Inline Tube - 1970 Cutlass W-31 Restoration - From Start to Finish Part 3

Inline Tube 1970 Cutlass W-31 Restoration - Part 3 the body

This car is mostly a original paint car with a few bump shop fixes. On the original car none of the sheet metal gaps were very good. the deck lid needs to be re-bent and the front fenders never fit at the door and the rockers. you can see the doors and trunk lid were on the car when it was painted at the factory. The door shows how the inside only caught the edges not the entire inside. the body shows white over spray all over the inside.

Our furry friends built a little bed for a few winter under the head liner. You can see the dash blue - over spray on the floor pan and just about everything else.

Blue was also sprayed on the package tray and no hard lines found. Since this is a vinyl top car we believe that the joint at the quarter and the roof was done in plastic body filler and the non vinyl roof cars had the lead seam. Not much filler here compared to what it is going to take to get it straight in the end. We used aircraft stripper to get all the paint off . Sandblasting can damage the metal and warp it, making more work in the end.

The car is now put in primer - ready to start the minor rust repair and getting all the gaps fixed.

The big damage areas are addressed first - then it is on to the details.

It takes a ton of body filler to get the roof to meet the quarter and it is all smoothed into the roof and the quarter.
Every part of the car will get a skim coat of body filler and then be sanded flat.

Even the small flats around the windows will be smoothed out. The trim will be fit to the car and all those areas fixed also. It is time to get the fenders on and take a look at the gaps.

This is before and after - hard to see in the photos but the metal is bent, welded tand smoothed out to get a constant gap.

This is before and after - the fender gap at the top is huge and the bottom it is nothing. The door and fender are both reworked to get it lined up. This is a big problem area on the cutlass body.

Now that all the body work is done and a skin coat of body filler is applied and sanded the first coat of blocking primer has been applied and roughed open to cure.

The body now will go back on the frame and all the gaps will be checked again to make sure nothing is out of line.

It looks perfect Nyle

The hood will also get aligned to the core support.

It looks like a real car again - but it will soon come off the frame again for final body prep and paint.

The underside is primed, sanded and painted semi-black. The next step is to overspray white body color.

The tail panel also gets a dusting of white paint. The cowl area is also painted in a flat version of the same paint used on the underside. We have noticed on many original cars that the paint was sprayed down causing the upper cowl edge to be bare steel. This is a neat detail that is usually overlooked.

The hood and fenders have been prepped the same as the underside and coated with white overspray on the edges of the panels.

The car is now back off the frame and taken apart and ready for final paint. All the black areas have been masked off and the body shell is ready for the base coat white.

The doors are painted on the car just like the factory did it and the overspray is duplicated as the factory did it.

The clear coat is now applied over the white base coat..

All the parts are painted with the final clear coat.

The hood and the trunk lid get the same process.

Before the body is is ready for the W-31 stripes the three coats of clear are sanded so the car looks like the base coat again. The stripes take almost all day to lay out and get get straight. Although the original cars had the stripes put on after final paint we have decided to put the stripes half way into the clear. after the blue is applied, 3 more coats of clear will be applied so there is plenty for the final sand and polish.

The entire car is masked off again to make sure no blue overspray gets on the white body color. The body and stripes are now both ready and soon the final 3 coats of clear will be applied.

W-31 and W-30 are some of the most difficult stripes to put on a car. They are all painted stripes and the fenders, doors must be in place to get them to align.

These stripes also have lots of details that are often missed. The bottom of the stripe is a sharp angle and the upper part is all radius. The ends also have a curve and the door and quarter do not wrap into the jamb much.

The stripes look great and the alignment is perfect.

The final coats of clear are going on. This process it repeated 3 times. There will be 6 coats of clear on the car but a couple will be sanded off to prepare the body for the final polishing of the paint.

All the panels are now done, ready for final assembly.

The body is back on the frame and the assembly process will now take over.

Please read on in the next article

Sources:

Inlinetube - Brake & Fuel Lines, Parking Brake Cables, Hoses, Valves, Brake & Fuel Clips, Disc Brakes

15066 Technology Drive
Shelby Twp, MI 48315
586 532 1338

www.Inlinetube.com

Wings Auto Art - Body, Paint, Assembly

Nyle Wing
Ionia, Michigan 48846
PH (989) 855-2577