The 14 Car Performance Therapy Project Rushforths, Baers, Yokohamas, and more

[NOT A TA]

Sometimes a little mistake can add a lot of work and additional scope creep. Grrrr

A while back, I'd taken part of the dash out while removing the HVAC system and smoothing the firewall. While doing so I used some masking tape to protect the dash from scratches while removing the gauge panel fascia. I've done this several times in the past 20+ years since I originally dyed the dash. By sticking the tape to clothing several times before applying it the stickiness is reduced and the tape can be carefully removed within a few days without removing the vinyl dye. Well, I didn't remove the tape right away this time and am paying the price.



Stripping and redying the dash in the car with the cage in the way would make it very difficult so I figured , remove the dash right? I'd asked the cage builder at the fabrication shop to leave enough room to get the dash out so that if/when a new dash was needed and reproductions were available I could replace the original. Good plan but the dash wouldn't come out without hacking away part of the dash structure and cutting back the metal where the upper dash mounts.

Now although I got the dash out I had to remove the vent mounting area on the left side for clearance. That requires me to make a new gauge panel as well as doing the repairs necessary and strip/dye the dash before reinstalling it.



Then scope creep took over once again. I figured since I've gone that far and no longer have to protect the dash I'd might as well remove the rear carpet, do the floor, and shoot the cage with a gun. I had a deadline to make a track day when I was reassembling the car after the cage install several years ago and didn't have time to strip and paint the floors. Also with the windshield, rear window, headliner, dash, door panels, etc. in the car I couldn't mask everything well enough and have access to shoot the cage so I painted it with a brush. So nows the time and I'm stripping the floor as well as sanding the cage. The only things left in the car are the headliner, shifter, brake pedal, and wires. Had I known I'd get this deep I would have taken everything out from the start and saved a lot of time and materials trying to keep things masked off.

By the way, it really sucks trying to work in a caged car. My car evolved over time rather than being a ground up build originally. If you're gonna get a cage, strip and paint the interior first.

[NOT A TA]

Floor stripped to bare metal and painted with Chassis Saver.

[NOT A TA]

My dash dye story was about a small mistake that cost me big. This one will hopefully prevent some of you from making a mistake I see too often.

While prepping cars for paint people have a tendency to concentrate their efforts on the exterior. Spending hours on panel alignment to get the best gaps, sculpting perfect body lines, and spending many hours block sanding to make the car straight. Meanwhile the door, hood, and trunk openings get little or no attention other than maybe a quick once over before paint. I've seen lots of cars with beautiful exterior paint and when opening a door, trunk, or hood there's bondo globs, grinder marks, wire wheel gouges, 80 grit sand scratches, rust pits, and dents that have been painted body color. I think of the openings as a transition zone which shouldn't attract attention between the gorgeous exterior and an inviting interior, engine compartment, or trunk.

My tip is to treat the areas you see when opening things as well as you would the exterior. Yes, I know it's a lot of tedious work and it doesn't look like you accomplish much for the time spent but it will greatly improve the overall quality of the paint job.The edges of the hood and front fenders should be treated like the exterior even if your engine compartment looks like crap now. You may do an engine compartment makeover later and wish you'd spent more time on the prep work there.

To be sure you're doing the areas that are seen, put the associated pieces in position so you can see the areas that will show when the car is painted. Then treat those areas to the same care you would an exterior panel.

You can see in the pics below how much of the trunk jamb needs to be done nicely. Yes it is a real pain to smooth and sand the hinge pocket area with the welded in bracket in place, but do it. Note the vertical area between the filler panel and trunk lip that goes all the way across between the hinge areas. It gets missed a lot on 2nd gens because people don't realize it's seen. I did the whole area under the filler panel pretty nice but you won't see most of it so if patience isn't your thing concentrate on the areas that are seen. Seam sealer will be used around the bracket where it's welded to the body. I'm getting all the jamb areas in final primer which will be sanded again before sealer and paint.







For the door jambs get your interior door panel and set it in place for the visual. There's a raised rib between the inner panel and door gasket that shows body color when everythings assembled so be sure to work past that rib to about where the interior panel clips pop in. The hinge end of the door isn't as critical just keep in mind what you can see when the door's open.

[NOT A TA]

Most 2nd gen F bodies need rear window channel repairs at some point because of a lousy drainage design. I never knew until taking the car apart this time but mine was repaired by the previous owner with fiberglass in the 70's. I didn't remove the rear window the first time I painted my car 25 years ago but with it out this time I noticed the fiberglass matting and started digging with wire wheels and grinder discs exposing some areas that had rusted through and thin metal with pitting in surrounding sections.Luckily the rusted parts had not extended beyond the part covered by the trim before the previous owner had glassed it over preserving it.

Welding in new metal would require welding over the headliner and risking warping the exterior sheet metal so I chose to add new metal by bonding it in with panel bond. I DO NOT recommend this type of repair if the rust extends to the exterior surface because there is a high probability of ghosting and other surface anomalies occurring after painting the car. This happens because of the different expansion/contraction rates of single thickness sheet metal vs. double thickness sheet metal, and the panel bond itself. If the rust extended to the exterior I would have made a new channel and butt welded it in place.

For this repair I wire wheeled the window channel to remove all rust and cut out the thin rusted sections of the channel with a cut off wheel. Removed paint on the backside with sandpaper rolls on a tapered mandrel attached to a long reach die grinder to get up in the little channel inside the quarter. Welded trim studs in sheet metal measured to line up in the centers of the holes I'd made, then cut and ground the patch panels to fit. Dimpled the panels where the trim rivets that will be used for trim clips are being retained after panel install (extras are used to hold patch panels while drying). Bend twist panels to fit tight to the back of the original window channel. Finger smear panel bond on backside of channel and locate panel into position. Pull the panel tight using the trim rivets to pull on. Used old bondo spreaders with a slot cut and additional spreaders used as a wedge to keep panels tight while drying. Used carbide grinding tip on die grinder to remove unneeded trim rivets. Ground off excess panel bond and then added a layer of panel bond over the repaired section including all pitted areas. Ground down panel bond with 36 grit wheel and hand sanded to make sure the panel bond was slightly lower than the metal. Finger smear bondo over the whole section. Sanded bondo smooth and epoxy primed, ready for high build primer and finish sanding. Backside will be brush painted with epoxy primer to cover any bare metal of the sanded metal and patches.

[NOT A TA]

I like the look of gutted race car interiors with their spartan "all business" look. I also like the look of well done complete interiors. My car's kind of in between with carpeting, headliner, and a stock looking dash while also having a full cage, Kirkeys, fire systems, etc. I Removed the heating system leaving the defroster vents wide open and you can see the dash wiring, heat shield, etc. through the openings and also through the speaker grill since there's no speaker there. So I decided to cut out the raised area around the defroster openings and smooth the dash top with a solid panel that will be bonded to the original metal between the dash pad and the windshield. When completed and painted it should look stock but without openings.











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[NOT A TA]

After making the opening for the VIN I roughed up both surfaces to be bonded with 36 grit and modified a bondo spreader to spread the panel bond evenly in cornrows like you would installing bathroom tile .



I used a few clamps to press the pieces together and hold them for 24 hours. The top of the dash being covered is concave and there's compound curves on the ends so I formed the panel as well as I could before bonding and clamped it well.



Filed off the extra 1/16" overhang I'd left around the edges of the aluminum panel and cleaned out the original spot welds on the angled part. Then scuffed the whole area with 180 on a palm sander and primed. Followed that with a skim coat of filler and blocked it out with 180. Will prime and block again before final paint.

[NOT A TA]

2nd gen F body doors are long and heavy. Worn out hinge bushings and pins are common now that they're 35-45 years old. Mine were in good condition still because it was a low mileage car (42,000) when I got it and painted it the first time. Even now at 45 YO only the drivers side hinges showed slight wear when lifting up on the rear of the door. However I figured now's the time to replace them so there's no need to do it once painted and take a risk of scratching/chipping something. The original lower hinge bushings are plastic (really GM?) so no telling when they might split and fall out. Might be the day after paint. I'm sure there's a ton of How To's on hinge repair around the web so I'll skip the instructional rhetoric and just show a couple pics some might gain tips from.









With the hinges replaced it was time to get the doors on and aligned. I was then reminded of the door gap anomaly on the drivers side of almost every early 2nd gen Firebird I've seen. It appears that the door skin wasn't shaped quite right to the fender curve above the door handle part. Welding a piece of rod to the edge of the door and filing/smoothing to create the curve didn't seem like a good use of time to me so I used a little filler in the rear quarter door jamb to even the gap a bit and then did some filing, sanding, priming, etc. to get the gaps on both doors good enough for me on this car. Are they perfect? No, but they're acceptable to me and probably better overall than when the car was new. After final priming/blocking they will be a little better than you see in the pics below.

Yes, I know the horizontal body line is off in the pics below. Previous blocking was done with the door just roughly in place with the old hinge bushings. It'll be straight after some more blocking and final priming/blocking.





Since this was an AC car and I've removed the HVAC the vacuum operated fresh air air duct on the passengers kick panel is no longer functional. I will be blocking off the upper cowl where air is supplied to increase downforce so there won't be anything to feed the duct. I'm also trying to recover the 200 lbs. I added with the roll cage so every little bit helps. The vent duct housing/door/vacuum canister assembly probably weighs a couple lbs. more than the aluminum panels I made to seal off the duct opening and it will get seam sealed when installed so I won't get any wind whistles etc. Drivers side duct opening was sealed by the factory with seam sealer to the plastic kick panel and is getting sealed with an aluminum panel also to increase fire protection. I know the aluminum isn't as much of a fire block as steel but risk of fire entering there is low and so I just figured the aluminum would be better than plastic.

[NOT A TA]

The early 2nd gen Trans Ams had cool looking front air dam fender flares from the factory. Most got smashed eventually on tall curbs, steep driveways and other road hazards so they usually need some repair and both of my front wheel flares were cracked in the usual locations. They were cracked when I got them 20+ years ago and I used some type of epoxy to "fix" them as well as I could with what was available to me at the time. They lasted probably 10 or so years before the cracks reappeared. Now we have other methods available so here's my 21st century repair.

Sanded the flares down to plastic. Hot stapled the cracked areas. Clipped staples off and ground down the stubs below finish level. Applied adhesion promoter and then 3M hard plastic repair material and let cure 24 hours. Sand plastic repair material and prime, fill nicks, then sand/prime till ready for sealer.

[NOT A TA]

Once most of the wheel flares were in final primer I moved on to some of the (many) other exterior pieces that needed to be prepped for body color. Early 2nd gen TA's have a lot of small parts that get paint and is why shops want more to paint them than many other cars from the late 60's -early 70's. On top of that, the first time I painted a lot of the parts that were chrome from the factory and now they all needed to be strripped and prepped as well. The fiberglass rear panel needed some structural repairs as well.

[NOT A TA]

Although I seem to be adding more weight than I'm getting rid of during this project I keep looking for things to put on a diet. The AC equipped 2nd gens had a vacuum operated fresh air duct in the passengers kick panel. Since I blocked off the openings in the sheet metal behind the kick panels I cut out the plastic duct and eliminated it along with the vacuum diaphragm etc. then made an oval plastic block off panel similar to the factory one on the drivers side and attached it with plastic adhesive saving a couple lbs.

Next topic up, subframe modifications.