$2500 1977 Rebuild thread!

OK well the car is finally painted. We ran into a problem with the original color we painted the car. The atomic orange did not turn out looking as good as expected and had to repaint the complete car. not wanting to have the same problem we decided to go a different color and scheme.

The problem with the orange was it did not cover even and had BAD shadows and dark / light spots. The paint we used was a 3 stage system with a candy orange top coat, will not do that again.

Here is some photos of the car after it was painted orange.
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As you can see it does NOT look good at all sitting there in the garage. Now the funny part is when it was pulled outside in the sunlight it did not look like this and actually looked OK, but can not have a car that only looks good in the sun.
 
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SOOOO we decided it was getting a repaint. We decided to go with this!!!
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I'm a fan of it. I love the black and silver.

I have a question for you, though. Did you go with glass front and rear bumpers or are those urethane? I thought they were urethane at first, but some of the later shots they look like glass. Either way, the whole car is looking fantastic.
 
I'm a huge fan of the orange but the silver/black looks great too.

I didn't know the orange tintcoat was painted over a silver base, I would have guessed a gold or copper base and then a orange pearl over that.
I've painted tintcoat/pearl and I don't think I'll do it again, didn't turn out as I wanted ...without the proper tools (booth) and technique (experience) it's a PITA... I leave that to the pros...

Take the car outside in the sun and take more photos :thumbs:
 
I'm a fan of it. I love the black and silver.

I have a question for you, though. Did you go with glass front and rear bumpers or are those urethane? I thought they were urethane at first, but some of the later shots they look like glass. Either way, the whole car is looking fantastic.

They are the Flex-glass bumpers. It is a flexible fiberglass. They are straight and look like glass however they do have a little give to them.
 
Damn, Phil, that looks sweet!

Thanks Mike! Keep an eye on your message box, we are getting ready to do the mechanical part of the car in a few days and sure I will have a 100 question on what to do and what parts to buy.
 
Damn, Phil, that looks sweet!

Thanks Mike! Keep an eye on your message box, we are getting ready to do the mechanical part of the car in a few days and sure I will have a 100 question on what to do and what parts to buy.

I'll certainly check it when I can. I'll be on the road a bit the next week or so (finally moving a bit closer to Kokomo).
 
The car looks great! I'm curious why you did not start the stripe from
the front bumper?
 
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well today was work on cleaning and reworking parts to go back on the car. I decided I would do 1 of each piece and see how they looked before I did the rest of them.

The first thing was to clean up the rear side marker lights. I polished the lens then painted the trim around the lens black. I think these will look pretty good this way do to they sit in the black stripe area on the car.
Here is a photo of what I started with and how it looked after a little work.
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The second thing I worked on was the tail lights. They looked pretty bad and thought we might have to buy new ones however with a little work they already look better. I need to get a small buffing wheel for the dremel and should be able to make them look a little better.
Here is a photo of one that I did not clean next to the one I worked on.
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Here is a pic we took of the t-top out in the sunlight. I think the colors are going to look pretty good. Keep in mind it has not been buffed out yet.
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The car looks great! I'm curious why you did not start the stripe from
the front bumper?

We wanted to use certain "ideas" from different cars. We used the stripe as it was on the hood of the BB cars. We then carried the stripe back like on the old chrome bumper race cars. We are also looking at using the C6 or maybe modified C5 emblems on the car. Then we have the TPI setup from a C4. I guess you could say it is like using little items or ideas from each generation Corvette.
 
Wow, the lenses look a lot better now. have a look at one of my headlight lens clearcoating threads..... I tried this a few years ago and have even done this on my C6 headlight lenses. You can hit the plastic with 600 grit wet and then apply a few coats clearcoat. They will look like new and last for years without peeling or turning dull.... the clearcoat can be polished or buffed just like any other painted part of the car. If you like you can tint the clearcoat as well...

I am very curious about what went wrong on your orange paint... I am guessing (I'm not a pro) that one has to apply several dry coats of the tintcoat and the two or three coat of clear, again I am just guessing: maybe the tintcoat was sprayed too wet ??
 
finally a nice day to pull the car out and see how it looks in the sun. Does not look too bad considering it still needs buffed.
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I even installed one of the lights that I cleaned up.
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Well we have not been able to get a lot of work done on the 77 however figured I would post a quick update of what we have been working on.

We finally was able to get the extra set of wheels put on the car and they do not look bad at all.
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We removed the old carpet out of the back of the car.
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We have the new carpet set and looks like the color of the carpet will look pretty good in the car.
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I started cleaning up the interior pieces and painted them to match the new interior. Here is a pic of the old color and the new color.
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Here is the parts against the carpet, should go good together.
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I went to a salvage yard that a friend owns and found a electric fan setup that we can use and get rid of the mechanical HP robbing fan.
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Out of what car did you pull that fan ??? F-body ?? Just curious because I was looking into the Mark VIII fans (single fan).
 
Well we have not been able to get a lot of work done on the 77 however figured I would post a quick update of what we have been working on.

We finally was able to get the extra set of wheels put on the car and they do not look bad at all.
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...................
I went to a salvage yard that a friend owns and found a electric fan setup that we can use and get rid of the mechanical HP robbing fan...........

Looking great, Phil! (Just out of curiosity, who's the friend that owns the salvage yard?)
 
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