Go Mango Boys Project Car

[GoMangoBoys]

During the efforts to align the doors, I discovered a problem with the new RH quarter panel.  The door was still on when we installed the quarter panel, and we thought that it was aligned well, but when re-aligning the door, I discovered that when the top of the door was aligned to the top of the quarter panel, the midway body line did not line up.  The line on the quarter panel was too low.  I was advised to bump up the corner, but I do not have that skill.  I actually just gave up and used duraglass to reshape the corner.  I hated that solution and ground it back off.  I was concerned that the corner made out of filler was bound to fail.  Instead, I built up the corner with weld, and a very tiny amount of duraglass. 

[GoMangoBoys]

While aligning the doors, I also discovered another problem with the door mating up to the quarter panel.  The upper part of the quarter panel had less curvature compared to the door.  I was able to cut the corner and pry it out and re-weld.  It now matches up much better.

[GoMangoBoys]

As best that we can figure, the RH front fender is an aftermarket replacement.  It had no antenna hole.  One of my gold nuggets from the swap meet at the nationals in Carlisle this summer was the project car for sale right near the entrance that I came in.  It was literally the first thing that I saw when I came in.m  I was able to get all the required measurements to locate the antenna hole.

[GoMangoBoys]

Before I re-installed the hood, I wanted to paint the springs.  Since they would be stretched when people see them, I needed to stretch them to paint them.

[GoMangoBoys]

Once everything was all aligned, I primed the whole car again.  In blocking and prepping to paint, I found some dents in the hood.  I was able to mostly pound out the one behind the hood scoop, but the ones in the very front of the hood were not able to be pounded since there were 2 layers of steel right there.  I used duraglass to fix that area as well as a little in the area behind the hood scoop.  Someone else may have known how to fix it otherwise, but I don't.

[GoMangoBoys]

Finally, we got to the point of painting the car.  The basecoat went well, but the clear coat did not.  I had the gun pressure set too low and we had a huge amount of texture and orange peel after 2 very heavy coats

[GoMangoBoys]

We decided that the best course of action to correct the bad clear coat was to sand it down and re-spray the clear.  We sanded the whole car with 800.  We had a few spots on the LH front fender where we broke thru to the primer.  The fender was easy to tape off and respray the base coat before re-spraying the clear.   We also had issues on both front pillars and re-sprayed the basecoat on them also. Unfortunately, there was a spot on the LH rear quarter where we broke thru the clear but did not appear to have harmed the base coat.  Once the new clear was applied, there was a very obvious blemish to the base coat.  Otherwise, we are VERY happy with the end result of our paint job.

[GoMangoBoys]

Just before we painted the car, we realized that we had not done anything with the front and rear valence panels.  When we got them out to work on them, we discovered that they both needed a lot of work.  Lacking the energy for doing more bodywork, we ordered a couple of new AMD panels.  Tonight we got them primed and will paint them in a couple days.

[GoMangoBoys]

A few months back, we rebuilt the A833 OD transmission that I bought at the 2019 Fall Carlisle.  My buddy that helped us rebuild it is a Muncie guy and he and my boy finished it up without me.  Shortly after my boy got home with it, my buddy called and said he thought that he installed the 3-4 shift lever incorrectly for the OD version.  I told him that he had put it on wrong.  I have yet to correct it.  We ran into an issue with excessive wear on the case where the shaft for the cluster gear goes thru the back.  Brewers set me up with a cast-iron case to replace the aluminum one.  Sadly, I had to buy some expensive parts for the cover to go with the otherwise inexpensive cast-iron case but it is now a beast of a transmission.  I think this will pair nicely with the 3.23 sure grip and the 478 CU IN stroker that we will build shortly.

[xx88man]

You're making tons of progress. It's going to be a fun car to drive!!

[GoMangoBoys]

I bought this car to do a project with my son.  We gave done a ton of work together.  Since he went to school in August, I have been working solo.  I wanted to get the car painted sooner, but I am glad that he was able to help me while paint the car while he was home on break.  Once the car was painted, we still needed to paint the valance panels.  While I painted the car, I felt he should paint the valance panels.  He was nervous but I told him that if he screws it up, we can redo it.  He did a great job.  I should have let him paint the whole car.  In the end, he can say that he painted part of his car.

[anlauto]

That's very rewarding right there

[Shoooter]

Thanks for posting. This is one of my favorite threads on the site.  I'm hoping I can start my own one with my boys. Keep it up

[7E-Bodies]

Very nice, all in all...I'll be trying it myself soon with F8. Looking forward to your assembly pics.

[YellowThumper]

Tons of progress there.
Thanks for the detailed write up.