Which project am I working on?

Didn't take a lot of pictures of the new project ... and you ask what new project. Well between everything else going on I took a little diversionary track down the road of helping a few friends and family over the last few weeks. One friend was updating his bathroom and needed my help because he had seen some of the results from my own home improvement projects and he was a self professed renovation rookie. Not a problem I said but a few weekends later and time away from my project meant not much got accomplished on the corvette. But here are a few pictures of the progress:

So that is it ... I cleaned up a few parts and repainted the hood latches and cleaned up the convertible frame. With that I removed the latches on the header of the frame and the header itself. It has some rust that will need some welding and cleaning up before I can por15 the whole thing. I did get the convertible latches cleaned up, primed and painted but will need to redo the chrome paint job because I got a few runs in the finish.

As you can see I didn't get much done on the car these last few weeks, with helping on a bathroom renovation and another car... what another car? Yep but it wasn't one of mine, it was Grandma's. Over the last few months going all the way back to this winter someone had backed into her rear bumper and cracked to the point it needed duct tape to hold it together. Well between friends friendly jokes, duct tape expenses and a son-in-laws growing shady tree garage expansion and willingness to be my first painting experiment. She took me up on the offer to let me replace the bumper with a junk yard reconditioned one. I stripped the replacement bumper, primed and sealed. Then broke out the new paint sprayer gun and went to learning some valuable lessons on painting. Several of those are to mix all the color you need once because it will vary and the pot time (duration) is large don't worry about unused portion setting. Take your time cleaning the gun after color is on and let it dry out completely and really blow out any residue. You don't have to worry about flash time, etc... for getting clear on after color. Speaking of getting the color on ... no matter what the part you have to get that piece up level or at least close enough to level so you can spray it at eye level or at least get down low enough to the piece so that you are eye level. I missed some spots and created coverage areas that I didn't notice until after I got the clear on. An the biggest lesson of them all .... once clear is on you are done so make darn sure you like the color and the coverage before you start the clear. I thought I could go back and lay color in areas that was not satisfactory and paid the price with a sub par result. Well I did manage to recover from those mistakes only after several more nights of repainting but here are the results of a before and a few afters. Thank you Grandma for letting me experiment and learn some painting techniques on your replacement bumper find.




The new bumper is on ...

and a few close ups, see if you can spot my mistakes...
Well even though it didn't turn out perfect, I really did enjoy the results and the fun doing it not only for the experiences gained but getting the chance to do something for Grandma as a favor back. Thank you Grandma for all the wonderful love and support you have provided our family over the years.enjoy the new bumper and the money I hope I saved you.