender, trunk drop off and inner wells done. I also decided to used Metal to Metal filler and do more of the floor. I don't want a perfect car, I just don't want it that obvious that the floors have been replaced. Tomorrow I hope to sandblast the rest of the floor and finish up some grinding and clean up work. Maybe next week I'll be able to start putting on a coat of POR15. It will be so nice when I can put an update on that isn't about body work.

Here's some pics:

Piece of sheet metal used to fill in gap:



Passenger side. I decided to weld it to the deep tub so it all blends together.



Driver's side



Cleaning up the front floors and trans tunnel.

[rlplive]

Incredible work, I will be watching this one.

[scherp69]

I was playing around the other day and thought I'd take some pics of the car upside down. I hope to never see the car like this again

[scherp69]

It feels like it took me forever to get to this point, but I actually started undercoating the car. I decided to go with two coats of POR15 first to stop any rust. I was going to use POR15's new bed liner until I saw the price. It's $255 US or if I get it in Canada it will cost me $350. I was hoping to use it to save a step, but I think I'll have to do that step anyways. With the POR product on top of POR15, you don't have to use a primer. Now I'll likely end up having to use their primer, then put another brand of bed liner to finish the undercoating. For those that wonder why I chose to use POR15, I wanted to use something that will stop any rust from coming back. The other nice thing is since I replaced the floor pans, POR15 helps hide my ugly welds as it's quite thick.

My next step is to get the bed liner done. Once that's done, I found a powder coating place in Kelowna that will do my subframe for $175. They will sandblast, prime and then powder coat. He'll do the rear end housing for about $75. I'm just waiting for a rear sway bar to be shipped to me and once I get that I can drill the holes in the back brace and get the brackets mounted, then off to powder coating.

Enough of that and onto the pictures.

I had to pull the car out of the shop to rinse of the POR degreaser and oxidizer.



After it was cleaned with degreaser





Finally some progress!! This is after 2 coats of POR15. The white dots all over are because the lens on my camera was dirty.

[scherp69]

Here's the tranny tunnel after using metal to metal to clean it up. Can't even tell there's new floor pans. It's not that grey in color. I tried not using the flash to get better detail and that's how it turned out.

[scherp69]

I finally got around to getting the POR15 tie coat primer on today. They recommend it when you are putting a non POR product on top of the POR15. The annoying thing is, the stuff cures with heat and not moisture so I had to get my shop nice and toasty. Those that are in cold climates will appreciate what I'm talking about. I had to get my shop to a minimum 12 degrees celcius. With the help of two 240v construction heaters and two halogen work lights, it got quite warm in there. I even put a cheap thermometer in the shop to make sure. Next week I hope to get the undercoating on. I'm going to use U-Pol's Raptor bed liner. Once that's done, I hope to get the subframe done and mounted to the car so I can actually start putting parts on.

Construction heater #1



Construction heater #2



After a couple hours, it was at 18 degrees celcius, by the time I was done it had gone up to about 24. My wife is going to be so mad when we get the hydro bill :devil:



I had to sand the entire underside before applying the primer



With the POR tie coat primer on it. The nice thing about the POR products is they can be applied with a brush.

[Speedjunkie]

Looks real good, I painted my front clip on my camaro with rust Bullet, basically same as POR 15. Came out pretty nice. hard as nails.

[scherp69]

I finished up the undercoating today. I ended up using Hippo bed liner instead of Rhino. It's a two part urethane caoting so it should be pretty good. I know some guys will say to stay away from do it yourself liners, but the paint guy at the shop I bought it from (which I go to a lot) swore by it. He said their store alone sold over 120 kits last year and he didn't have a single complaint about it. The only time he's ever seen an issue with the stuff is when the surface area wasn't prepped properly. The other nice thing was that it usually sells for about $105 a case and you need 2 cases to finish the whole underside. They were having a trade show and I ended up getting them for about 1/2 price. Now hopefully I had it prepped right.

I was going to roll the liner on, but I figured for $25 bucks for a gun, I couldn't go wrong in spraying it. So far I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

Next week I'm going to start prepping the subframe so I can get it painted and bolt it back on (finally and hopefully for the last time). I was going to use the Eastwood ceramic paint, then I decided I was going to have it powder coated. Well what a shock, I've changed my mind again. When I went to put the POR15 on the underside of the car, I opened the can I had and found it was hard as a rock so I ended up buying another gallon of it. I barely used 1/2 the gallon to put 2 coats on the underside so I have over 1/2 gallon left. I liked the way the stock subframe turned out with the POR15 so I'm going to do the new subframe the same way. I'll put 2 coats of POR15 and then a coat of the POR chassis coat to help with UV rays.

Car masked off



Liner is on





Close up of the texture

[waynieZ]

It looks like it came out nice. You should never have a problem under there.
Wayne

[fesler]

Project is making some nice progress, not sure how you are working in that temp but nice work. Keep the pictures coming