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Messages - bryes

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1
Paint and Body / Re: 78 Malibu Paint
« on: December 12 2018, 06:48:06 PM »
Thanks! Yeah I do like the rims. It would look a lot better assembled with new chrome to set things off.here


Believe me, I'd really like to find a way that I can somehow live in the same location as my workshop. In the last 12 years, I've moved from Ohio to CA to Ohio to GA to Ohio to NY to Ohio to GA, so moving my whole operation hasn't happened yet. I kind of have to  follow the work I guess.


I did take a "permanent" job in Ohio after CA that lasted less than three years, which is when I bought the house where I set up shop. I keep on hoping I can find a way to work remotely or have steady work somewhere, but it just hasn't materialized. I'm in GA now but will likely have to leave in March 2019 again.

2
General Buick Tech / Re: Newbie w. New GN
« on: December 12 2018, 06:25:24 PM »
Well without this site I wouldn't even know where to start other than swapping out parts.  Thanks for that!


Yes, driving it is nice. It's just about like a normal car now, runs close to how I'd imagine they should when most everything is right at least.  I don't put many miles on it, but I do daily drive it frequently when the weather is cooperative. It's a fun car and real car people appreciate it I think.

3
Paint and Body / Re: 78 Malibu Paint
« on: December 01 2018, 10:38:25 AM »
Unfortunately, we had nothing but problems with the clear coat on this car. At the time we believed our problems were related to solvent pop by not allowing enough time before respraying the clear, so too much buildup etc. So, after sanding it all back down to the base coat and respraying to remove the "solvent pop spots", I resprayed the 3-4 layers of clear, except this time I waited far longer between coats (1- 2 hours).


Unfortunately, this strategy ended in a similar result (although it was better).... and also resulted in the same massive setback, sand down the entire body again.


After this, we finally solved the problem by changing 2 and only 2 things:
#1 the air hose
#2 the paint


This time instead of using summit clear we bought a $500 / gal can of PPG clear. The difference was of course worth the extra coin.


Because of these setbacks and me living in another state again (no jobs for me in Ohio), I can only work on this car during my "Vacation". So needless to say, it isn't going to get done quickly...


Attached is the car in it's current state. Only the hood needs to be sprayed still that i'm aware of. Other than that, it's mostly reassembly and buffing...


4
General Buick Tech / Re: Newbie w. New GN
« on: December 01 2018, 09:55:12 AM »

Sorry for not posting sooner, but life kind of got in the way for the last couple of years. I was able to fix the problem and the car has been pretty much trouble free for the last year, so I am confident that the issues discussed previously have been solved. I think the car had 2 problems simultaneously, so that is why it was so maddening.


   Problem #1, the "A" connector on my ignition module terminal was probably making intermittent/poor contact.


To fix the problem, I was able to slide the metal end on the wiring harness side "A" terminal out and bend it so it made better contact. There's a picture in this thread about 10 posts back that clearly shows what I'm talking about. After that, no code 42 SES light ever again and no more failing computers.


After problem #1 was fixed, I still had an intermittent issue where the ignition would cut out every so often. Sometimes it was when I hit a bump in the road, more often then not it was at WOT or close but less frequently it seemed random....It felt like someone just turned off the key for a split second. Then it would cut back on after a split second, often backfiring. I blew out my muffler one time this way. The SES light would come on for a split second, but there would be no code. This went on for a year or so, often it seemed to come and go. Because I had just bent the connector to "fix" the issue, I thought it might still be "Problem #1".So I eventually soldered in a new Casper's Ign. module connector from. Not long after that my car died in the driveway (no-start), which is when I found the real culprit.


   Problem #2, the ignition module.
My first inclination was that my solder job was to blame, but it wasn't. I remember next going through the "no-start" tree and coming up with a bad ign module as a possibility. Even though I had already replaced this part, I bought a new AC/Delco (the previous was a "standard" part I think) unit and I've had no issues since.

5
General Buick Tech / Re: Newbie w. New GN
« on: April 16 2016, 07:47:16 PM »
Sorry for dropping the ball on this for almost a year. I've been working out of state and have been focused more on painting my uncles Malibu as posted in the "bodywork" section. I intend to get to this soon, I'm back in Ohio the next two weekends so we'll see what happens then.

6
Paint and Body / Update
« on: April 16 2016, 07:41:04 PM »
We kind of had a major setback last fall on this project. We got almost everything cleared and were in the process of water sanding and buffing it out. Everything looked great until we were in the final stages of buffing. Since we were in a darker garage everything looked fine. Then we opened the garage door so direct sunlight fell on the car and what we noticed was horrible... tiny specks in the clear. It wasn't contamination like one might think, but if you look up "solvent pop" on the net, that's our best guess as to what it was. Looking at it under a magnifying glass, it looks like little tiny voids in the clear coat. You won't even notice it until the light hits it just right and reflects back at tiny little points of light. I bet on a lighter color you'd never know it was there, but black.... ugh. 


Assuming the  solvent pop theory the solution is to allow more time between coats and spray at cooler temperatures to allow the solvents to completely evaporate. We sanded all of the clear off the car and re coated everything, this time waiting more that an hour between coats of clear when spraying. Yes it sucked and unfortunately it did the same thing....


So now we have to sand that stupid car down again. I'm convinced that the paint itself is bad. My uncle tried to get some satisfaction from summit Racing to no avail. Next time it will be sprayed with another brand of clear.


Kind of a bummer, but the car will be even straighter after all this sanding!





The picture below is the clear after being water sanded and partially buffed out. I was really pleased with how straight it looked. Very hard to find imperfections. You can't see the solvent pop in this picture but it's there.  I have some others someplace where you can, I'll try to find those some other time.

7
Paint and Body / back in black!
« on: September 08 2015, 09:47:15 PM »
Over the weekend we got the car painted black with four coats of clear. Below are some pictures. Just water sanding , buffing and assembly to go I think. Also a pic of the incredible assembly of spray guns that I've collected.  I'll eventually have to get some better pictures.


Overall the body is straight, we did see a couple imperfections, nothing major. The paint has fairly considerable orange peel in places.

8
Paint and Body / Re: 78 Malibu Paint
« on: August 24 2015, 10:16:34 PM »
This weekend went a lot better for this project. The only thing  that turned out messed up was the second fender where a small dent became noticeable after I sprayed it black. I sprayed a fender, both doors, the trunk lid and a bunch of smaller panels (fillers etc.) in single stage. Then the trunk lid, fillers and a couple of smaller panels were then sprayed with 4 coats of clear. It's  summit racing paint btw; I beleive it's made by kirkar. High temp reducer with medium temp activator. The ambient temperature was roughly low 80s. I sprayed it with a binks 7 B/C, it's a conventional gun.


The pictures below all have the 4 coats of clear. The paint is really nice by my standards at least, low orange peal. I could really load it onto the horizontal surfaces. But I will say there are noticeable imperfections in the clear that aren't visible in the pictures, so we'll have some water sanding to do. That's the bad thing about not having a booth. A few small bugs got into the paint but luckily the dragon fly that swooped in didn't stick! Overall I'll take it.


Sorry the pictures are so terrible. I wish I would have taken them when the trunk lid was outside in the sun. It looked great imo.




9
Paint and Body / Good bad and ugly
« on: August 16 2015, 10:36:39 PM »
Well after blocking out the car for the majority of the summer, we're starting to spray the detached components black, no clear yet. So far the results have been a mixed bag.


The good:


The fender in the below  pictures turned out really well overall. I started off spraying the trunk lid, the inside turned out well. The outside turned out to be orange pealed fairly significantly. I think the reason was that I was using medium reducer (70 - 80F , it was about 85 ambient), so I thinned out the paint with a little high temp reducer and the outside of the fender came out really well as you can see in the pictures below.


The fender IMO was about as good as can be expected without a booth. A few specks in the paint that I'm sure will water sand out easily. It looks really straight to me in person, no waviness at all. The paint really flowed out nice, which I can't say about everything else.


The bad:
I had a couple of small runs on the fillers and the fender on the back side. Nothing major. The trunk lid was orange peeled badly, but it's not a show stopper because it will be cleared and water sanded. Sorry for no pictures, just imagine a trunk lid without much gloss bc of the orange peel!


When I started spraying the door my gun started dripping paint out of the fluid nozzle onto the door. We found out that the paint line on my pressure pot had some old paint that was flaking off and getting stuck in the between the fluid needle and seat (if that's what it was called) allowing paint to flow when the trigger wasn't pulled. I had to clean out all the old flaky paint from the line with a .22 gun cleaning brush.


The ugly:
I had to remove the fittings from the flexible lines to fit the cleaning brush in. The fittings are a kind of compression design  that have a brass ring that is clamped, similar to a water line compression fitting. Well in retrospect I should have known better, but to get that brass piece to slide over the rubber line, I lubed it with "tire wet" which works great for mounting tires, but as it turns out should stay as far away from paint as humanly possible.


Although I flushed out the lines with MEK thinking that would be sufficient to take care of the lube, when I went to spray the door I was met with the worst case fish eyes I've ever seen. I guess that little bit of stuff contaminated the whole batch of paint too, and even pouring it into a new container and spraying with another gun didn't help, the fish eyes were still there. Worst of all, I sprayed almost the entire door before realizing what was happening, so that is going to be a real pain. Unfortunately, the rest of the weekend was spent cleaning the spray equipment and sanding down my screw ups!


Sorry I don't have pictures of the bad and ugly, I'm hoping to wipe any evidence of that episode out of existence.



10
Paint and Body / Re: 78 Malibu Paint
« on: June 28 2015, 08:35:57 PM »
Update :

Progress has slowed because I'm working two states away now. We're still. block sanding. The doors seem to be the biggest problem followed by the ps quarter which is about done hopefully. Below is the current state. ps quarter, door and fillers , trunk lid and ds quarter which seems to be turning out nice.

11
General Buick Tech / Re: Newbie w. New GN
« on: June 06 2015, 10:39:38 PM »
Ok ill try what you suggest when I get a chance. It might be a couple of weeks unfortunately, I'm working out of state for awhile.

12
Paint and Body / Re: 78 Malibu Paint
« on: June 05 2015, 10:31:41 PM »
Car is completely primed now. We did wind up using spi epoxy. Here's a few pics. A few runs but that's what happens when I spray!


13
General Buick Tech / Re: Newbie w. New GN
« on: June 05 2015, 10:00:55 PM »
Different brand rebuilds

14
General Buick Tech / Re: Newbie w. New GN
« on: June 05 2015, 08:14:32 AM »
That is the third one to go bad in the last 500 miles. Any ideas what causes this?

15
Paint and Body / Re: 78 Malibu Paint
« on: June 05 2015, 12:53:47 AM »
Taking a welding class or at least having an experienced person to guide you will save a lot of aggregation I think..


Welding is great fun except for the part where a spark flies in your ear and you can hear your ear canal sizzling. Sucks big!

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