46 Power Wagon Restoration pt. 2

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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]

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]

We had some really nice weather this weekend, so I pushed to try and get some paint sprayed. Friday evening I did a final clean and sprayed the seal coat and let it set overnight.

First thing next morning I set everything up and started on the color and clear. The color sprayed out fairly nice, maybe a little dry but since there is no metal or pearl or anything fancy it was pretty forgiving. I only noticed one or two little pieces of trash in it, so I cleaned and re-touched those areas and then let it flash before moving onto the clear.

[Desoto61]

It's Blue!

All the practice with primer, surfacer, and color didn't really prepare me for spraying clearcoat. As the name implies since it's clear it's tricky to see it going down very well, especially the second coat. Third they recommend two wet coats, and there ends up being a fine line between not wet enough, wet, and too wet.

End result was shiny and looks nice, but the first coat was a little dry in places which created a lot of orange peal on the vertical surfaces, other areas got too wet and ran, basically it's a bit of a mess, but I did three coats figuring it probably would be so I had some extra material to work with during the color sanding. The horizontal surfaces were better because the clear could flatten and level, which is a very slow process compared to most of the other paints I've sprayed up to this point.

In any event I still like the final result, and it's amazingly pleasing to see it in color, which I really like. Again the pictures just don't do the color justice. In the sun it looks different than in the garage, it's very blue and should look great against the black fenders.

[Bruce in BC]

Welding nut trick

When welding a nut in place first put a bolt in it . the bolt will help prevent the nut threads from getting damaged. if you put some anti seeze on the threads it works even better. Never use anything with teflon or lead in it .


Hope this helps.

Bruce

[Desoto61]

Thanks for the tip

Another nice weekend weather wise, there are few of these left till fall, so the goal was to get the inside of the cab done, as well as the back of the door. I didn't do anything with the underside of the hood yet as it can't be installed yet, so I probably should have not painted it at all yet since I'll have to find a place I can store it without damage. Though since I had the guns out I did also spray the bottom halves of the hood since they needed little in the way of body work.

First I covered the outside of the cab with plastic to prevent overspray. I covered the window openings, but in hindsight would have done better cutting the plastic around and taping it around the perimeter and leave the opening open. I also masked the outside of the door. Between that and trying to clean and wipe down all the surfaces inside the cab took a long time. The rotisserie made it easier to get under the dash and work on the rear wall and ceiling.

Spraying inside the cab is harder than outside, the overspray makes things hard to see very quickly. I started with a normal gun, but quickly ended up switching to a smaller detail or touch-up gun as the big gun prevented me from being able to access too much of the interior. Since most of the interior will be covered with panels I concentrated more on coverage of all the hard to reach areas than aesthetics, so runs and such were OK.

[Desoto61]

The rotisserie allowed me to get at the underside of the dash and the firewall easily. Once I was sure everything was covered I sat the cab down on the little cart and cut out the rotisserie bracket to prevent damaging the paint. I used a cloth to catch the metal shavings. Then cleaned up the areas under the brackets, cleaned the metal and sprayed that area too.

I had a couple of spots that needed a little work, some cream filler in a few spots and a little sanding before hitting it with another coat of primer. Then let everything flash, clean, and start with the color and clear. I stayed with the detail gun for all of the pieces. It sprayed well and worked well enough considering the size of the pieces and that only parts of the cab were getting color and clear.

Used a box fan with a furnace filter attached to help suck the fumes from the cab, but it still required slowing down to let the air clear a little so I could get a good view of what I was spraying. End result is pretty good, much less orange peel, didn't see any runs. Did have a few spots where I over-taped near the jams and openings and left some gaps in the color, but it's still not bad for a first-timer.

[wayneh]

Spraying the clear coat is a learned skill. The good news is, even if you have runs, you can always sand them out and buff it when it dries. We wet sanded and buffed the last truck I did and it looks great, and frankly that is about the only way to 100% eliminate orange peel as far as I can tell.

wayne

[Desoto61]

Yea, I sprayed a third coat on the outside knowing it was going to probably get sanded off, but the interior stuff is really good comparatively, there is some orange peel, but it's minor enough I'm not going to mess with it. As I spend more time around it the roof and even the firewall weren't bad, the worst is that back wall, and then the little runs I got in various places. But we'll see what it really looks like once I get it out in the sun. Still, if I can get my big gun to give the same effect on the rest of the parts I'll be a happy camper.