69 SC Journey

Anthony - you are still in college and working to put yourself through right? ( BTW, sorry about that big Penn State win Saturday, go blue&white!). You won't have much time for a while. When the education is over and you can settle into a singular job and some free time in the evening, things will get done, at least until little Anthony's come along!

If you read the start of this posting, you'll see that for decades I had little time to spend. Life has a way of having busier and slower time periods in it for all of us. Just take advantage of those slower times to do what you love.


I worked yesterday to get the inside of the right door and underside of the trunk lid under primer. Now it is time to clean the shop up for the picnic. No new work until after next weekend. But by then, I'll have a nice uncluttered and clean shop to work in over fall and winter months!      

I just went through the 19 pages of this thread and I am so impressed.  Obviously about the work you are doing, but more importantly what you are doing with your son.  I envy you you.  

Weekend update: We got some time in the shop this weekend.

First up, was to get Eric setup to start the detailed analysis of the rear end before teardown. It is now sitting on its stands for winter while Eric digs in. I am hoping he will start posting his work over the winter here and what he is finding. Friday, we got the Model 20 Rebuild video from "Route66" here on forum and made it our Friday night movie screening event! Great resource video - highly recommend. Still deciding how much we will tackle on our own verses getting help - may depend on tool availability...


I continued on some tedious hand sanding on the inside of the door and trunk lid Saturday, that I had started earlier in the week. I will post the results of the trunk project as a separate posting later this week since it is a mini-thread of its own. Below I am recapping the progress of fixing the rust through on the bottom of the door: as blasted / leaded / finishing to date:



I am not 100% satisfied yet, but I now feel like it is close enough that I will get it there. Pictured here late Saturday after re-priming. This door was in worse shape than I thought it was before starting on it, and still working through some other issues with it to get it where I want it to be.

Front crossmember is back from stick welding and I've got it under priming, and even starting sanding out rust pits, scrapes and bruises today. Pictured here is the first pass on priming. From how it is sanding out, this will be turning out awesome very soon. I've got to then decide what colorization I want to use to simulate bare metal. If anyone else has gone through the analysis of paint options for the "bare metal" look - please let me know, I'd like not to reinvent the wheel on everything.


And finally, before wrapping up the weekend, I got the trunk lid flipped over, and since it was Frost White (this is a '66 replacement lid), I decided to throw down a dusting of black primer to do a handblocking on the original paint surface, to locate trouble spots before a full mechanical strip next week. I know there are some dimples that I felt, but I think this pre-step will ID all the problems quickly and fully. Looks camo!

Ross - sounds like a plan. Will look forward to it. Found out tonight that our ace ex-dealer AMC mechanic here still has a hub puller we can borrow for disassembly, so that is a big plus.

Tonight I did the quick "pre-block" against the original Frost White on the replacement decklid.

Hmmm. Not what I was hoping for.... Looks like a skim coat coming up after stripping. It had some dents along the drop section, but it looks like between the framing some flex dropping has occurred. Just a little too much to try to prime and block sand out.

Several sessions over the last couple days, making a layer of dust everywhere in the shop, the trunk is now super smooth from air boarding with 36, and handblocking with 80 grit.


These panels are just not level smooth from the factory. In most areas along the edges there are high and low areas. I can even see them in the 64 Classic trunk. Interestingly, you will see mirror image imperfections from the stampings on both sides.

I felt this was better than priming and blocking way too many times, and having a more stable building material. Most areas are very thin and transparent. This panel should turn out really nice.

Tonight I also welded two additional small cracks on the right door and ground them down. There were a total of five areas that were cracking around the vent window on the door sheetmetal, and unless you strip it all down - you won't see them until they have really spread into the visible areas beyond the rubber.

Priming coat probably this weekend for door and trunk.