RH door skin repaint

I knew the process of attaching the door skin would bang up the paint, and that I would have to repaint the outside just to keep it from rusting while the rest of the restoration work is done. Last Sunday being Fathers Day I opted to hang out at home, so this week was my first opportunity to do the job.

Simple, really, just time consuming. Sand off the thin protective coat applied at the factory, then shoot with etching primer followed by rattle can enamel. The primer is quality stuff, but the enamel will have to come off before the real paint is laid down.

As it turned out it was a lousy, rainy day, so I only shot two coats of primer. Next week I'll finish it up.

While sanding I used some Vice-Grips to tighten up a few places were I had run out of strength last time.

RH door skin attached

This was a day I thought would never come. The door frame was ready, and the door skin was ready. The time had come to do the deed. I was more than a little apprehensive, because I knew that this was a job I had to get right the first time. Having never done it before, I had zero wiggle room.

As the pics show, I used a variety of Vise-Grips to hold the door skin in place, and several sizes of channel lock pliers to bend the flange around the edge of the frame.

The trick is to get it started, then to take a very small bite with each squeeze and gradually work the flange along. The only problem I ran into was muscle fatigue and blisters. Even though I wore gloves I had blisters for a week.

Well, there was another problem, but this one seems unavoidable. All along the edge the nice, pristine skin the pliers left a small line of disruption. Mostly looks like a narrow, shallow dent. No doubt a factory installer could avoid this, but for my first attempt I think this went very well.




 

Painted door skins, ready to attach

Today was a big step forward. I finally painted the inside of both door skins with gray POR-15. Also painted some spots on the door where drips would have interfered with attaching hardware later on. Patrick Casey told me about another local source for POR-15 products, Hi-Line Distributors on Ualena St. They had two 4 oz. cans of gray paint and I grabbed them last Friday.

Sanded the paint applied at the factory, to rough up the surface of the good parts and remove the bad parts. Used my orbital sander as much as possible but had to resort to hand sanding for the tight spots.

Next time I will attach the RH skin. That should be exciting!




Last Sunday was Pattie's birthday party at Side Street Inn, and of course May 12th was Mother's Day. On the 19th I was still dealing with a leaky hot water heater but I did manage to bring in the Lotus battery for a charge. Didn't help, car still won't crank. Will take battery to Batter Bills for a test. The cassette water pump finally arrived, brought it to the shop.