The carnage of Clyde....

Well, poor Clyde sacrificed his life today. Armed with a sawzall, a circular saw with a cut-off wheel attached, and a grinder, Clyde began the process of giving up his frame for Betty. Inside the depths of Clyde's interior we managed to find a Hardee's coupon for a Turkey sandwich that expired in 1984, and a receipt to a drug store from 1975, probably when ole' Clyde had just rolled off the lot. We let Jim's kids prove the urban legend that just a gentle toss of a piece of spark plug porcelain will shatter a window, and Dawn, Jim's wife, enjoyed throwing a brick through the front windshield several times. She enjoyed it. What's seen here is two days worth of work, but by next time we should have the car ready for the 50' body to plop down on top.

Duh-na,na,naaa....I'm working again!

You know, I've been over this whole keep the car - sell the car thing about 40,000 times over the last year, and I think I've finally decided that I need to just roll my sleeves up and get this damn thing done. Today I ventured out and decided I needed to get the car's front fenders off so that the body can be ready to lift off. I've decided to hold off on finishing the body work on the front half of the car until the body is sitting on the 75' Riviera chassis. If I can get that far, the rest is all downhill. -TH




So today I ripped the fenders off. It went surprisingly easily. Bolts that were rusted in place simply broke off with a good tug. I did break 3 bolts off where the fender mounts up to the rocker panel, and those will need to be drilled out and re-tapped later. Not a huge deal. After removing the fenders I had a heaping pile of sandblaster sand and crap. I even found an old Snap-on wrench inside the fender! I'll have to use that somewhere on the car! -TH

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time.

Pinky-swearing we do! Our wedding - June 6, 2009 Shiojiri Garden, Mishawaka IN

Tim and I finally said our "I Do's" On June 6, 2009. The day went off without a hitch, and we happily boarded our flight to Italy 2 days later. We spend a wonderful 2 weeks in Italy surrounded by family and very (very!) good food and wine. Now, its back to the daily grind of work, work, work... and more work.

As you can imagine, we haven't even touched the car. What was her name again? Oh, right.. Betty. Poor gal. Lots of things have gotten in the way.. home-ownership, for one. Pure laziness for another... and a slight lack of motivation.

Tim is looking at a few options of what we'll actually do with Betty in the future. Maybe hiring someone to "marry" Betty and Clyde together to create a frankenmonster car & finishing the rest of the details himself.. or maybe we'll sell them both. Or maybe we'll sit on them for another 6 months trying to figure out what we really want to do. Who knows, at this point. Not me.

The idea of finishing Betty is so awesome. The practicality of it.. is daunting, to say the least. In all honesty, I have no idea what will happen with her. Stay tuned... -SH

Wow. Long time, no... well... anything, really.

So, it's now May and the last update was in... February? Jeez-ow.
I can't say we've done much of anything with Betty, besides getting her a new friend (whom we affectionately call Clyde) and primer her "rear end." I think at some point Tim cleaned up around Betty's 'area' - took down the makeshift work-booth he had, swept under her belly, etc. It was more of a Spring Clean for the garage, and she just happened to get in on a little of that action.

Every couple of weeks or so Tim says to me "I really need to get workin' on Betty and get her finished." Maybe some day we'll start working on her again. But you know how it goes with excuses. First, it was "too cold" to work on her in the garage. Then, Spring came and it's always "too nice" of a day to do anything but yard work. And of course, we've got our wedding in just 25 short days, and a 2-week honeymoon in Italy that will, of course, get in the way.

So, I wouldn't hold your breath, but you can still hope for the best. She'll get done. I just don't know when. -SB

PRIMER!

Well, I am officially 5 months behind schedule on when I said I'd actually have primer on the car. Luckily, the weekend I planned for primer (Feb 7th) the temperature shot up from 5 degrees outside to 55, so heating the garage would be easy! I planned to prime the whole back half of the car, all the way up to the doors, minus the roof. There were a few very very small spots that needed spot putty and a little finesse, but for the most part, the rear was 98% done.


I opted to go with a Urethane based, high build primer from Paintforcars.com. They sell quite heavily on ebay and the price was good. I consulted with Finishmasters in Grand Rapids on what primer to use, as I was initially going to use an acid etch first, then go with a build. When I told the guys I really wasn't looking for a concours paint job and the end result was going to be a flat finish anyway, they said that a Urethane high build would work fine over metal. The primer from paintforcars was 88.00, plus a quart of reducer took me to around 100.00.


The first batch I mixed up a little too thick and it shot on like undercoating. Luckily it laid down a bit, so no biggie. Overall, a very easy primer to use, and built-up very nice. Finally, the rear doesn't look like a hodge-podge of multi-colored primer and metal! From here I'll start working on the front of the car (which will be much easier and less time), prime that, block the whole car, and be moving on to paint. I will need to remove the front fenders at some point, as when we do the body swap, they'll need to be off.


Here's the finished result after two coats.

Cost update!

I figured I'd ponder for a minute on the cost factor so far in Betty.

When we last left you, the car, cost of the Ohio body panels, body filler, sheet metals, and basic shop supplies was at about 3,600.00.

Purchasing the 1975 Riviera was 1500.00. I look to recoup some of that cost, as I'll sell anything off of the body of the car (doors, front fenders, hood, rear quarters, glass) that I can, and scrap the rest of the body. I would think I could recoup at a minimum 400.00 from this, maybe more. At any rate, that puts the total project at 4,900.00.

I don't see any major costs coming up until the 455 motor gets worked over. Well, let's hope!

Gimme Shelter!

So after a few days of filling and sanding in the garage, I realized that I was getting a lot done. The backside of the car was sanded smooth with 220 and ready for primer. The drivers side rear fender was getting close...awful close. I tried not to get that "screw it, it'll do" attitude, so I kept going over and over, looking and feeling for any discrepancies, spraying a thin guide-coat of dark grey primer and checking. So far, so good. Then, I realized after just 2 days that I was making a complete dusty mess in the garage.

Now, I'm not like some crazy garage clean freak, but when my tools, shelves, quads, and camping gear get covered with a layer of filler dust in 2 days, I knew I had to do something to contain most of the dust. Enter....the shelter.

I decided to take a regular camping shelter, 4 rolls of 2mm plastic drop cloths (it's about the thickness of Visqueen...maybe a little thinner) and ran the plastic all the way around the shelter. In the front, I draped the plastic around the hood, and for the most part, the entire area was sealed up, other than the underside of the car. With the torpedo heater right inside the shelter, the area (and the car) heats up in a serious hurry, and stays warm. It also helped contain the dust.



For the most part, I've spent the last few days (about 4 hours) finishing up the driver's side rear fender. It's just about done. Today I worked my way over to the passenger side, which is going much quicker and easier than the driver's side. The passenger side welds and metal were much easier, and I had got the hang of welding the channel much better on that side. My guess is that I'll probably be done with the back of the car soon, and be able to get some primer on it. I've made more progress on the car in the last week than I made in 4 months. This is good. The front half of the car has probably 1/4 of the body work needing to be done, so things are moving along well. I've sourced out some primer, and decided to go with a urethane multi-use primer that can be put over bare metal, rather than doing the etch, then a build primer. Once again, it's not going to be a concours car. I think I've opted to go with a basecoat / clear, and use flattening agent in the clear to get that suede look I'm after. I've heard too many horror stories about using Hot Rod Flatz metallic paints and trying to get them to lay right. So...that's up in the future, until now, I'll be chilling in the shelter, which is more like a suana when that heater runs for awhile!


Oh, and the Riviera sellers called back - the new motor and tranny are in, and the car is supposedly going to be delievered tomorrow. Gulp.




Here, the driver's channel is on it's last little spot coats...

Sanding is a 7-letter word.

Yep...I'm back on the body work again after a long long time delay. In fact, I don't think I've even laid a piece of sandpaper on this car since August.

I got back on sanding the drivers rear fender and worked over to the passenger side, while putting the final touches on the rear. I also needed to take my abrasive sponge wheel and take off all the surface rust that had formed on the backside of the car. This had happened from when the garage door was open and it was snowing. Just a little dusting of snow on the bare metal and surface rust had started. I now have a cover for the car.

Here's the drivers side...getting closer to being done.



I'm hoping to have primer on at least the back half of the car by February (I've heard that before).

At it again update....

So the sellers of the big green Riviera called me (see, Ooops, we're at it again to find out why the hell we bought a 1975 Riviera) to tell me more bad news. One, the tranny was definately bad, but what's worse, there was coolant in the antifreeze, which indicated either a cracked block or head, or in a very rare case, a headgasket leaking coolant into the oil. I had sensed that something was up when I noticed a new radiator, water pump, and thermostat, all changed by the sellers within a few weeks. It seemed to me like they were chasing a problem - that problem more than likely was a cracked block or head, and coolant getting lost in the oil. What's worse, is this explains the oil light coming on while I was driving home. The coolant was slowly galling the bearings until there was no oil pressure left. They simply hadn't driven it far enough, and at the massive-transmission-slipping RPM's that I had on the way home, it sealed the deal. I was blowing up the motor and didn't even know it. Fun.

So the sellers were at a complete loss on what to do. Honestly, I consider myself very lucky. I could have had some sellers that just told me to get screwed, and then I was stuck with a car frame missing the two most important parts of the swap - the motor and tranny. What's even odder is that they told me they were going to try to find a motor and tranny for the car, and put it in... I told them I didn't see how this was possible as the cost involved in this would probably be over what the vehicle was worth. I felt really bad for these people. They had the worst string of luck and felt obligated to do something about it. At this point they were stuck fixing a car that utimately would cost them more money to sell than it was worth. We agreed for them to return my money to me and I would call this a dead issue - a major bullet dodged for me.

But then...they called me back on Friday to tell me they had just got back from Iowa, where they found another 455/400 from a 1976 Electra, and were in the process of having a garage install the motor and tranny! They even pulled the trans apart to change the front pump seal and the rear main seal of the motor. They told me they wanted everything perfect. I asked for picture documentation of what they were doing and they agreed to take as many as they could.

You can't buy this kind of dedication for 1,500.00.

Stay tuned.