Priya's SX/4 project

[milliard431]

That is why I made those suggestions about door panels to be made for the whole door. Yes the bottoms rust but 30 years of parking lot dings really add up. I hope they do make them.

[shaggimo]

Look at it this way.........If the car was made by GM, you would need that much filler just to smooth out the factory defects , I'm not kidding either, I don't think I'll ever go back to the GM side after working with an AMC .

[priya]

I recently finished prepping the underside of the hood for paint.  Due to all the intricate curves I couldn't use power tools so I had to do this all by hand - that was very exciting.   There was a lot of oil on the underside of the hood so first hauled it to the car wash and then gave it a wipe down with lacquer thinner.  Then it was sandblast the rusty areas, primarily where the battery was, featheredge those areas and a few spots where the paint was lifting, fine sand all surfaces and then I had it to this point:

The green/yellow areas are where I sprayed it with etching wash primer after the sandblasting to prevent rust until I got to sanding the rest of the hood's underside.

After that I coated the whole underside with etching wash primer which is as thin as water and almost as transparent:

This completes the paint preparation for the colour change on all non-exterior portions of the car, the engine compartment, the door frames, and the edges of the doors.

This weekend I asked my hubby to help me drill the holes for the rear spoiler.  We found some tips on the Eagle nest and started by making a cardboard pattern of the centre section:



We transferred the cardboard template to the hatch, centred it and using a sharpie marked the holes for the bolts.  As you can see a bit of sand has gotten into the interior:


Ward drilled 5/16" holes in the spots and the fit wasn't quite right so he drilled 3/8" holes to give us a bit of play to adjust the spoiler. On the underside of the hatch we simply drilled holes where the dimples were as the tips we found on the Eagle nest suggested. Here's how it looked on:

It's still slightly too far to the right so Ward's going to bring home some tools from work and we'll enlarge the holes on the left a bit so we can get it just right.

Ward did up a template for the small side pieces:



He transferred the driver's side one to the car and I held the side piece bolts to the marks he made and it was clearly 1/2" too high.  We argued about it for a few minutes and then he said "Mark the spots where you think they should be and we'll drill.".  I marked the rear one 1/4" below the mark Ward made and the front one 1/2" below the mark he made.  Ward drilled the holes, I tried to place the piece in it and Un-oh, its too low to go on.   Ward just looked at me with that "I told you so." grin.  He said "How about we do the passenger side my way?".  I felt pretty sheepish so he laid the template on the passenger side, marked the holes, drilled, and it fit perfectly.  I should have known better than to challenge the master - I won't make that mistake again.

I was thinking that at this point all I needed to do was the finish sanding on the exterior and the car would be ready for paint.  As I was thinking that I walked by the rear quarter on the passenger side and thought, "The rear quarter is dented!".  I got closer and realized it wasn't dented, ran my hand over it and it was clear the shaping of the body fill I had done there wasn't even close to right and upon looking at the driver's side it wasn't even close to the same as the driver's side.  I can't figure out how I missed that, its so obvious and yet at the time I was doing the rough sanding I was sure I had it bang on.  So after reshaping that area I should have nothing left but the fine sanding on the exterior to be ready for paint.

[IowaEagle]

Thanks for the great write up and pictures.  Your pins and bushings will soon be on their way to you.

[priya]

Thanks Doug.  I wish we would have realized we were going to replace those sooner.  We're planning on putting the doors, hood and fenders back on the car to do the finish sanding and to get the car down to the body shop for paint.  We'll probably want to do that early next week so we'll have to remove the doors again when the hinge pins and bushings get here to install them.  As well I spent a day or so prepping the hinges for paint and couldn't get at a lot of them to sand but once they're apart I'll be able to do a better job so I'll be re-doing the hinges after that stuff gets here.

[priya]

Well, I've got an appointment to get my SX/4 painted next saturday.  I've been working hard all week to get it ready for paint and I'm pretty close.  I've got the exterior of the driver's door to do finish sanding on and I have to prep the area under the rear hatch where the weatherstripping goes yet.  Other than one rude surprise the rest of the car is ready for paint:


Yes, believe it or not that motley looking car is smooth and ready for high build primer and then top coat.

Here's the rude surprise I got when we put the nicely prepped and ready for paint passenger door on the car:

D'oh!  The repair I did to the lower left corner isn't right.  I didn't check closely enough and made the 4"X4" patch as a right angle and in fact the left edge of the door curves in and as you can see the door gap is uneven.  I was willing to live with the less than perfect visuals but my husband and I discussed it and even though the door closes without hitting now there's only about a 16th of an inch gap in the corner and he said as time goes by the door's going to shift and start rubbing so we decided tomorrow I'll get out the grinder and welder and open up the gap - so much for the paint ready finish in that corner.  I'm pretty stressed out this week as I'm putting in long days (for me) and trying to have the car ready for paint Monday so the painter can look it over and make suggestions for anything that could be improved.  Between that and trying to do the best job I can its got me a little wound out.

[IowaEagle]

I agree with your husband.  Adjust it now.

[jim]

After all the fine work you have done you shouldn't let a small boo boo upset you.

[priya]

Yes, you're right Jim.  Its just that I was planning on having the car ready for paint on Monday and now that won't be happening.  Hopefully I can repair this in one day or less.

[Whuntmore]

with the work you put into this car, I think that would bother me as well.  I mean if the car's a total "I'll patch it for now" kind of job well, I'd probably let it go, but with this kind of work, it would bother me alsol.

Sorry to see your paint job postponed till this is fixed, but with work like this, I have to agree with your husband as well, fix it now, and then it will be perfect, and then paint it.  it will be worth it in the long run.

[priya]

Well, it only took me 1/2 a day to get the passenger door gap a little more reasonable.  For some reason it looks a little closer in the picture than it does in real life.  In any event the gap is big enough now that the door won't rub and I'm not going to have at the edge a second time.


I got a start on the hatch area where the rubber seal goes, it was worse than I thought, I should have checked that before I started prepping the car for paint, I just assumed it was in pretty good shape.  We pushed the car out of the garage and took the sandblaster to it.  The sand blaster didn't touch the seam sealer so between hubby and me we chipped it out bit by bit with a dull flat tip screwdriver and a hammer.  About 3/4 of the hatch opening needed to be sandblasted and sealer removed.  And another surprise, for the second time when I think I've got all the rust repairs done I find out I don't - this is what I found on the driver's side of the hatch opening where the rubber seal mounts (the red paint is a weld through primer):


Fortunately its all straight edges and bends so I should be able to get a new piece welded in fairly quickly.  There's an outside chance I might have the car ready for paint tomorrow evening, but if not it should be ready to go Tuesday and then the painter can look it over and if he has any concerns hopefully I can address them all before Satuday when he's going to spray the car.

[IowaEagle]

One surprise repaired and another one pops up.  Like say, it appears to be a "straight"forward fix.

[priya]

Well, its wednesday and I finally got everything ready for paint on the SX/4.  I discovered three more areas on the hatch opening lip that needed to be replaced as they had pinholes.  Fortunately a few weeks ago we bought a shinker/stretcher:


While I was preparing the hatch area for welding my hubby set to work on making the 4 patches we needed for the lip.  Two of them were in the upper corners and the shrinker/stretcher made it easy work for him:


Here's some of the test pieces he did with this machine to show what it can do:


Here's two of the repairs made to the hatch opening lip, the same areas on the other side ended up needing to be replaced as well.



It's supposed to rain tomorrow and friday so I was happy to get the car completely prepped today, if two days later than I was originally hoping.  Ward fabricated brackets to fit a tow bar he bought to the Eagle and we hauled it down to Perfection Automotive at suppertime.  Our luck was good as it started to rain about 10 minutes after we got the car in the shop.



The painter is going to start on it tomorrow night, I'm not sure exactly how he's doing it, but a basic primer is going on first and then at some point a high build primer and Saturday is a go for paint.

The engine went to the machine shop a couple of weeks ago.  Its getting a .030 overbore, the crank is getting ground .010.  I wanted to raise the compression ratio half a point but the only pistons available were' the factory 8.2 to 1 so the shop is milling the head .015 and decking the block .015 which will give a .6 point increase in compression ratio.  The shop is installing the cam bearings but other than that the works is coming home disassembled and hubby will be assembling it himself.

[IowaEagle]

Fantastic work!  Now he needs to start rolling rockers for all of us.

[rollguy]

Here's some of the test pieces he did with this machine to show what it can do:

That is too cool!  Very professional job!  I've got to hand it to you (an egg that is), you are impressing a lot of folks around here!