Door Panels, Painting, Louver Installation

6/20/11
Well you may notice pictures of a 1992 Chevy S10 pickup truck and a 2007 Mustang on my site…they are …kind of related to the 69 restoration…The truck is my test of painting to see if I will re-paint the mustang myself…the jury is still out, see below. I decided to start posting things I do with the new Mustang as well…after all its a mustang isn’t it!
Below you will see pictures of the new rear quarter window louvers. I got them from CJ Pony Parts click this link to see them. . They are 3DCARBON brand but they are NOT Carbon fiber. They are some kind of resin from the look of it. Mine were a tan color not black as in the picture on CJ’s web site. I got the unpainted ones as I wanted to paint them myself and have left over paint for any future touch up work on the car.

The paint I used was from Automotive Touchup and it actually was the only place I could find that had the 2007 D3 “Colorado Red” paint code in a spray can. I found the touch up brush on at the Ford dealership but that was it. Duplicolor has never failed me before but they just don’t have that code..ah well. I got the Primer, Basecoat and Clear for about 50 bucks and it is more than enough to do this job with lots left over for future work or touch ups. The color was right on, the paint applied very well and looks good…the only issue I had was with a raccoon … more on that later. I used 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of color, and 4 coats of clear.


Here you can see them as I put primer on.


This is with the basecoat on. IT dries flat and you have to put clear on top of it.


This is the decal you put over the window to blacken it out.


Here is the fully painted louver on the car. I have not yet put in the little fake vent inserts.


These are the plastic fake vent inserts

Louvers with the vent inserts. The little inserts add a lot more to the look than I thought they would.

Lessons learned:

1) Keep Raccoons out of the garage. We have some in our neighbor hood and of course when I painted then louvers I did it in the garage and left the door open to let the fumes out. I went inside after the final coat of clear was on and it looked great. I came back out and my newly painted louver was no where to be seen. The I saw the raccoon run out of the garage and my louver was laying…face down..on the floor…He had knocked it down and the top coat had not fully dried so it was a mess. I had to sand and re-do the clear coats…sigh…
2) Let the primer dry for 24 hours before you sand it. I waited 8 hours and it started to peel as I sanded. After 24 it was no issue.
3) The paint goes on and flows very well but the nozzles will clog a bit and start to splatter. Between coats wait about 15 minutes and while your waiting take the spray nozzles off and put them in paint thinner. That will keep them clean and spraying nicely…actually these spray as nice as I have ever seen any spray paint.
4) Clean the underside VERY well or the tape that holds it to the window will not stick.

I am very happy with the louvers. I painted them myself but it was a lot of work…and frustration due to the raccoon incident. I wanted the extra paint. You might want to get them pre-painted. I was worried it would not match and that is also why I did them myself. I am very pleased and like the look.

6/8/11
I have a few updates. First I replaced the rear axle bearings. I was getting a noise from the left rear and the car has 150k on them so I figured they were due anyway. I got them from a local auto store and it was a bit confusing to figure out which one I needed. I have an 8 inch rear but they were all listed as for a 9 inch or a 7 inch rear…huh……well after a little research I found out that the axles in the 8 inch and nine inch are basically the same. You need to know how many splines you have on the axle all 8 inch rears have 28, most 9 inch rears have 28 also and are exactly the same as the 8 inch but some 9 inch have 31 splines. That was the key to make sure I had the correct bearings..they were listed as for a 28 spline axle. I was going to put them in my self but decide to have a shop press them on. I would have had to use the heat them in the oven method and did not want to do that. This time the axles were both out in under an hour as I knew exactly how to get them out from the last time I had the rear out. I had the bearings pressed on and it took about an hour to get both axles back in. All done good for another 150k.

I also ordered some of Eastwoods single stage urethane paint and primer. I actually painted my 92 S-10 tp see how I liked the paint and if I wanted to paint the mustang with it or not. The truck came out good and the Eastwood paint was very easy to work with. The primer was actually VERY good and very sand-able. The paint went on nice too.

I still have some work to do to see if it will be good enough to do the mustang with, Here is a picture of the painted truck. I still have to polish and buff it…have not decided if it will be good enough to paint the truck with. I think the Paint itself is fine, my painting skills, not so fine….FYI My camera is broken so I had to take it with my Blackberry which is also messed up…sorry…new camera on the way…

3/25/11

Working on the car a little here and there but I did get a new toy…..see below:

It is not new but it’s new to me!! 2007 Mustang with 25k miles, Premium package, Pony Package and deluxe interior…sweet! Now that it is getting warmer I intend to get to the stang projects which include installing new parking brake cable, sports mirror with remote, finish the door panels, fixing the leaky cowl vent and many others..will post as soon as I do!

2/1/11

I am starting to get ready to work on the car in earnest again. I think I am going to paint it again but use Eastwoods Paints this time. They have a great reputation and I think that will really put the car over the top. People already complement the car but the cheap paint I used does not meet up to the standard of the car. For those who have been following the car project I used cheap paint due to the fact that I have never painted a car before and wanted to learn, knowing that I would repaint the car again. Soooo that time has come. Eastwood actually makes the Ford Mustang Candy Apple red for 60s mustangs, awesome, that is the original color of the car. I also want to put the racing stripes on the car too but I want to make the stripes match the color of the top and new interior panels which is a bit more of the Ford white which was a cream color not a stark white. I ordered the color chips from Eastwood so I can get the right color. I will write a lot more about that later but for now I wanted to talk about what I learned about the 60s mustang cowl vents and leaking.
Being as I am going to paint the car I wanted to do some final projects I had been putting off. The Cowl vent on 60s mustangs leaked when they were new and did not magically get better with age. The 65 to 68 years were different than the 69-70s and the replacements are NOT made for the 69-70s. The only vents you can get are for the 65-68. In 1969 Ford made a big change in the cowl vents. The 65-68s had two vents one on either side, the 69-70 only had one vent on the passenger side. When I say vent I mean the round vent hat that the air passes through. I called all over and did an internet search and the 69-70s cowl vent hats just cannot be found, therefore I am going to have to fabricate one. In reality that may not be so hard. The panel sits in on my car is shot as well and is so rusted away as to barely exist. Therefore I am going to cut it out and fab one myself out of sheet metal and weld it in. For the hat itself in looking at it and it looks a lot like the round A/C vents you see in out home A/C system. I will look to see what I can find but I may be able to find a good way to do it with that or PVC or some plumbing parts made of plastic. I will of course document it so everyone can see it. I have not found this for a 69 mustang on the web so I am on my own…the excitement mounts!

In other news I got a drivers sports mirror with remote and am going to start working on the door panels soon too. Installing the remote locks, deluxe door panels, etc..I am starting to get all the parts together for this and could start on it any day….but I have to clean the garage first….sigh……

1/23/11 Well to be honest I have not been doing to much to the car. It has been cold here in Maryland but I have been driving it some. I hate to start taking it apart as I will have to stop driving it but there are some things I need to do and I have ordered some parts. Here is what I am going to be working on in the near future.
1) Installing automatic door locks using the alarm system to drive them.
2) I need to replace the cowl vent, it is in REALLY bad shape. This will require I remove fender etc..sigh….
3) Install drivers side sports mirror with remote,
4) Finish installation of the deluxe door panels. I ordered the door cups and mounting parts for this.
5) Some welding inner the floor pan I never got around to
6) Apply rust proofing to underside of car. I did some of this but never finished.

Compared to what I have done so far this is nothing but it does mean I have to take the car off the road for a while…sigh…oh well. Once all of this is done I am going to spend some money on some good paint and repaint the car. That is about it for now. I have really enjoyed driving the car and intend to take it to Carlisle this year and would like to meet some of you if you are going. Drop me an email!!

Dan

9/15/10
Took some pictures from the drivers seat
Was driving in this morning on a wonderful sunny day so I snapped a pic from the drivers seat in case you guys wanted to see what it looked like to drive an old stang!!!

Sorry for the blueness…stupid blackberry

I will take some better ones that are not all blue.

9/8/10
New Delux Door Panel Installations
Got the new door panels they were just the panel I had to get the inner wood grain inserts and door lights also. it really does start to make the car look more finished. The original flat ones are just dull.

Here is the Drives side door installed with the courtesy light and wood grain insert!

Read of door panel showing the light installation

Woodgrain panel and light installed. Still need to get remote sports mirror

8/30/10
Got new deluxe door panels, inserts, etc. Put better speakers in the dash, drove the car 100 miles one way to York and then back…I worry to much the car was fine! I will post some pictures later.

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