Parts arrival day! My first shipment of parts arrived today on the back of a semi-trailer. Check out some of the photos. The driver of the truck and I moved the stuff off of the trailer without much of a problem. I was extremely excited to get my parts! The parts didn't look too bad and the company didn't do too bad a job of crating the stuff. I have no basis of comparison for this but it seemed pretty secure.
I did notice that a lot of stuff was not included in this shipment and they were a little sloppy on what they kept put in the box. The engine had the exhaust manifolds removed and they didn't keep the engine lift rings.
May 2, 2001:
Spent most of this evening at work. I'm trying to get the garage set up so that it will be ready when I bring the kit back on Sunday.
May 4-6, 2001:
The time to pick up my kit from Factory Five finally arrived! I was extremely excited to travel up to Massachusetts to go and pickup the car. I had already confirmed the rental truck and flight to get up there. I've documented the trip in detail on the photo page so click here to go there.
Special thanks to Nate and Kelly for hosting me at their house and Nate for making the long trip with me back from Mass. It would have been a long drive by myself. Also much thanks to Derrick, Curt, Maurice, Karen and JT for helping me unload the vehicle back in Newport News! That darn thing was heavy! :-)
May 11,2001:
Haven't done much with the kit this past week. Started my new class for the summer term this week. This is going to keep me pretty busy since it meets on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings for 3 hours. No big deal. Sleep is for the weak!
May 12-13, 2001:
Spent most of this weekend cleaning the donor parts. I cleaned up the rear end, steering rack and bell housing. I opened up the cover for the rear end and changed out the oil. I noticed that the cover was missing three bolts and was also dented pretty bad. I requested Indy Mustang to send me the missing stuff so it should be here with the final shipment of parts.
Time: 6 hours
May 18-19, 2001:
Drove up to DC on Friday night so that I could head up to Carlisle for the Import/Kit Car Show on Saturday. The weather wasn't looking too good but I decided to go up anyway. Neil and I drove up the next morning to check out the show. The weather turned out to be very nice on Saturday. I got lots of good ideas from looking at other people's cars. Check out the photos. We left the car show around 2 PM and I dropped Neil off at his house. I headed back to Newport News to attend JT's graduation party later that evening.
May 20, 2001:
Spent some time today preparing the frame for the POR 15 process. This consisted of using my angle grinde to take off the weld spattering that was all over the frame. There was quite a lot of this spattering on the frame. I also sanded some of the rust off the square frame members.
Time: 4 hours
May 21-22, 2001:
I took two days of leave this week to catch up on my school work and also do more stuff with the car. I spent most of Monday studying and preparing the frame for painting the next day. I followed the directions from Restomotive (POR 15 Company) to prepare the frame.
Using my engine hoist and homemade dolly, I pulled the frame out to my front driveway. I sprayed it down with the Marine Clean to get any of the residual grease off. After rinsing it off, I applied the Metal Ready Etch and rinsed that off also. Restomotive recommended that I dry the frame off overnight because the POR 15 needs a bone dry surface to adhere to.
I got up early the next morning to start the POR 15 painting process. Boy did I underestimate the painting time. I figured that it would take me maybe two hours at the most for each coat of paint. Seven hours later I finished the first coat! Painting the frame by hand is a very tedious process which reminded me of painting jungle-gym equipment for school projects.
The results that I got from painting the POR 15 weren't too bad. I highly recommend using less than more POR 15. If you apply too much then you can end up with runs in the finish. Once you get a run, it is very hard to get rid of especially after it dries. This stuff is really tough!
Time: 18 hours
May 25, 2001:
Today was a training holiday for Memorial Day so I used the time to paint the Top Coat over the POR 15. This process took about 10 hours today. I ran out of paint so I need to continue this process at a later date. The parts that I did paint came out very nice. I feel very confident that the whole POR 15 process is going to protect my frame well. It is a lot of work but it appears to be worth the effort.
Time: 10 hours
May 26-28, 2001:
No more car stuff for the rest of the Memorial Day weekend. I went up to DC again to visit Nate and Kelly and to also attend another friend's wedding in Maryland on Kent Island.
Parts arrival day! My first shipment of parts arrived today on the back of a semi-trailer. Check out some of the photos. The driver of the truck and I moved the stuff off of the trailer without much of a problem. I was extremely excited to get my parts! The parts didn't look too bad and the company didn't do too bad a job of crating the stuff. I have no basis of comparison for this but it seemed pretty secure. 