2022 - Floor pan, Body, and Plating

On my cars I really try to do as much as I can as that is part of the hobby for me.  To plate pieces, I built a small plating station.

This is a basic zinc plating and if steps are followed it does produce a great result from a home system.

Plating carb parts.  This is the throttle cable stand prior to color dip.

Fuel hose bracket drying.

You can see the Dichromate provides that nice cad coated rainbow look.

This areas has a bad area that oil cans and needs to be shrunk back and repaired but you cant get to the back.  I'm doing some heat/quench cycles to shrink it.

Getting a lot stronger.

There are some micro areas still low and to avoid a lot of filler I'm gently pulling the lows up.

80 grit the area and it looks pretty flat.

The fresh air intake area is barely visible, but it can and does get wet so I sealed the entire area and primed for paint.

Cleaned the air intake cover with light blast to ready  it for paint.

Dash and cowl primed.  Note two photos back that the bottom of the windshield area at the dash is hand painted with flat black across those two defroster vents as they are visible through the dash pad.

My goal is to run the engine and to do that I need the water lines run and to run the water lines I need the heater box in and to get that in I need to do the interior...etc. etc.

Stripping down the heater box.

Blast cabinet cleaned and prepped.

Primed and sanded box and doors.

Painted and reinstalled wiring.

Repainted core.  I ended up buying a rebuild kit from Dean that provided new felt and heater door gaskets.

Ready for install.

Since I want to get this running I figured I better get the pedals in as well.

Painted and new pads installed from Dean at DatsunParts.com.

Another item to complete the chassis is the e brake, so I broke out bucket to pick a starting point.

Will break down and clean and restore all of the pieces.

Cleaning, polishing, and painting as needed.

Back together and ready.

The e brake mid piece provides an offset to move the cable system, from the trans tunnel further out to meet the rear axle and provides some adjustability for cable tension.

Blasted and ready for paint.

Some of these parts are/were plated but I chose to paint as plating is a sacrificial coating designed to wear saving the base metal from rusting, but since the undercarriage is an exposed area I used paint for long term coverage.

Again the goal is to get the car running , installing the heater box means the floor needed to be done.  I epoxied the entire interior.

The entire dash area and firewall are done.

Prior to the next step I reapplied seam sealer to every area I striped it from.

Fully sealed and every hole and threaded area is covered for next step.

I sprayed the entire floor pan with a ceramic heat and sound treatment. Note the paper covering the door jambs as I wanted areas that would get vinyl or the paint shows to not have the coating.  I didn't worry about the rear tire wells as that vinyl has a foam base to cover it.

The coating provided great coverage and did make a more solid feel to the metal.

Close up of floor coating.

Covered the coating with Sora blue base and then clearcoat should any area show through interior.

Hard to see in photo, but the door jambs and the two front panels are shinny paint.

So now that the basics are done I can move forward.

Even though I did spray the interior I'm still using some sound deadening on the floors as the ceramic coating was rough and would have created another tough to clean surface. I also installed new panel boards from Dean along the firewall.

You can see how thin the pads are and the look between the pads and the rough ceramic.

The next step to get the heater box in is to get the carpet under it installed.  I tapped off the area around the trans tunnel and sprayed interior glue to the tunnel area.

Trans tunnel carpet on and smoothed out.

I had made a paper template of all holes prior to spraying the glue and placed that over the carpet and used a soldering iron to open holes through the carpet.

So I did all of those steps so I could get the heater box installed.  It's in and the heater hoses are connected.

Installed steering and pedals as well as a control cable to open and close the heater valve.

My next big fight is getting the hood to close and align.  The 1st step to this is getting the release system working.

To prepare the hood hardware I completely disassembled and then blasted the parts.

A quick acid dip smoothed out the finish.

All pieces were wired with copper and dropped in a heated cleaner degreaser.

After rinsing the parts goes straight to a zinc plating tank.

Zinc plated and rinsed.

Final step is the dichromate color dip and rinse.

All parts are then left to dry and harden for a few days prior to use.

These are the carb pieces plated in January and how they look installed.

Stripped the trunk.

Inside and out.

So I fought the previous hood and could not get the hood to align (even after I installed the release hardware it was still too far off).  The 67.5 hood is unique so my choices were limited.

Installed a temp dash to monitor engine.  The engine is running off a fuel can so the next step is a gas tank.

Just like the brakes, I broke out the equipment to create some fuel lines.

Since I had saved the original lines I simply went bend by bend copying the original line side by side.

Cleaned and polished the fittings and did new flares.

So I spent stupid money having a tank done at a Gas Tank Renu dealer and then Sid (311 list member) busted by dream when he showed me they adjusted my pick up location.  So I started over with another tank and decided to do it at home.

Stripped and cleaned.

I used a tank cleaner/sealer system and repainted the exterior a satin black.  Here the rubber strips are being fitted.

Blasted, painted and then restored gas tank straps with new rubber spacer strips.

I wanted put a high build polyester surfacer on but the car has sat for so long and I wanted the primer to have a mechanical and chemical bond so I put a reduced coating of epoxy on.

Quick blocking after the epoxy cured and then sprayed the surfacer.

The body is looking good, but I continue to find small areas that could always be better.

Big hood work to come.

The new hood looks OK, but the hood prop rod system is not correct for a 67.5.  This is an exact match of what I need except the actual drivers side frame rail which I removed from the old hood and installed it on this hood.

Completely stripping to bare metal just like every other panel.

Stripped the outside for primer.

This is the rail I removed and the replacement piece on the completed hood.

I used some heat shield on the hood underside.

I used the remainder of the coating on the trunk to stiffen up the panel as the trunk skin is very thin and oil cans easily.

Hood primed and ready for high build.

So the front fenders were POR 15 sealed and then dusted with primer.

This is the U POL Gravitex like I used on the undercarriage.

Just like the undercarriage, I painted the Gravitex to make it smooth and shiny for easy cleaning.

The front fenders had a strip of material to seal the fender to the pillar.  The OEM material held water and led to rust issues.  I used a waterproof foam to seal the lip and avoid metal to metal contact.

Every time I block I find small areas that I'm just not satisfied with.  This quest for a super flat surface is why I avoided Thunder Black as my selected color.

Hood in high build.

Guide coat and blocking.

Prepping fender for high build poly.

High build surfacer on.

More blocking and sanding.

The top of the front fenders have a style line at the peak of the fender.  I am blocking this line back to a crisp straight line.

Blocking to each side of the peak created a nice line that will certainly be visible with glossy paint.

Down to some light work with glazing putty.

Final glazing on the drivers door.  The large area is blending where the mirror was installed.  The bottom of the door is me going too far.  The bottom of the doors had a set of indentions from the manufacturing process (you can see them on the bottom of doors), but I smoothed them out.  They are like the slope of the back panel by the tail lights.  They belong there, but sometimes get body worked out.

Trunk area final prep.