hemigeno's Daytona restoration - a few more tweaks... again!

[hemigeno]

The first shot was my attempt at showing a small but accidental paint drip that was intentionally left in place between the hood hinge and the fender.  Not so hot paint coverage in this area, as is typical.

I poked the camera in the nosecone and took several shots, such as the last three.  BTW, whether it's common knowledge or not I don't know, but I did some research this week about the bulb (err, lamp - sorry Frank B.!!) used in the turn signals.  Pretty well anyone familiar with Daytona's knows that the turn signals were '69 Valiant units.  What some may not know, is that Creative's workers were supposed to change out the bulb from a 1157A to a 1157NA.  What's the difference, you ask?  The 1157NA lamp is a 14volt piece, where the original 1157A is a 12.8volt lamp - probably just a tad brighter is all, as both bulbs are amber in color.  The lamp changeout was part of the combination used to show the Federal DOT that the turn signals met the requirements for brightness and visibility at the reqired angles and distances.  Chrysler's engineers were probably a little concerned with the added obstruction of the radiator grille screen material.  It was supposedly a required/safety item, so my guess is they probably checked for that and ignored every other way they butchered-up the cars.  Once installed, no one could tell the difference without some way to measure the lumen output of the whole assembly.

The nosecone/radiator rubber air seals really do look awesome if I might say so myself (that's mostly dust and probably not much overspray on them).  One thing to point out which is different about my car from most, is that no blackout paint was found inside my fender/valance/nosecone area.  For whatever reason, they forgot to put that on this particular car, although most had this area blasted with flat black.  It gives things a little different look than most cars in that particular area, but that's what we documented with my car (same thing with the organosol on the latch tray too - and Vance is pretty determined to paint the front spoiler organosol too based on the paint strata evidence seen on cars besides just mine).

[69_500]

Coming along very nicely there Gene. Makes me want to plan a trip to Michigan and try out my new camera I just got for my birthday. Its itching to be broken in on a good trip to see some car, and shoot up a few hundred photo's of what my wife calls "useless details".

[hemigeno]

I hear that, Danny.  When I come back from trips like this and show pictures to my wife, she likes looking at the ones that show the whole car or show one of the kids.  Apart from that all I hear is some very rapid clicking on the camera as she scrolls through "those other pictures"

[69_500]

Which is why we have 2 external hard drives hooked up to the computer. One labeled Family Pictures, and the other is just labeled "Danny" and it holds only car photo's. That way the wife doesn't have to sort through them or even be bothered by them unless she wants to view them. Which I think has happened 1 time, and after about 50 pictures she was done. If things keep up though, I"ll have that 1TB hard drive full of car photo's by the end of this year though and then I don't know what I'll do.

[hemigeno]

Some more hood rib primer shots...  from the right angles, the paint jobs did look pretty atrocious.

[hemigeno]

Which is why we have 2 external hard drives hooked up to the computer. One labeled Family Pictures, and the other is just labeled "Danny" and it holds only car photo's. That way the wife doesn't have to sort through them or even be bothered by them unless she wants to view them. Which I think has happened 1 time, and after about 50 pictures she was done. If things keep up though, I"ll have that 1TB hard drive full of car photo's by the end of this year though and then I don't know what I'll do.

That's a lot of pictures... or at least it would be with my toy camera.  Yours?  Well, even your old one took pictures with more resolution/size than the hard drive capacities of most home computers not all too long ago.   

[hemigeno]

Some interior compartment shots.  You can see where the Upper Door Frame paint has been applied (black interior car, of course).

[hemigeno]

Some shots of the rear window channel(s) and supports.  The third one shows a bit of body color overspray on the "bare metal" support that shouldn't be there - but I'm sure Vance will be cleaning all that up even though it doesn't show on a finished car.  They had only removed the masking in a lot of areas on Thursday, so there are tons of details that hadn't been addressed just yet.  I'm still amazed at Vance's overall thoroughness.

[hemigeno]

Even though not a whole lot of details are evident to the casual observer, Vance has spent a ton of time getting details just right in the trunk compartment - and there is still a fair amount of work left to do.  The whole car is still very much a work in progress, but I love what I see so far.

[hemigeno]

I've tried to ocassionally take pictures of areas which aren't too visible once the car is done in various stages of the restoration process.  These are examples of that effort in the trunk compartment.

In retrospect, I wish I had taken a ton more pictures before the restoration started - even though I have quite a few.  There's always that "one little detail" I forgot to snap a picture of.  Hopefully that won't be the case with the finished product anyway...

[hemigeno]

More trunk compartment shots.  He was gettin' pretty happy with that seam sealer gun, waddnhe? 

[hemigeno]

The last two shots show the decklid catch, which almost always has a nice shadow effect behind the catch itself with primer showing through.  You can also see the back edge of the decklid has primer showing through there as well.

[hemigeno]

I took some shots to remind myself to remind Vance that the rear vertical seam between the corner and valance had not been redone.  It is indeed supposed to be an open seam, but Vance hasn't had a chance to fix that area yet.  No big deal, but the last time out there I didn't take any straight-on shots.

[hemigeno]

More soon-to-be-hidden trunk compartment detail shots

[hemigeno]

I took some pictures of the wing washers/supports.  These were welded in place prior to paint being applied to the trunk and quarterpanel area, so quite often there is a little bit of overspray on the edge of the washer itself.  You can (almost) see how Vance left a bit of overspray in that last picture (sorry it's a bit out of focus and has some camera flash).  Most of the underside would have had little, if any, overspray.

[hemigeno]

Back to the passenger's compartment, with some pictures of the transmission tunnel with console brackets, and passenger's side area.

[hemigeno]

A few shots of the roof and A-pillar corners

[hemigeno]

The last picture is of the windshield channel, ready to receive the clips.  I still need to order these from Mr. G's, but am trying to find screws that match the originals a little better.  The originals from my car were a gold (cadmium?) color and most of the repro screws I've seen are silver.  Yeah, I'm a nutcase, worrying about screws that are never seen once the moulding is installed   

[hemigeno]

Some inner fender shots with everything pretty well in place

[hemigeno]

Vance raised the car up for me so I could take some undercarriage shots.  I started underneath from inside the engine compartment, looking forward at the nosecone.  Not a common perspective shot once the radiator's in place, that's for sure.

[hemigeno]

One more nosecone shot, and then a couple three of the firewall-to-framerail area.  It totally depended on the mood of the Hamtramck paint guy as to how much paint was sprayed in this area.  Some cars got lots of paint, some got overspray and not much more    This is probably somewhere in the middle.

[hemigeno]

Some shots of the battery tray and radiator yoke area.  This area didn't always get thorough paint coverage, especially on the underside of the tray.  Some cars (Jim B. has an example of this) didn't even get much on the inner frame rail where the top ledge of the rail casts a "shadow".  I think Vance has decided to redo some of the areas around the framerail from what is shown here.

[hemigeno]

Ever wonder what Mopar hood hinges look like in the closed position?  Wonder no more... 

The last two pictures are a neat detail.  On the lip that joins the cowl to the firewall, there is a locating hole used in the assembly process.  One of the Hamtramck sealant worker's steps was to squirt a dollop of sealant in this hole, presumably to keep it from becoming a gutter downspout for any rainwater which travelled down that channel.  Quite often, they goobered the sealant up so much in this hole area that some of it would leak down and stick to the firewall.  Vance has seen this a lot, and usually replicates the look - which you see here.

[maxwellwedge]

Funny how the J-nuts are positioned in that picture. Most I have seen are positioned "slid-in" to the edge which is how they are designed to work. Disco is identical to the way yours are. Cool.

[hemigeno]

One more shot of the firewall area where it joins the floor pan.  Not a whole lot of paint coverage, but again - that was at the whim of the Hamtramck worker.  You can see the seam sealer sticking through the joint.

The last two pictures are of the hood underside, where the primer sticks out like a sore thumb against that red.