46 Power Wagon Restoration pt. 2

[Desoto61]

Next step is to clean everything and try to get some order and reason before spraying the base coat and clear coat. I think I'm going to start with the floor pans as a test panel since they will basically be covered by a mat and don't need any body work, so it will just be sprayed wet-on-wet and will let me set up before moving to the more complicated pieces like the door and cab.

For color I did some searching on the different Blue's Dodge used. The DPW forum lists a Ditzler code on their PIF that tracks to a blue used by Dodge and Chevy here. Some searching on that site turned up a Dodge color called Eldorado blue that would have been available on Dodge trucks starting in 48, which is what I ended up going with. It's maybe a little darker than I was thinking but the picture doesn't do the color justice, it tends to shift in the light a little going from almost black in low light to having a slight gray in the sun. In any event I like it and just hope I can make it look as good on the truck as it looks on the test card.

[Desoto61]

Also had to scuff sand all of the primer on the firewall as well since it will get sealed and sprayed with the rest of the truck, just no filler work and it's way outside the recoat window.

One last thing to do was install the lens for the center mount stop. First I needed to re-fit the lens as the primer-surfacer had closed the hole up some. Once it fit again I sanded down the interior mounting surface with some 80-grit to give the epoxy a good bite and used a fast setting epoxy to glue it in place.

Once the epoxy had completely hardened I tapped off around the lens and started sanding it with an 80-grit disk on the air sander. Once I got closer to the metal I switched to 80-grit on a block, then slowly worked my way to being flush with the tape at 500. At that point I used one of the headlight lens polishing kits which goes from 500 to 3000-grit and a final polishing compound to get the lens smooth and ready for everything to be clear coated. The lens sits a little proud but should be close by the time the rest of the paint is laid down.

[Desoto61]

So after a lot more sanding I think I'm finally ready to look at applying color and clear to the parts I've been working on. I managed to get everything smooth with the block at 220, the hood and door were easiest, the cab took a little more work and a lot of material, then more guide coat and P320. Guide coat is your friend with these situations.

I probably could get away with that considering I plan to use the DPLF as a seal coat since I have a few areas I burned through to the primer and even bare metal, but the P-sheet specifies either 320 dry or 600 wet, so I went the extra step and wet sanded it with 500-grit. Though all these different grit designations are tricky.

The wet sanding is really messy but at least there's a lot less dust, again guide coat is your friend here, you can really see the scratches disappear.

[Desoto61]

D-
Thanks for the shop tour. I'm blown away by the knowledge and abilities of the members on this forum. Your "little project" is coming along beautifully.

It was nice meeting you, always willing to talk Power Wagons! Now you just need to start posting some pics of your exploits.

[BurgPW]

D-
Thanks for the shop tour. I'm blown away by the knowledge and abilities of the members on this forum. Your "little project" is coming along beautifully.

[BurgPW]

New Member

Desoto61,
Can you PM or email me if you're in town. I'm new to the forum and just picked up a 65' WM300 that I'll be restoring. I'll be in Norfolk tomorrow afternoon/night and would love to stop by to see your project. Let me know if you have a few minutes to show a newbie the ropes.

Mark Jugetes70@Yahoo.com

[Desoto61]

I had cut out the cowl vent drain so I could paint in between. I ended up powder coating the drain itself, but while I was touching up some areas on the outside of the cab I rolled it over and painted under the cowl so I could weld it back into place just in case I damaged the paint on the outside of the cab while welding it back in, there is still time to fix it.

To prevent that I used quick tack welds with the MIG and let it cool before moving on. The cut line was not at the cab so I had a little distance which also helped. That took care of the two mounting arms but the unit had also been tack welded around the perimeter and which wouldn't work with the paint everywhere, so I built a tab and welded that to the opposite side around the drain nipple. It's welded to the underside of the bolt area where the hood hinge bolts so it's not visible if I did damage any paint.

Otherwise it's been more sanding. I didn't do a very good job with the filler work in some areas, so I've had to go back to the surfacer more than I would like considering the cost, but it is close. I've also taken to spot spraying the low spots with a coat or two first before laying down the general coats to help those areas build a little faster, which seems to work. Luckily the one door and the two hood halves were in much better shape. Sanded those out today and they're basically smooth. So I'll spray one or two more coats and then work my way up to the final sanding before sealer and color. In the mean time it's back to the cab.

[Desoto61]

I'm not sure how durable it will be from an undercoating aspect, but I will say that the hood sections are completely "dead", they just thunk when you tap on them. Now it did add some weight, but it's a mass damper so that's to be expected. It seems quite "hard" once it's cured, as opposed to the liner which is much more "rubbery".

I'm kind of glad I didn't put it on under the Al's Liner I used on the underside of the cab as I would have probably made the same mistake there and potentially compromised the protection of the liner. The liner should provide some damping, but it's hard to tell with the rest of the cab still bare.

I still have more than half the bucket left, not sure where else I will use it. The other section of the hood will probably get some, but I had been looking at using Sound Deadener Showdown products inside the cab and doors, though this might be a better option for a few difficult areas like the underside of the dash and cowl, and I may use it on the underside of the floor and transmission covers as well, which would be an interesting test of how it holds up vs the Al's Liner.

Otherwise it's quite easy to work with, everything cleans up easily with water, and there are no fumes. Where it lifted the bottom coat was well adhered, so I just made sure to get everything clean and then since it was flat poured in a small amount of product and spread it out with a brush, repeating till I had built the area back up. Same with any cracking, I just filled them with some more product like joint compound.

The gun in their application kit is nice but a little tricky to use, I think the regulator I had put on the gun was restricting flow too much as the stuff likes pressure. The material came out but fine, but was not real uniform so they talk about a 10 to 20 mil coat but I think I had that in some areas but was thicker in others and that caused my problems. I removed it for the heat control as it wants even higher gun pressures (compared to HVLP guns anyway) and got a much better pattern, but that material is also far lighter too.

Also, they provide a test to determine when it's dry enough for a second coat which is OK for a thin coating, but there is no re-coat window, so more time is never a bad thing. I think the first coat wasn't compeletly dry and the second coat partially re-wetted the first coat making it act like one super-thick coating which is why it behaved badly.

[Kevin Mienke]

It's good to get a report on the lizard skin. I spent a good part of the night reading about it on their site. Reports from actual users are much more helpful.

My plan was to do the underside of my cab and firewall with either lizard skin or the 2-part epoxy bedliner material from rustoleum.

The Lizard Skin seems to be the product of choice nowadays. It apparently holds up to extreme temps better than anything previously available.

[Desoto61]

When I got tired of sanding I turned to working on some of the other parts that needed metal work prior to primer. The captured nuts on the front radiator cowl had all rusted badly. So I drilled them out and got some nuts to replace them. To install them I turned to a new toy, Eastwood's TIG welder. It's probably not as good as a machine from one of the big names, but the reviews are good, the company is close if I need to get it fixed or return it, and at $700 it's hard to justify twice the money for name brand unit.

Access to the captured nuts in the side panels is a little tricky, so my first attempts were not that great from the back side. So I tried drilling the hole larger and welding the nut from the front side of the hole. This worked a little better but is very delicate as too much heat in the wrong place will damage the threads, so for the other side and the top piece I moved to a two part system.

First I welded the nut to a washer. I could do this on the table with good access and visibility from the outside where I was less likely to damage the nut. Then I would place the nut and washer into the area and weld the washer to the part. The washer acted as the filler material so I didn't need as much access to feed filler rod in and I could get to areas I might not otherwise be able to weld in with the MIG.

[Desoto61]

Some notes on the Lizard skin products. The directions talk about various thicknesses from 10 mills to 20 per coat. I found out the hard way that thinner is better. The gun is inconsistent so build slowly over multiple coats, otherwise it will crack and can lift. Plus it takes forever to dry. I had to do some repairs on mine once finished. The heat control is lighter and goes down a little better, but I went with finer thinner coats and it came out much better. I'll eventually paint the whole underside whatever color I decide to do the body in.

Otherwise it's been lots of sanding. The fender that looked pretty straight needed more help that I had thought, so I cut down the surfacer with some 80 grit and started building up with filler. The hood sections turned out better and should come out with a few rounds of surfacer and sanding. The cab, as expected, was going to need a few more rounds of surfacer and sanding. I had a few areas where I burned through which had to be touched up with some primer before another round of surfacer, but that meant cleaning up all the sanding dust, and re-masking some of the cab openings.

[Desoto61]

With the top-coating window on the primer closing I used the nice weather to get the sound deadener on the underside of the hood. The kit comes with an applicator gun and is water soluable so cleanup is much easier, but it is still a thick sludge and kind of messy. They recommend two coats with complete drying in between, so the important part for today was just to get the first coat on.

Since I am also going to apply their heat control products the final thickness is about 80 mills I taped off the front and back edges of the hood where it sits on the cab and cowl as well as the hinge and the back side of the hood. It dried enough to get the second coat of the sound control. The heat control product can be applied any time after that.

Also worked on sanding out the filler on one of the door, still learning the tricks of sanding it down, but hopefully it will come out better than some of the work I did on the cab.

[Desoto61]

My block sanding skills are non-existent but I'm learning, as expected some areas are still pretty wavy. Burned through the primer in one spot so I'll have to spot prime it before the next round of surfacer.

But while the primer top-coat window was still open I took a detour and spent today undercoating the cab. It's a bed liner product called Al's Bedliner. It's a three-part urethane product, that can be brushed or sprayed on. They sell a gun but it's basically the same texture gun you can buy from HF for half the price, which is what I used.

The biggest problem is the stuff is messy, cleanup requires solvents and it gets quite sticky. The gun did a good job of laying it out and pushing it into most of the tight areas but it also generated lots of overspray onto adjacent surfaces. I had covered most of the cab and other painted metal but found it in a lot of other places after the fact.

I mixed half the gallon for the first coat to see what kind of coverage I got. It was a little runny and started dripping but that was solved by rotating the cab upside down till it set. I had some bare areas left due to spraying the cab upright so with it tilted back I put down the second and concentrated on getting into the sides hidden areas. It came out a little rougher than I was going for, but that's mostly just aesthetics.

The hopper gun worked well and made short work of the job, but due to the size of the hopper it is tough to get the gun into some areas. In hindsight using a brush to get some of the inaccessible areas would have been a good idea and a good use of the leftover mix from the bucket.

[cj7ox]

It's coming together! Definitely looking good!

[Desoto61]

Weather was turning colder today with rain this afternoon, with no real improvement in the forcast till next weekend, so tried to get the primer-surfacer on today before the top coating window closes.

The benefit of the colder weather was a slightly longer pot life which on my surfacer was only about 20 minutes at the temps from the day before. I did three coats, was going to go for four since I figured I will need more coats before long, but after the third I needed to clean up the gun as the paint was starting to gum up the nozzle rather than clean everything twice I just stopped. Again, not sure I had everything set up quite right, and the P-sheet didn't give a lot of detail about the application, but this is a learning experience.

The hood halves were in very good shape, though I might need to repair one of the hinge ends, but I elected to prime and paint them anyway I can always remove and paint the hinge separately after repair, if needed but I didn't want to leave it bare steel any longer than I needed to. Not sure what I'm going to do with the underside yet but the top needed no real body work so it will go straight to the primer surfacer. I had one fender that after some hammer and dolly work is also in pretty good shape, I might need some glazing putty in a few spots but don't think I'll need any gross filler work.

Still, it looks great to see it in some color. I still have a pile of parts that need some repair, or metal work, or like the door some filler work before it's ready for the next step, but it's still progress!

The other big question is what to do over the bottom of the cab. I thought about having it LineX'ed but it's kind of thick and the logistics of getting the cab there and correctly positioned for that is daunting. Plus it is fairly thick, and as others have pointed out if I ever had to repair the metal removal and repair become a problem. So now I'm thinking one of the DIY beadliner materials (basically a tougher rubberized undercoating) may be a better alternative.