Finally found one...Now it has a new floor.

[watchamakalit]

My truck got a woody today.....pics to come. Gotta unwrap it first. Gonna be nice to lose the vibration from the old "custom" front driveshaft.  Plus I got new stickers.

[watchamakalit]

As promised.

 

Quality is top notch. Great company to deal with, and an awesome product. Now I need spring to get here so I can go get it dirty.

[watchamakalit]

Added a new console latch, console block off, and some taillight washers to the truck, courtesy of @dzim@ zimdak industries.

  Also changed the tail lights back to incandescent bulbs, as I have heard leds will cause the cruise control to not function. Haven't had the truck out to test it yet.  Got my ashtray light installed and put a new bulb in the cigar lighter lamp. 

 

 

Most exciting to me is the bucket seat trim, what a difference it makes in the cleanliness of the interior. Thanks @Jolietjeep@

 

Getting excited for spring. Roads are finally clean and with mostly above freezing temperatures in the 10 day forecast, I am considering waking her up from hibernation a bit early.

[watchamakalit]

Today is the day. I swapped all the tools over and put the MJ back into daily driver service. So glad winter is mostly done.

[watchamakalit]

Let me preface this with a caveat, I am not a body guy, due to my lack of patience.  Pictures don't seem to do it justice, but I started to do some exterior clean up. Decided to sand off the failing clear coat edges and try to feather them into the paint. Hoping to improve the overall looks a bit. After several hours of work and a few lessons on what's too aggressive I have the passenger door and fender ready to polish.  So far my method seems to work as long as I don't get excited like I did on the front section of the door.   I started with a 400 wet sand focussed on the edge of the clear to take off the failing product.  Then a 600 wet and finally start polishing.  Could sand finer but the paint isn't very thick so I am trying to be minimal in what I take off. Just trying to blend it all to a consistent color and remove the white "fade line". Any suggestions to make this a simple project are encouraged.   Not shooting for show quality just trying to clean it up a bit. 

 

[watchamakalit]

Well the passenger side is done except for a bit of polishing and wax. Looking much better. Can't wait to put a shine on it.

 

[89 MJ]

Just an idea, instead of polishing it, you could do a 50-50 mix of acetone and boiled linseed oil to shine it up. It’s a lot quicker and easier than polishing and the oil will help slow rust, but you will need to reapply it every 6 months to a year. 

[watchamakalit]

42 minutes ago, 89 MJ said:

Just an idea, instead of polishing it, you could do a 50-50 mix of acetone and boiled linseed oil to shine it up. It’s a lot quicker and easier than polishing and the oil will help slow rust, but you will need to reapply it every 6 months to a year. 

I have looked into that. My issue with the boiled linseed\acetone mix is the tackyness. I am new to the cut and buff \polishing side of things and thought what better project to get aquatinted with the concept, than a truck with an already gone paint job.  If I get crazy and screw it up I might just have to rework the whole truck and paint it.

 

Edit:this is just kinda a start of the project  I have plans to sand and neutralize as much of the rust as possible. I know I can't stop it but I'm gonna try real hard to slow it down as much as possible.

[89 MJ]

21 minutes ago, watchamakalit said:

I have looked into that. My issue with the boiled linseed\acetone mix is the tackyness. I am new to the cut and buff \polishing side of things and thought what better project to get aquatinted with the concept, than a truck with an already gone paint job.  If I get crazy and screw it up I might just have to rework the whole truck and paint it.

 

Edit:this is just kinda a start of the project  I have plans to sand and neutralize as much of the rust as possible. I know I can't stop it but I'm gonna try real hard to slow it down as much as possible.

Gotcha, that makes sense. If you want to plant the truck at some point, it definitely makes sense to keep oil off of the paint. 

[watchamakalit]

4 hours ago, 89 MJ said:

Gotcha, that makes sense. If you want to plant the truck at some point, it definitely makes sense to keep oil off of the paint. 

Some day I would love to do a complete strip down and rebuild "tomahawk style". But that's a long ways off if it ever happens.

[watchamakalit]

First go at the polishing thing. Wow what a difference. I am definitely learning as I go here, but so far I'm happy with the results. Not sure the pics do it justice. Wishing I would have done this years ago when there was still a little paint on the hood. Guess it's like going bald, once the hair is gone it's too late for ponytail. Lol

 

[watchamakalit]

Any advice or tips from the body work knowledgeable among us would be welcome.

[89 MJ]

Painting tips, rust repair tips, or bodywork tips? I suppose I'll go over all of them. I know you've done floors in this and have your CJ, so you've got some experience and I'm sure you know quite a few of these tips already, but I'll go over a bunch of body repair tips, from rust repair all the way to paint work. 

 

For rust repair, I’ve got a ton of tips. 
I’d recommend you get a sandblaster. Don’t use it on large, flat panels that you plan on reusing, like the bedsides, centers of the doors, hood, etc., because you’ll warp them from the head (you can do it, but you need to hold the nozzle for the blaster nearly parallel to the panel, it’s just tricky). It is super nice for something like your inner wheel wells when patching the bedsides, as it allows you to quickly get rid of the rust. Same with suspension parts, door jambs, rockers, cab corners, and it’s a good idea to lightly go over your welds with it to find pinholes in the welds. It will probably result in you finding a lot more rust though, so you might be cussing me out if you do this haha. You also need to expoxy prime any sandblasted spots because the metal will be very rough and porous.
 

When cutting the rust out, go at least 1” farther out than the rust than you see to make sure you cut all of the rust on the inside out. 
 

When you’re welding new panels in, butt weld everything, don’t overlap your panels because the line can be seen in certain lighting. It’s also a spot for rust to start again. It is more work, but will leave you with a better final product. You want roughly 1/16” gap between your new panel and the old panel you’re welding to so that the weld will penetrate. 

 

Similarly, weld the whole panel in. It’s fairly common to tack a panel in and then either seam seal or spread body filler over it to fill in the gaps. Don’t do that. It’s quicker, but it’s not a proper fix. Might as well fix it properly. 
 

Hang on a second, I’m going to switch to my laptop and keep editing this. 

 

Ok, I'm back, whether you like it or not.

 

I recommend radiusing the corners on your patches. It's a little bit more work, but it will help spread the heat out a little bit when welding the panel in, helping to prevent warping the panel. Also, don't do a solid bead welding the panel in, start with a couple of tack welds, then do the entire perimeter as tack welds, roughly every inch to 1.25" apart. Then go around and do a 25-50% overlap on your previous tack with a new tack. Repeat this until the whole panel is welded in. It is also good practice to use a blow gun on an area with a 1" radius around the weld right after welding to help prevent warping the panel.

 

It's also good practice to use weld though primer on the back sides of the panels you're welding in. It pretty much will just add longevity to your repair. Sand/lightly grind/lightly sandblast the back side of your panel and then hit it with the weld through primer to make sure it sticks when you weld the panel in.

 

 

 

 

Now I'll start rambling about bodywork.

 

Good bodywork starts with good metal work. Take your time on rust repair, otherwise you need to learn how to either live with warped panels or learn to shrink panels. This also applies to the quality of panels you're starting with. If you're doors, fenders, or hood are beat full of dents and dings, consider replacing them to save yourself time and money worth of product.

 

If you have any large dents, a slide hammer and stud welder for pulling dents will be your friend. Smaller dents should be hammer and dollied.

 

You don't necessarily strip the whole truck to bare metal, but you do need to make sure that there is no cracked paint or crow's feet in the current paint, otherwise that will come back. If the truck has been painted one time, other than the original paint, you should be fine, but if it's already been painted at least twice, I'd strip at least the panels that have several layers of paint. There is always a chance of a reaction happening between the old paint and the new primer, so talk to your local paint shop if you need help figuring out if the product will react. They should have people that can come out and help you figure out if you will have any issues, or they can help find what caused certain issues.

 

When it comes to spreading bodyfiller, it should never be thicker than the thickness of a credit card once it is sanded, otherwise it won't hold up. It will crack and come off over time. When spreading filler over welds, you really should use a fiberglass reinforced bodyfiller, then go over than with regular filler. You also need to go larger than the size of your dent to make sure you get the whole dent smoothed out. And when I say dent, I really mean low spot. In terms of bodyfiller, I really like the Evercoat Rage Xtreme and Evercoat Rage Ultra. The Xtreme is more for your main bodywork and the Ultra is for the finer stuff, but you can get away with the Ultra on the whole truck if its fairly straight. The Ultra is more just for filling in the tiny little pinholes in your other filler. Be advised, its expensive, but it holds up. My dad has been using this stuff for at least 20 years and is yet to have an issue with it. At the very least, do not use Bondo branded bodyfiller, or any of the really cheap stuff for that matter. Also make sure that the filler will work fine with both bare metal and primer. Always use a tack cloth followed by a wax and grease remover after sanding before applying more primer or filler to remove dust and any oils from your hands.

 

Something like a DA will save you a lot of time sanding, but you have to make sure you hold it flat, or you'll dig low spots into the panel. To be honest, only my first coat of primer was DA'd on my truck. The rest of it was hand blocked using various lengths of Durablocks. Use the longer blocks on large surfaces for the best results. It sucked, I had several weeks in blocking my truck, but the truck is pretty near to laser straight (other than the hood because we were almost out of primer, so I had to decide whether I wanted the hood primed again and I could get it straight, or if I wanted to use the primer as sealer and then paint it. I chose the latter because I was trying to get the truck done. I also may have warped my driver's bedside when doing rust repair because I was learning. Stripes hide that well...)

 

 

 

 

I think now we are onto paint and primer. Now this is really where it depends on how nice you want to make the truck. I'm going to recommend going with a basecoat-clearcoat as opposed to single stage paint because I think it is a little more forgiving and will hold up better to UV rays, but it is more expensive. I really like PPG products, but Akzo-Nobel are good too, and a little bit more affordable. 

 

A paint and primer gun can be the same paint gun, but you'll need a larger tip for primer. Something like whatever the purple Harbor Freight paint gun is works fine for primer. I'd talk to your paint supply company about a good, entry level to middle grade gun to use for paint and clearcoat. No need to go crazy with something like a SATA. My dad has been using the same middle grade paint for at least as long as I've been alive and he has had cars in books, magazines, and place in national shows. I'm not bragging, this is just to prove that you don't need super high end products to have good results. He doesn't even have a paint booth, just an exhaust fan, floor to almost ceiling plastic sheets for the paint area, a filtered air line to keep water out of the gun, and covers the floor with a plastic sheet.

 

Between your final block sand and your paint job, you should always use a sealer. This will help for when you get your first rock chip. It will help prevent that spot from rusting.

 

When you're spraying, make sure you go all the way off the panel to ensure even coverage. Also keep your gun roughly 12-18" away from the panel and keep the gun perpendicular to the panel.2-3 coats of primer should be fine. I'd do at least 3 coats of paint, you might need more if you're going with metallic paint, and then 3 coats of clear. Be careful not to get any runs in your sealer or your basecoat, as you don't need to sand either of those before moving on to the next step, whether it be paint or clearcoat. Your last coat of clear should be a little heavier than your first two so that it does not look dry when it is dry, but not so heavy that you have runs in it.

 

I don't know how crazy you're planning on getting with this, but I'll tell you what I'd do for a paint job and ways you could get around that. First, pull all of the glass. At a minimum, pull all of the trim for the glass (find something to hold the rear window trim off of the body to get paint behind it). Remove door handles, tail lights, front end trim, any badges, and bumper end caps. I'd also pull the hood, header panel, fenders, fender flares, doors, tailgate, b-pillar vents, cowl panel, and bed off of the truck in order to get everything painted. It also makes it a little easier to paint it, in my opinion. If you're going with the stock color, you really don't need to do the door jambs, the sides or bottoms of the hood or worry about the front of the bed and back of the cab, so you can get away with leaving the truck together, but you then have to live with either tape lines or overspray. You can also do the jambs of everything, then put the truck together and paint it, which reduces the chances of scratching the truck on reassembly (like I did on the driver's side b-pillar of my truck), but then you have to worry about overspray and tape lines again.

 

Make sure that you spray the panels the way they will sit on the truck. In other words, paint the hood parallel to the ground and the doors and tailgate perpendicular to a wall, the way that they would sit on the truck. This is especially important on metallic paints because the metallic will lay differently based on whether the panel is horizontal or vertical. If you paint a panel that lives vertically, like the hood or tailgate, parallel to the ground, the metallic will "flop" making the color appear either lighter or darker. This isn't as much of an issue with a solid color, but it is still good practice.

 

For basecoat-clearcoat, you can get away with a little cheaper paint, but you need to use a good clear coat. PPG Omni paint is fine; its what was used on my truck, but I did use a higher end PPG clear coat. 

 

 

 

 

In my opinion, a perfect paintjob looks like this: 

Entirely disassemble the vehicle

Rust repair

Strip/sandblast vehicle

Epoxy primer

Fix any spots sandblasting/stripping found

DA or block sand epoxy primer

Do bodyfiller work

Prime again

Final block

Sealer

Paint

Clear coat

Reassemble the whole truck

 

 

 

 

Sorry, I got a little long winded there. Feel free to reach out to me via PM or I can give you my phone number if you've got anymore questions. My dad has been in the bodywork and restoration industries for the better part of 40 years and he worked in an autobody supply place for a couple of years, and I can reach out to him if you want direct suggestions of products to use, such as paint and primer part numbers. Also, pages 1 and 2 of my MJ build thread cover a lot of the rust repair and up to page 4 covers the whole repaint process. 

Edited Wednesday at 02:33 AM by 89 MJ
I switched to my computer to make typing easier

[watchamakalit]

Holy cow! Way more explanation than I expected, lol.

If \when I do repaint I plan to keep the factory color for 2 reasons. 1. I really like the color. 2. I won't have to do jambs and firewall. Yes I'm lazy like that, lol. 

As of right now I just had plans to sand and "neutralize" the rust as best as possible.  Like I said before I know I can't stop it, but am also aware that full bodywork and proper repairs will probably require several panels being replaced. My truck has been my daily for many years and it has the battle scars to show it.  My bed is very heavily dented and the fender wells are gone, both doors show the fact that they too have lived their whole life in snow country. Front fenders are in decent shape but in my younger days I removed the air dam and cut them, something I now regret. This is why I'm not ready to tackle a complete repaint just yet.  I love the patina of my truck but at the same time would like it to look "loved".

I haven't started in on the rust spots yet, because it's the season to drive it not work on it, lol. I am after a slightly glossy look without complete body work I guess. Similar to what VGG does when he shine juices a patina job. But as mentioned, I might paint it one day so I would like to avoid the BLO.

 

Again, thank you for the info and guidance. It won't get done tomorrow, but there is a long term plan on place that will use all of this info and more.

[89 MJ]

16 hours ago, watchamakalit said:

Holy cow! Way more explanation than I expected, lol.

If \when I do repaint I plan to keep the factory color for 2 reasons. 1. I really like the color. 2. I won't have to do jambs and firewall. Yes I'm lazy like that, lol. 

As of right now I just had plans to sand and "neutralize" the rust as best as possible.  Like I said before I know I can't stop it, but am also aware that full bodywork and proper repairs will probably require several panels being replaced. My truck has been my daily for many years and it has the battle scars to show it.  My bed is very heavily dented and the fender wells are gone, both doors show the fact that they too have lived their whole life in snow country. Front fenders are in decent shape but in my younger days I removed the air dam and cut them, something I now regret. This is why I'm not ready to tackle a complete repaint just yet.  I love the patina of my truck but at the same time would like it to look "loved".

I haven't started in on the rust spots yet, because it's the season to drive it not work on it, lol. I am after a slightly glossy look without complete body work I guess. Similar to what VGG does when he shine juices a patina job. But as mentioned, I might paint it one day so I would like to avoid the BLO.

 

Again, thank you for the info and guidance. It won't get done tomorrow, but there is a long term plan on place that will use all of this info and more.

I think keeping it the factory color is a great idea. If I ever paint my Eagle, it will go back to the original colors for the same reasons you mentioned. It also prevents the project from spiraling. As soon as you disassemble it all the way, its hard to stop. Pretty soon, you've built a truck that's almost too nice to use.

 

For parts that won't be seen, I've had good luck with Chassis Saver. Similar to POR15, but it is only a 1 part product and seems to work better. Otherwise, some of those rust converter sprays like the Eastwood stuff seem to be okay. You might be able to get away with that on the parts that you see.

 

I think it will look great all polished out. Have you seen that VGG has a wipe on clear coat too? That product is intriguing to me. I get why you don't want to paint it now. It is a huge investment, both in time and money. 

[watchamakalit]

I have seen the wipe on clear coat and have considered it. Do you think it would last?  I'm just a bit apprehensive about trying it.

 

I was told by a guy with a dozen or so Comanches, that If I want a truck for show tear it down and repaint. He said the down side to the show paint is not wanting to drive it for fear of it getting ruined.  I still enjoy driving mine too much for fancy paint. Lol

[89 MJ]

I would guess it would last if you scuffed the surface first, but I can’t really sale for sure. I was going to try some over the summer, but ran out of time. 
 

That is the same problem I have. You make it nice and then you don’t want to drive it into towns with lots of traffic or you don’t want to drive it in the rain in case it turns to hail. I think you’ve got the right idea for what you want to do with it. Make it nicer, but don’t make it too nice to use.