WILD ELK MAKES AN IMPRESSION

Greetings!

Wow! We're in the month of December already. In another two weeks or so we'll experience the winter equinox and have the shortest day of this year. From that point forward the days will be getting longer and we have the hope of another glorious spring. 

This time of year is also ripe with the presence of loved ones. Here's a picture of my young son Joey, a member of the US Marine Corps posing with Ike Anderson, one of his platoon buddies. My son is out of uniform on the left and arrived home from Ft. Benning, Georgia yesterday. He reports back after the first of the year for further training but it's great to see him again. Once he completes the MOS training at Ft. Benning we'll apply to get him enough leave to serve a full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That will have Joey serving somewhere in the world for two years. Oorah!

Since this is a blog about the cars being served up hot and steaming at Desert Classics I'll include a photo of the '05 Mazda that I'm working to rebuild. The owners of Grace, the '68 Camaro that's been featured on this blog recently, were traveling in wild country a couple of weeks ago and hit an elk. The animals are so long legged that it hit mostly the grille, hood and fender as it sailed up and over the passenger side of the little car. The windshield wasn't damaged at all.

It's back together again now with a new A/C condenser, radiator, & support, hood, fender, grille and passenger headlight. I just got it into the paint booth before my son Joey came home and distracted me. Although the photo doesn't show it, I've got it all sanded and I'm starting to mask it for paint. Since the passenger front fender was replaced, I intend to paint it and then blend the paint color into the passenger door a bit. That way, if the paint isn't an exact match (is it ever?) the eye won't be able to pick out the difference in the color of the replacement parts. The same procedure will take place on the driver's side. I'll paint the hood and then blend the color into the driver's fender, but not all the way back to the driver's door. 

There was a noticeable dent in the top of the driver's fender, so I thought I'd repair it since I was going to repaint the fender anyway. For those who haven't seen the process I've attached the following pictures of the fender with the paint sanded away to bare metal. I used an orbital sander with 80 grit paper for this. Then, using a 30 year-old Uni-Spotter stud gun, I welded a pair of studs to the bare metal in the deepest part of the dent. Using a slide hammer that tightens up on the nail, I pulled the dent out of the fender and ground the studs away. Finally, I used a bit of plastic body filler (bondo) to cover the imperfections and allow me to sand it back to perfection. Now, it's covered in grey primer and I'll paint it with a sealer coat before the red color coat and clear coat. Since I'm painting the entire front sheetmetal, I encouraged the car owners to allow me to paint the front urethane bumper also. It was covered with bug guts and marred by stone chips, but once the fenders and hood were refinished, the bumper would look sickly and out of place if it wasn't painted at the same time. I'll be painting it tomorrow so I'll include some photos of the finished car in my next post. 

Doug