1981 LeBaron coupe - from the ground up.

Yep, wear the mask Doc.
Developing brain damage where you end up a veggie (and not knowing)might be more preferred than developing something like emphysema, where struggling just to breathe can be your life, giving one lots of time to regret the past.
Painting, even with spray bombs, is a very toxic undertaking. Its PAINT, for gosh sakes.
The saddest part of not protecting yourself, is that the damage shows up loooooong after the fact.
69.5, wear a mask. Please.
 
ive got 3 masks..i just get..umm...lazy at times..depends on how much or how long or "where" im painting..if im bombing or airbrushing outside i dont bother as theres enuf breeze to keep fresh air flwowin..but any more (for the most part unless im in a hurry) in the shop all sealed up i mask up
 
Dr.Jass said:
Well, I did make some progress today... in fact, I planned on posting it in the tech section. However, paint fumes have overcome me and I feel sick, so I'll post the pics and process later.
Click to expand...
Y'know, I had a really-good thread going on getting good results with spray-can paint as well as tips for first-time users of spray guns, but it got so long-winded I figure no one would get through it so it kind of died at post #7 (on my desktop, not on the board). Plus, it's likely the guys who actually know what they're doing would have interjected at some point and asked me the question with the obvious answer: are you insane?

Regardless, I was painting the cop wheels. Two of the four turned out quite well... funny thing is, it was the first two. The third one I intentionally screwed up as an example of what not to do, and by the time I got to the fourth one I was so tired I just plain blew it. I was out there for about 9 hours and was just beat--but even so, #4 came out better than #3. Both need sanding and another coat. The two good wheels are nicer than I could have expected considering A) I'd never held a loaded spray gun previously, and B) they're wheels; I wasn't exactly shooting for perfection (pardon the pun). :D

And so, another tech article dies on my desktop because it would have stretched across three magazines or gone 10 posts in the tech section. :doh:
 
Sweetness...I too have never held or used a "real" spray gun...hope too soon though....getting tired of listening to that little ball rattle around....and no the other one not the one rolling around in my head....:shifty::toot:
 
The best advice I can give you on a spray gun is to experiment with all those screws and knobs on a test panel (I used the LeBaron's door and the Conquest hood) until you get a spray pattern you like and with which you can get good results. Or, I could just e-mail you the whole diatribe I typed out--I'll need to finish it, mind you--and you'll need a bit of time to get through the whole thing. :D I covered everything I know about spray cans--and that's a lot, trust me--as well as everything I learned with my POS $35 touch-up spray gun, including how to get decent results without buying a $600 Sata Digital spray gun.
 
Dr.Jass said:
as well as everything I learned with my POS $35 touch-up spray gun, including how to get decent results without buying a $600 Sata Digital spray gun.
Click to expand...
I've been painting a long time and I can tell you that good-to-very good results can be gotten with a POS gun. Experience, common sense and ability gets the results. In spite of that, I've still managed to turn out a few decent jobs. :)
The high dollar guns just make it soooo much easier and faster.
Email me your article Doc, I'd really like to read it.
 
restoman said:
I've been painting a long time and I can tell you that good-to-very good results can be gotten with a POS gun. Experience, common sense and ability gets the results.
Click to expand...

Back in the early 60's there was a young farm boy that built himself a streetrod and decided to compete in the show circuit. After a few years he had made it to a national show event and was awarded the "Best Paint" trophy for his beautiful metallic paint job.

His secret "method" of applying paint was the only means he could afford. He had used a bug sprayer similar to the one below and a lot of hand sanding. ;)

bxp27811.jpg
 
I'll post the article when I'm finished writing it. It's not so far from done, but I will have to go back and re-read it so I don't repeat myself too much.

I bought an Ingersoll-Rand body saw today... the solution has been found for the welded-up lower control-arm bolts. I plan to saw those bastards off tonight and then can finally move forward with the wildly-pricey front-end rebuild. :dance:
 
Remember the welded lower control-arm bolts I've been fighting for oh, two years? They're finally out. :dance: I have never, ever fought a so stubborn a fastener in my life as that driver's side bolt. I don't know if it was the bolt itself, the weld, or some sort of cosmic joke. I was so elated when I finally got that prick out that I started calling and text-messaging people out of sheer joy... at 10:30PM last night. :D

Sadly, the tool death toll was fairly high. Story and photos to come later, but I've got the garage at a balmy 70° so I'm getting ready to head out there again for now.
 
I ordered my upper- and lower-control arm bushings today, as well as my poly swaybar bushings. They're special order so it'll take a week or two--plenty of time to get the now-dismantled suspension bits detailed. That's right: lots of blasting, painting, and oven time coming soon.

All I need now is my torsion-bar pivot bushings (another $75) and a set of poly swaybar end-link bushings, and I'll have all the parts needed to reassemble the front suspension.

As usual, when ordering the control-arm bushings, I get the smart-ass: "Aren't these the late-model RWD bushings? What are you building?" I told him about the LeBaron, and how much I have into rebuilding the front end (nearing $1500 at this point) and of course he had to question both my intelligence and my sanity. I hate having my intelligence questioned; my sanity not so much.

In my own defense:

A) I had no idea these cars were so expensive up front when I decided to trash everything and replace with new parts.
B) I like the confidence in knowing that virtually every wearing part has been replaced, especially in a car I'll likely send down the strip with someone else as pilot.
C) When I say everything, I mean everything:
  • Poly control-arm bushings¹
  • Ball joints*
  • Tie-rod ends* (I didn't go to the oversize 11/16" stuff here to save unsprung weight--still unsure of this decision)
  • Pitman and idler arms*
  • Torsion-bar pivot bushings (Firm-Feel poly)
  • Torsion-bar to-control-arm bushings* (price those in Moog sometime :doh:)
  • Steering coupler (the whole assembly)
  • Swaybar mount bushings¹ (on a cop-car 1.875" bar)
  • Swaybar end links* (hybrid--poly bushings¹)
  • KYB Gas-A-Just shocks
  • Alignment hardware*
  • Brake calipers (B-body pin type)
  • Rotors (the big 11.75" mamas)
  • Brake pads (race-type carbon metallic, $75/set)
  • Wheel bearings & seals
  • Spindle hardware & dust caps
  • Brake hoses (braided stainless DOT--Skyjacker, of all things)
  • K-member mounts (solid aluminum)
  • New Chrysler lower-control-arm bolts
  • Royal Purple synthetic grease wherever it's needed.
Everything marked * is top-shelf Moog stuff. Energy Suspension provided the parts with the ¹ denotation. This gets expensive very quickly--and I get all the Moog stuff at cost. :D

However, from the standpoint of being a boss with a couple of employees who don't yet have a really-good feel for what parts go where, this will be a golden opportunity to train, as well as have someone else doing the work. :dance: I mentioned in another thread about these training sessions for my employees, and they're all over this one. A yearnin' for learnin'. That's the one truly-great thing about the F/M/J-car front end: we can assemble the entire thing--brakes, steering, swaybar, and suspension--on sawhorses, and put it into the car as a single assembly--with four bolts. It saves me some time and teaches them volumes.
 
The more I'm around F/M/J cars, the more I appreciate their simplicity as far as assembly. It's good that the employees want to take part.:bravo:
 
Filtration:

I decided to run a 1/2" fuel pickup, which I'll have to custom-build. No one makes a pickup sock for that large a tube, so I have to have an inline filter prior to the pump. I picked up an Allstar filter with a stainless sub-100-micron filter to install on the draw side of the pump, with all the parts to run 1/2" line. The filter is a work of art: about a foot long, 2" in diameter. Allstar doesn't rate it for flow, but I can tell you this: you can breathe normally through it. The filter element is almost 10" long; the thing flows, big time.

ALL40216.jpg


I decided I wanted the look of the large oval air filter used on Six-Pack and some Ramcharger-hood cars, so I'm currently waiting on my steel lid and fiberglass base, but I've already got the correct air filter (Fram #CA332V). As much as I hate to run a Fram filter, it's more effective than the K&N unit and those are the only two manufacturers that make the filter. Plus, the K&N unit is ugly.

Obviously, I'm insane. I have over $300 tied up in an air cleaner and I feel it's totally worth it for the look, even if replacement filters are $70.

Anyhow, since my goal is a "what-if" car--meaning what if Chrysler was still building high-performance cars in '81, I designed a decal for the air cleaner patterned after the '70-'71 Hemi unit. I realize what TNT stood for, and I won't technically have the first "T" nailed, but then again, Olds didn't rename the car 4-3-2 when you ordered an automatic, did they? To my knowledge, Chrysler didn't have another moniker for their single-carb wedge-head engines, so I ran with it.

Tell me what you think.
 

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If at some point you endeavor to design a custom tachometer face for a model never available with a tachometer, heed this advice: Sharpen a #2 pencil, grasp it firmly, and jab it as hard as you can straight into your ear. It's quicker and less painful than the project I've been attempting for about a week now. Just when I thought I had everything worked out to my satisfaction, I realize the scale was all wrong in regards to the face size. I have a 12-layer .psd file for which I have to rework at least 8 of the layers from the start. :doh:

Luckily, I saved every iota of information, so it won't take me another week to get it right... I hope. :shifty:
 
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