After a pleasant break to get the ’40 Ford settled in the garage and to spend a bit of time looking it over and deciding what needs to be done, I got back to work on the Dodge. The body is sitting in the shop garage letting it’s paint cure while I am sealing, masking and painting the main body panels that were not on the wagon when I sprayed it.

I have seperated all the remaining pieces into a beige pile and an orange pile. The beige pile has the hood, front fenders, grill shell and front splash pan. Prior to applying the sealer I had to mask the underside of the hood which we had painted satin black last week. Yesterday I sealed the hood, fenders, both splash pans, the grill shell. This morning Jerry and I took the fenders down from the tree and put up the tail & lift gates for sealing while we masked off the orange areas of the hood and fenders.

Masking & Sealing the Front Clip Parts

After the sealer on the tail & lift gates had cured for an hour or so, we took them down and set them aside until Sunday when I spray the orange pile of parts. After rearranging things in the paint booth, I wet the floor and we sprayed the remaing parts with three coats of beige. Using the lessons learned from painting the body I had Jerry add 1 1/2 oz of additional reducer to each gun load. The results were much better today! Still some orange peel but it is much reduced and more uniform. It should color sand fairly nicely. I also spent more time wetting the walls and floors between coats to cut down the dust which also worked quite well.

Painting the Beige Parts

I will let everything sit overnight and then remask the hood and fenders for the orange paint. I hope to paint the orange pieces that we sealed today as well. That will leave the rest of the window frames and a few other interior trim panels to be painted orange on Sunday.

If all goes well I should be able to touch up the bad areas on both front doors on Monday AM, then take down the paint booth so that I can get the wagon back on the lift to pull the steering column and third member out of the rear end. I plan on taking both down to the valley on Wednesday. The steering column will be rebuilt and will have the cruise control, window washer and ingnition key lock removed. The rear end will be rebuilt and will have the gear changed to a 3.50:1 or so ring & pinion installed.

Moving forward for a change!