10/28/01
Today has allowed for a LOT of drag racing on TV. Wow. I'm exhausted from just sitting on my butt all day watching. Actually, I've desperately needed the rest, as now the LEFT knee has gone totally frizzo. This is so bizarre, as I felt no strain or anything last weekend playing tennis. The right knee, as you may recall, is the really bad one. Just really crazy. Anyway, I was about to run off to near Pomona (not for racing) to look at a '41 Hollywood Graham (the successor to the Cord). More on that later. Gotta keep those apples out in front for motivation. Gonna do a little rubbing on the FC right now. Derek did a GREAT job of cleaning up the garage Friday, making it more fun to work in there. We also hung up the monster studio monitor speakers we built. Now to get the electronics end working. Also e-mailed everyone on my list about raffling the Gremlin. I just put a Kenwood FM/CD and speakers in. In case you didn't see that notice in the website:

I am raffling the Gremlin off as follows:

FOR SALE: $50

300 tickets @ $50.
First $2100 goes to the Families of NY Firefighter and Police victims.
All checks will be cashed and held in escrow account until car is sold.
If for some reason car is not sold, all monies will be refunded.
Drawing will be held two weeks after final ticket is sold (to allow for notifying all entries) on Friday night @ 8 PM at Bob's Big Boy in Toluca Lake. Winning ticket to be drawn by members of LA Fire Dept.

SEND CHECKS AND CONTACT INFO TO:
Dick Wagner
16000 Gault St
Van Nuys, CA 91406
(818) 888-3333
dick@dickwagner.com

How many tickets you wanna buy?

We're also going to post a few sponsor options on the car in the next few days (done in Photoshop), probably long before you read this.
Now with the garage a bit more organized, I can get to finalizing the tool inventory, setting up the computer program for tracking it, and enjoying the range of equipment we now have.

A LAYMAN'S GUIDE TO SHOP TOOLS

Air Compressor: A machine that converts energy produced 300 miles away into compressed air that travels by hose to an impact wrench that grips nut overtightened 12 years ago 6000 miles away in Japan -- and rounds them off.

Battery Tester: A tool for transferring acid from a car battery to a new pair of jeans.

Drill Press: A power-driven machine for snatching materials out of your hand so they knock your coffee cup onto freshly painted projects left in the shop.

Hand Drill: A device that makes holes above pipes and other objects; also performs random carving jobs on finished surfaces.

Jack: A lifting device that lowers a vehicle to the ground so it hides the
tool you need.

Hacksaw: One of the family of cutting tools operating on the Ouija-board
principle to transform energy into unpredictable motion.

Hammer: Originally a weapon of war, now used to break expensive parts near the object you were trying to hit.

Pipe Cutter: A clamp-like device with a rotating wheel used to cut pipe an
inch too short.

Pliers: Used to round off bolt heads, and sometimes to partially drive in
nails before bending them.

Pry Bar: A basic tool for crumpling material surrounding an object you need
to remove.

Screwdriver, 16 Inch: A prying and gouging tool with a superfluous machined flat section opposite the handle.

Screwdriver, Phillips: A metal shaft with a handle, used to make holes in the
tops of oil cans.

Shop Knife: A tool used to open cardboard cartons and also slice through
their contents; works well on boxes containing furniture and expensive
clothing.

Sockets: Steel devices that fit over nuts and bolts so they can be turned.
Sockets come in two varieties: "metric", which are the ones at hand when
working with English-measurement hardware; and "English", which are the ones you can find only when repairing metric equipment.

Trouble Light: A device in a cage on an electrical cord designed to
prematurely burn out light bulbs; used to illuminate grease buildup and mouse droppings; also produces large amounts of heat, which is released when the device unexpectedly rolls into one's face.

Vise Grips: A member of the pliers family, used when you have a number of
bolt heads to round off and wish to do so with one handy tool. When left,
forgotten, sticking out of back pockets, can also emboss car fenders and
table tops.

Wire Wheel: A useful invention driven by a hand drill to remove rust from
parts, revealing that they're worn out and useless and should have been
thrown out in the first place.

10/30/01
In reviewing the last update (#29), the headers, while here, have NOT been touched. I did get an angle grinder and lots of wheels, just haven't gotten to that. I also bought a complete new torch setup to do the brazing. I better hurry, though, since Jan 1 is coming up fast. Coated or not, those headers will be running! The most important things to do right now are the belly pan, and mounting the headers. Oh, and the oil temp bung in the pan. Once the starter is back on, we can try and fire the puppy. And the front brakes: it would be helpful to have those properly working. BB's back has been very troublesome, and she has also been unable to get here. Her boyfriend did agree to tow the Gremlin to LACR on his flatbed, for $100 round trip. I'm still thinking about that.

11/2/01
I'm probably not going to use BB's tow option, and instead will follow the Gremlin with the dually. I found some spare 15 x 7 steel wheels with the proper 5 on 4.5" spacing, and Randy gave me his old Hillman MT 10.5" wide x 28" high slicks. Got them mounted, and found both had air leaks, so had to install tubes. They don't make much of a difference on the street, but should make a MIGHTY difference where I can do a burnout to heat them up, and have some rubber and VHT for them to bite on (at LACR). Gonna put it in the Woodley Fire and Police Car Show tomorrow, and perhaps get some raffle bites. Darling Millie is helping me run off some forms and color prints of the Gremlin. And Capt Randy is displaying his car as well. How about that? It was a mighty push to get his paint and graphics done at M&M Auto Art, but they came out absolutely great. Tried running on Ebay, and got over a thousand hits in a few days, but they don't permit raffles on an auction system, so it was removed. I'll reinstate it as a straight auction with a $12K reserve. Meanwhile, I've amended the run-till-it-sells Recycler ad to reflect the 300-ticket raffle.
On the FC front, I got ALL the paint today, except the Zolotone (which will come in on Monday or Tuesday), for a mere $1100!!!!!! That amounts to a finished quantity of 4 gallons of Dupont Viper Yellow Chroma Base color (including the thinners and hardeners), 4 gallons of clear, and 4 quarts of Zolotone. Yeah, I opted for the slightly less mustard tint of the Viper instead of the Mercedes yellow I had been thinking about for so long. And it was marginally cheaper at ONLY $235 per gallon (and that's shop pricing)!!! The plan is to shoot the color, touch up any goofs, etc. with light sanding, let it sit overnight, and shoot the color AGAIN. Then, color sand it as necessary with #800, and shoot the clear, and repeat the color sanding with #1200, then buffing. It appears I'll be doing the painting. A part of me doesn't want to do this, as I never have, and part of me is intrigued with the challenge. Oh boy! I still gotta finish the blocking and filling of some small air holes with finishing putty. The car finish and contour is really very sweet. Let's see how it looks with a lot of expensive paint on it!
I may spray the underside first, then the inside, and finally the exterior. We'll see how it falls together. I DO know that having Mikey here to mix paints will be a major help. His help on the last primer go-round was worth about a 50% reduction in time, and fatigue. I do have to do a bit more priming on the spill plates and hatch cover, a fairly quick thing.
Now, let's look at this from here on: with the paint on, I can apply my vinyl graphics, and have a fairly finished piece. Of course it will need the air-brushing talents of MM Art for the headlights, taillights, and side and rear windows. I have the Lexan ready to go, and as it is not too old, should be clear once the paper is pulled off. So with paint, I can bolt the headers on, and run the car, presuming of course that the aforementioned brakes and bellypan corrections are complete. Really hot to get this baby rockin'!

11/10/01
Randy's incredibly hip techno buddy Tom Burroughs came by, and instantly saw the problem with the brakes. Notwithstanding the fact that
Randy and I had previously pulled off the front calipers, turned them vertical, and bled them, Tom insisted on doing it again, and it worked. I think we may have not gotten the master completely de-aired, again in spite of doing it as we had been instructed by Airheart. Whatever, I adjusted the brake linkage to get more pedal, and we're stylin. We also disccccovered a bad inner wheel bearing seal on the left front, so that has to be tracked down and installed. We also found a better way to get the brakes and wheels off, so that's a plus. In the ideal world, I would have the caliper brackets remade to mount them at the proper angle to get the bleeder on top. For now, they should be fine. Hell, they lasted for years without a bleeding. Went to the Winston Finals Friday session, talked with Mark Williams about those brackets (he suggested just making them out of 5/16" 7075 aluminum), discussed the Gremlin rear and what it would take to narrow it ($600), then spent the night until after 11 PM rubbing on the FC. I washed it down twice, and rubbed every inch to get a consistent #320 finish on everything. There were many areas that had been missed. Nick came over today, and pronounced the car very good, again complimenting me on my work. I hope he isn't terminal or anything. Two compliments in three weeks!! He found two or three areas that he feels need a little work. He had also strongly suggested at the outset of priming that I mask the car from the inside, but I noted for him that I was painting the window openings in black anyway. Well, upon his return today, he said the lip left against the masking gives rise to peeling, and again strongly suggested I correct those edges, so I did. I also found another crack in front of the blower opening, in a triangular-shaped section about 6 x 6 which is particularly vulnerable to easy (and inappropriate) leverage. So I will be glassing it top and bottom, more bondo, more sanding and finishing there, along with the two other areas, and the assorted small pinholes. Inspired and committed as I was, I could find no fiberglass hardener, so that wiped out tonight. Tomorrow I go the Finals at Pomona, then get back on the car, looking for yellow paint by the weekend. Nick agreed that I should shoot the underside and interior Zolotone sections first, and thought just using spray cans for the flat tin would work much more easily. I'll need to prime the metal and sand that tin to get a nice finish. So I now need to pull out the lift system control board, sand the inside, then mask it off, and do some experimenting with Zolotone and the detail gun perhaps (smaller spray). Next weekend looks quite doable, particularly as there is nothing to do to the Zolotone once it's shot on. Of course, if I find really horrible looking areas underneath, I'll probably do some cosmetic work there. The belly pan and coupler cover (and mounting the fuel shutoff cable stand thereon) are the next BIG things, and at that point I'll bolt the headers on and see if the puppy growls.

11/11/01
The skies growled early this morning, with some light rain. Here's hoping it gives way to some nice breezes and a clear, dry track at Pomona. I'll be returning for exchange some mis-bagged tools I bought from the Craftsman concession on Friday (they gave me metric on two sets of tools). The nice thing about today is that we going on 4-day passes, a gift from Ronnie Stearns. There are three season championships still up for grabs as of this morning. Wow!

11/12/01
The rain held off, and the racing was good. But Sunday is a LONG day at the races. I much prefer Friday qualifying runs, more cars, more action. Today is Monday after 5 PM, and the rains just hit big time. The race car has seen some work today: found perhaps 4 dozen small pits throughout the paint, so I guide-coated those areas, sanded them to reveal the black dot left by the hole, and now will fill those areas one by one with Q-tips and primer. One areas on the left door needs to be floated, as it has lotsa little holes. Nick also wants me to float a section of the hood as well. John Jarnagin helped today (on the clock) with cleaning up the interior of the cockpit, grinding off old resin runs, etc, and masking it. We'll need to do two serious glass repairs inside the cockpit, one of which was the area that had been broken (and repaired) when the body was turned on its back at Hamrick's. A portion of that repair let go. There is another spot behind the hatch that can use a little work as well. And, the hood crack near the blower opening also needs correcting. So there's a couple of days work (3 steps back) before we go on. The decision to erect the Garage Mahal has sure shown itself to have been a KEY and good thing right now. I dread the thought of hustling the car out of the rain, etc. Putting the years and money in that structure sure took away from running the car, but it has certainly paid off handsomely at times like this. I will do some Zolotone on the interior of the cockpit area, see how it looks, and perhaps do another round of tune up. If not, then I'll address the tin work with more sanding and prep, then primer, and Dove Gray paint. After that, we'll shoot the underside of the body. That will quite likely need a second round. Saw a neat idea at the races: a pair of FC chutes were attached to a plate, which was in turn clipped to tabs coming out the back of the body. Nice touch, allowing the chutes to be packed in a horizontal position, and just lifted onto the car. I'm gonna do that one. Regarding the paint, I'm going to verify with Nick regarding just what gun I should use to shoot the color. With $1100 in materials alone, the price of a gun is really not an issue anymore. Later in the week I'm hoping Nick will receive the dually, which got its LR door trashed 2 months back while getting detailed (talk about an oxymoron). That will require some serious pulling, beyond my capability at this time. I presume the interior door panel will need to be removed to allow for some metal working. No, Nick says he has this trick spot-welding gun that puts little rods on the outside. I saw him do this. You pull the panel out using these rods, then just grind them off, followed by bondo. Anyway, I'll attend to some bids right now, and get back to the car a bit later tonight.

11/13/01
John and I did some more today, doing the fiberglass, some blue coating (thin bondo over some pitted areas), and dabbing primer into the pinholes. Turns out the hood break was only in the bondo, which I found out only after grinding the area down to the fiberglass. I glassed in the top and bottom anyway for added strength, and reduced the bondo thickness there by about 90%. The bondo was quite thick there, and couldn't take as much flexing on that flap area as the glass. D'Angelo says the detail gun I have is too small for Zolotone, so I'm going out to check the HVLP (high volume low pressure) gun I bought for the primer for the required minimum top size. If good, I'll make some test passes on the Zolotone to see how it goes, probably on the underside of the car (why waste it?). I'm told Zolotone can be shaken like regular paint, so we'll go that route. At present, it looks sorta like sand in water in the bucket. I'll need to mask off the windows again for this step, then remove that after doing the tin, and reverse the masking to the inside for the exterior body color work. I hit a few of the areas of repair with 150# and 320#, and some will need another dab to get them really right on. I'm doing stuff which I never have before, and once underway, it is stimulating and rewarding. It sure helps to have another body there to force me into action. John likewise had never done glass work, so it was all new for him, and fun. Let's hope this gorgeous cue-ball perfect car stays crack-free once we shake those tires!
Fred Garcia @ Auto Parts Unlimited (818-778-5373) tracked down the elusive left front wheel bearing seal for me, and is ordering two for tomorrow. Hurray! Because there always is a lit of to-do, it feels like little or nothing is getting done, until I look at the DONE list, and then it gets impressive. Back to some bids, then to checking the gun for orifice size, then to Nick's to shake paint, and possibly shooting some in the next day or so. We're at 3,000 words in this update, still talking about shooting the paint.

11/15/01
Stopped at Modern Paint on the way to Nick's, and had them shake the Zolotone. Bought the interior gray paint for the tin while there, some aluminum primer, and a few goodies. A mere $100. The fun never stops. Went to Nick and borrowed a gun from him. The Zolotone in a test looked green. I now realize that one of the two colors used to mix this batch is "Camouflage…" Great. It actually dries dark gray, but looks VERY green in the can. We'll see. John did some final grinding on the cockpit interior fiberglass, and masked the hatch and windows. I am pretty much ready to shoot the stuff now. My respirator filters appear nearly plugged, so that won't be a good thing trapped inside the bubble shooting highly toxic stuff. I'll need to look around for some elements, or kiss it off for another night. Made another pass around the car after mucho sanding of the primer repairs, and found a few I'd missed sanding, and one or two more pits. This is VERY minute stuff, but after all this….well, you know. After finding that crack in the bondo around the blower opening, I am now seriously contemplating not shooting the yellow until I make a few shakedown runs. If I precipitate some cracking, now would be the time to get it repaired, not after the color is on. Also got the grease seals (Federal Mogul, of course). So, I can get the left front wheel back on, shoot some interior paint, perhaps shoot the bottom of the car as well, and look to fabricating the belly pan and driveshaft/coupler cover. Lots of people comment on how they want me to call them when I'm ready to take it out……hey, how about a little help here?

11/17/01
Nick's gun did not work so well. It turns out my detail gun has a huge tip, a 1.8 mm, and that worked better, As I was spraying, I noticed it pumped out much better if I just dunked the pickup tube in the paint, without the cup being tight. As the cup is quite small, I just held a 2-pint cup under it and blasted away. Went significantly faster. Randy later informed me the vent was probably clogged. Yup, he knows a lot more than I. John and I shot the inside of the cockpit and the entire underside of the body, minus any aluminum (which we will primer first). It came out pretty nice. We have a few areas that bled through, but on the whole it is dramatically improved. I've ordered another 2 quarts of the same blend, which did come out gray and not green (whew!!!) once it was shaken and dried. There isn't a whole lot of fleck to it, which is disappointing. I can always go over it with some more color. But a big step has been made. Tomorrow I will do some metal work (sanding the tin), and getting some primer on that. Then we'll go for the medium gray Nason paint on the firewall and side panels inside the cockpit. With the car nickname of Qwikdick, I maybe should change the name of the driver compartment to the jock-pit, as I'm the jockey for the car……Should Mikey show, along with Gene Christianson (AutoRite trans guru), we might get the front wheel back on, and who knows what else? Perhaps we might even get crazy and fab up the coupler cover out of something.

11/19/01

Well, Gene did not make it. Seems he had some health problems with his pet dog. But he intends to make it next weekend. Meanwhile, Mikey and I did some SERIOUS sanding and body prep. Mikey did the interior sanding of the tin (removing the old black paint on the aluminum), until we ran the compressor to death (literally). The compressor melted the air-cleaning OFF!!! And, the belt shroud started to melt as well. We had noticed the compressor taking interminable time to recharge lately. Good buddy and electronics genius Ed Turner (back from San Francisco), came over and helped out with three projects; checked the smoking microwave and determined it was OK, inspected the garage hifi electronics and took them home for tests (after finding a loose connection and fixing it-I told you: the guy IS good), and just attacked the compressor with me and pulled it completely apart. I frankly wouldn't have had the guts to do that. He seemed astonished that someone who can pull a FC apart, to the last piece, should be at all intimidated by a little two-cylinder flat head compressor motor. I just can't get into more projects, is what it really is. But with someone else there to help, it's an entirely different thing. I took the guts to All American Compressor in Van Nuys, and they said $100 to fix it, $450 to replace it with something WAY better. Guess what? We're replacing it. With $1100 of paint to spray, I'm taking NO chances here. Oh, and Ed paints cars (not a vocation, but he's done many, many)! The compressor is a Home Depot Campbell-Hausfield cheapo. Well not exactly cheap, it was about $700, but the motor and compressor are WAY over-rated (6 REAL horsepower would look three times as big and deliver more than twice the air), and the real good stuff costs more. At the time, it appeared a good value, and I guess I got my money out of it. Anyway, tomorrow will see more money going out but a FINE compressor coming in. Gotta keep the Garage Mahal equipment and furnishings in good order. I'm pretty much done polishing the FC body, so my attention is now on the interior (cockpit) paint and the remaining underside Zolotone. I'll probably do some touch-up down the road on the Zolotone, but for now it is a BIG improvement. Once the big compressor is back, the next step is grinding on the tin, metal-etch priming it, and shooting the Zolotone on the bottom, the Ford Gray enamel on the top of the tin. After the yellow goes on, there will also be the painting of the black around the window openings, and doing likewise on the edges of the Lexan windows. As mentioned before, I would like to wait in primer for a few laps, but Randy cautions that will contaminate the primer with dirt, etc., so I'll just have to go for it at this point. I have also been cautioned not to do any graphics or vinyl stickies for several weeks, in order NOT to trap gases in the paint, this advice I believe was from Nick. How do these race car bodies get painted so fast, as well as show cars? More questions. So we're past 4000 words here, but paint has been applied to many areas. I predict yellow paint by 7500 words. Any bets? On the work front we are thankfully busy, with a couple more jobs looking to start soon. I've halted new bids for a while until I catch up on the remaining 8 or so sitting on the desktop, not to mention the half dozen we're actively doing. Sounds, rosey, but cash flow is tight (what else is new?), partly because of expenses like the compressor, and some loan repayments, and a little house finishing here and there. Oh, and the Gremlin. And the Gremlin front end parts did arrive, finally. So as soon as I get the manifold back in it, I'll motor over to Canoga Alignment and get those parts installed. The Gremlin bent a pushrod, AND popped a lifter out of the bore, AND broke a different rocker arm. I hadn't realized I was having that much fun. I'll endeavor to get that back together pronto, needing just a set of intake gaskets at this point.

11/20/01
Got the compressor back in one day…..neato. It is dramatically quieter, and fills quickly, and MUCH less vibration. Derek and I hoisted it up. Joe at All American Compressor in Van Nuys gave me the word on how to properly plumb the lines (a little late now, as they are in the walls). He educated me on NOT setting up an oiling system (very nasty when spraying paint!!), how over-oiling tools is not good (notwithstanding the sticker that says oil them every day), how not to waste money on water traps (but use them properly), and how to properly set up drains in the lines. I'll do what I can at this point. Put a page out for BB to see if she can come in tomorrow and do some grinding on the tin, to prep it for primer and paint. Bids are going well, and looks like another job or two may happen over this critical holiday time. Waiting on three checks (fairly desperate as the thanksgiving LONG weekend is coming up).

11/21/01
Got this from my son-this is REALLY good!
THE RAILROAD & SPACE SHUTTLE CONNECTION!

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were
built by the same people who built the
pre-railroad tramways, and that's the
gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used
the same jigs and tools that they used for building
wagons which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular
odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing,
the wagon wheels would break
on some of the old, long distance roads in
England, because that's the
spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots first formed the initial
ruts, which everyone else had to
match for fear of destroying their wagon
wheels. Since the chariots were made
for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike
in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4
feet, 8.5 inches derives from
the original specification for an Imperial
Roman war chariot.

Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next
time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's a** came
up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial
Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to
accommodate the back ends of two warhorses.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

Now the weird twist to the story...

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its
launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the
main fuel tank. These are solid
rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by
Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who
designed the SRBs would have preferred to make
them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by
train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory had to run through
a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that
tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track,
and the railroad track is about as wide as two
horses' behinds. So, the major design feature of what is
arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was
determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's a**.

And you wonder why it's so hard to change
things in this world...

'Course that's nothing compared to how long it's taking to get the FC back on track…….
Spent some time grinding on the interior tin, a painfully slow process, which EATS the DA discs in short order. The hangup is the bead roll ridges, which make it a bitch to sand, plus the aluminum isn't really flat, so the air file isn't of much help. I may try a palm sander next. I went searching for my trusty (and brand new, never used) angle grinder-NOTHING! 90 minutes of scouring the garage and still couldn't find it. Remember my mention WAY back about doing a computerized tool inventory system, including the LOCATION of each tool? Well, Ed just left claiming his programming buddy was close to completing it. Hey, you want it faster he said? Just pay his buddy $65 an hour and he'll jump right on it. This is another case of when free ain't free. This was to be done last April. Ed pointed out that the system needs to include some custom features like not allowing the employees to over-write and delete stuff, etc., along with an interface to tie the bar-code reader to the employee records. OK, OK, but how about getting it done? The real joke is after spending almost $400 updating the dedicated PC for this operation, that computer may NOT be able to handle the late model software we'll use. Oh joy………On a more positive note, electronics genius Ed Turner called to report that not only does the trick amp system I gave him to test work, it actually is a tri-amp system (including electronic crossovers), meaning it has 6 amplifying channels. So it is a completely ready-to-go system, needing just a music source (CD, tuner, etc) to function. I hadn't remembered that it had the bass amp in it, so GREAT! I ran out and got 150 feet of 2- conductor wire to begin stringing the wiring to the speakers. To do what I want, I will be opening the walls (again) and running flex conduit inside to carry the wiring, so as not to ever have to worry about it again. I'll need to get a receiver (with preamp outputs) or some very basic preamp, tuner, and CD to give me some selection, plus a place to plug a TV into the sound system.
The new compressor works fabulously. Quieter (not silent), vastly more capable of delivering air, much less vibration. Nice piece.
Spent another 4 hours in the garage, organizing, discovering a neat way to clean the tin, and discovering one-part glazing putty. Man, does that make it simpler! I'm down to the really anal stuff, literally tring to find mere pinholews anywhere. Rather than having to mix two-part, and the subsequent sanding hassles, or mixing upp primer and letting it harden up, some one-part glazing putty makes very quick work of these areas. I also threw another small coat on a section of the hood. As I've never applied 12-16 coats of paint on a car, I have no idea what will cover and not. We're looking for about 8 coats of base, and about the same of clear, 2 gallons of color with two gallons of reducer, and the same mix again on the clear, about 50-50. So I'm just presuming ANYTHING will show. Certainly can't go wrong if this is overkill. I'm also developing a better eye and feel for the finish, far beyond what I started with. The trick to removing the black lacquer on the tin is LACQUER thinner. How's that for a no-brainer? Hey, I'm qualified….It makes its own mess, but it's far easier than sanding it off and tearing up the DA's, not to mention the horrific amounts of coal black dust. I'm using plumber's emery strips (for dressing copper pipe), and it works just great with the thinner. Just give it about a minute to soften it, hit it again and it's nearly no pressure to get it to release. It's just the ticket for the tight and awkward spaces in that driver's compartment. It's also hell on the hands, and I've not found a good glove that can resist lacquer thinner as yet (and give any feel). Tonight I load up on the hand moisturizer. Tomorrow I'll go again at the tin, and perhaps even get to the underside. Need to run over to Nick's to get the other two quarts of Zolotone for the unsprayed underside areas (mainly just the bottom of the tin areas). Still have not found my angle grinder….crap!!!! I did spend some time putting more stuff away, as no one else seems to at all. The Lexan windows have taken a little beating around the edges. I hope the paper has done its work on the middle of the windows and they remain pristine. The edges, about 1-1/2" inches or so, will get black paint to cover the jambs. I now have them stored behind a cabinet, hopefully out of harm's way. Sitting here in the office, I just a got a hit of the compressor kicking on from the other side of the wall. I definitely need to get it back up on its spring suspension.
Got the Gremlin intake gaskets, but haven't gotten the intake back on. Perhaps tomorrow as well. By the way, I'm offering $1000 to anyone who can market the raffle tickets and get the remaining tickets sold.

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