2010 May | Eastwood Blog

Archive for May, 2010

New Face at Eastwood

May 24th, 10 / 4 Comments

Hey everyone,

My name is Shawn Pillow and I’ve just joined the Eastwood Team for an internship in the Marketing department. As I give you a little background info on myself, I’ll begin explaining why you should follow my blog, so just hang in there.

I’m a rising senior at Duke University pursuing a degree in Political Science and a certificate in Markets and Marketing. While I’ve always had a passing interest in cars (by which I essentially mean, “I sometimes have a picture of one as the background on my Mac”), I’ve never really modified any car that I’ve owned, unless you count installing a connection for an iPod as a “customization.” Instead, I’ve driven a series of Volvo sedans ( a ’95 850, a ’99 S70, and now a ’98 S70) so dull that even I would have a difficult time picking them out of a line-up. Though I have some basic technical familiarity from working in construction and assisting my father in various home improvement projects, I’ve always been a little intimidated by working with an automobile.

Many of my friends and fraternity brothers will have the same job title this summer (“intern”), but they’ll get the same exposure to business as if they’d read a book or watched a documentary. At the end of the summer, they’ll be lucky if their boss knows their name. Meeting the owner or CEO? Forget about it.

Not at Eastwood – our president, Curt Strohacker, stops by my desk every day to talk, and it’s always with the same greeting, “You learning something?” If Curt could stop by your garage or shop to check in on your projects, I’m sure he’d lead off with the same question. After all, that’s part of what makes a hobby so enjoyable – encountering a new challenge or obstacle and figuring out how to overcome it.

And that’s the heart of what I’d like to show you through my blog posts; the culture at Eastwood, and what makes it so valuable to me as a young intern, is what makes Eastwood so valuable to you as a restoration enthusiast. Don’t think of Eastwood as a supplier or a store; think of us as a resource and an extension of the restoration community. Your passion makes everything that we do possible, and inspires in us a passion to deliver the finest products and give you the most responsive and helpful support possible.

Being in this environment every day, I’m anxious to tackle a few projects of my own and I’ll chronicle my adventures here. I look forward to sharing my experiences, both in the garage and in the office, with y’all and hearing your feedback!

Best,

Shawn

Eastwood Chatter

Digging deeper into the engine bay

May 20th, 10 / 0 Comments

Today I received another update from our friends over at Penn Manor. Seems as though they are making some progress in getting the mechanical side of things taken apart for repair. Below Penn Manor student Tyler gives us a update.

Today’s update on our progress, we have cleaned the cylinder head and intake manifold and are now cleaning the engine block. As soon as we have finished cleaning all the grime off the block, we will paint the head and valve covers then replace them. However, we would like to replace the timing belt and are working on that. I have included several more photos of what we have done thus far, if you have any suggestions or advice, feel free to share it.

Penn Manor TSA Restoration Project

Strongest undercoating ever?

May 19th, 10 / 0 Comments

With many restorations, you have to deal with rust repair. This in itself, can be a tedious task. What could make this task even more of a headache? Add in the extra factor of having to repair a rusty area that was undercoated from the factory. There is much debate as to which way is the best to remove what seems to be the “strongest coating ever known to man” (or so it feels that way every time I have to remove it!). I’ve personally tried many methods, from a propane torch heating it up and scraping it away, to a wire wheel on a angle grinder, to a straight up grinder. No matter how you go at it, you get either covered in the stringy mess or deal with the horrible smell when you heat that stuff up. When I came across the rust pictured on a VW I am restoring recently, I was lucky enough we had recently come out with this new product. Under Gone is designed to make this task much quicker and easier than the old “caveman-esque” ways of removing undercoating.

I started using a screwdriver to poke around and find the rust. Once I found the areas, I needed to “dig deeper” to find the extent of the rust. I also wanted to clean a large enough area that I could cut out the cancerous areas and weld in a new patch panel. Check out the pics below of what I found when “poking around”. I received this truck from a friend who told me it was “rust free” aside from some obvious rot on the floors. True to what I have learned, it is always good to poke around a bit, rather than taking the word of a previous owner!

After picking up a few cans of Under Gone (I ended up only needing one can, but now I have more for later!), I began liberally spraying the areas of concern. The undercoating used on 70′s & 80′s VW’s is nasty stuff! Because of this, I chose to go a little overboard and spray 2 layers of Under Gone on the areas. I sprayed the first coating on and waited until the “foaming action” was over and it had seemed to soak into the undercoating a bit. I then reapplied, and again waited for it to soak in. What I noticed was that the undercoating got much more flexible, and once I cut a edge into the area I wanted to scrape, it “peeled” off easily with the scraper. If I hit an area that seemed to be a little tough to scrape, I sprayed another bit of Under Gone on the area, let it soak in for a few minutes (perfect time for a sip of a cold beverage!), and went back at it.

In the end, this was a much less smelly, messy, tedious job because of the Under Gone. I was able to get the pieces cut out and replacements welded back in all in the same day! Hopefully this saves a few of our readers some time and frustration. Thanks for reading and keep bringing those classic rides back to life!

-Matt

Eastwood Pro Restorers, Matt's Motor head Talk, Tech Corner

May I Introduce?

May 10th, 10 / 0 Comments

Today we are pleased to add a new section to our blog. These entries will document the storyline (as mostly written by the students) of the restoration and rebuild of a diesel VW Rabbit Pickup by students at Penn Manor High School in Lancaster, PA. We hope to help them along the with advice and some products to help their project move along. I think this will be a great chance to see them grow and hone their skills (not to mention maybe inspire some of our adult “beginners” to take on a project or two of your own!). Ill let one of the students Tyler kick it off with his background on the truck.

My name is Tyler Newswanger, I am one of the students from Penn Manor working on the Volkswagen diesel pickup. A basic history of our project began a few years ago when our chapter of TSA was working on creating bio-diesel. We wanted to continue our experiments and create a larger scale operation to create bio-diesel and have a vehicle to run it through. We wanted something that was unique and yet still usable. After searching several weeks, and several failed attempts, we were able to find our 1981 Volkswagen “Caddy.” It was in an old garage of which the owner was tearing down and had to remove the contents (see attached photos). It was delivered to our school with needs of a replacement head gasket and repair several spots of rust damage (see attached photo of driver’s side shock tower). In the past week we have set up a schedule to work Mondays and Fridays after school and start removing the head. We are currently in the process of cleaning parts that we have removed and finally removing the head.

Penn Manor TSA Restoration Project

Bit by Bit

May 7th, 10 / 0 Comments

From time to time you may notice that we have an old Mustang that we use to test products on and also do photo shoots for ads with. We figured that there was no better way to test one of our new mig welders, than to do a common task many of you would be doing with your mig. This may look all too familiar to any vintage Mustang guy.. rear quarter panel and inner wheel arch replacement. Never a fun or quick job, but often times necessary, as they seem to always rot from the inside out. During this process, I decided to shoot some photos along the way, and document some of our products that made this job a bit easier.

First task when doing this process was to expose any and all factory spot welds and brazes. We began by using a combination of different abrasive/sanding discs, including our 80 grit flap discs around the seams to quickly expose any weld points on the rear quarter.

Once the spot welds were located, we grabbed the drill and a Spot Weld Drill Bit and went to town detaching all of those old spot welds. Once these were drilled out (this is possibly the least fun part of this job in my opinion), Mark made quick use of the Electric Metal Shears. After a few minutes with the shears, the panel was dangling from the last little bits of original rusty metal and a couple quick zips with the cut off wheel, and the cancerous panel was off. You can see a interesting thing Ford did from the factory in the last picture below. They seem to have run the body wiring harness in the rear quarter panel on top of the inner wheel arch. Because of the rust forming between the arch and the quarter, the wiring began to be effected by the corrosion of the metal it was laying on. This surely would have caused a major issue, had it shorted out!

Once the old panel was off, we were able to assess the extent of the rust and rot. Luckily, only the inner wheel well and the inner trunk corner were the major areas of concern and we had planned ahead and had them ordered up ahead of time! First thing was to clean up and straighten any of the seams where the old quarter panel had been attached. Inevitably when removing old body panels like this, some of the attachment points may get a little tweaked. Below you can see Mark is fixing this by using the Hammer and Dolly set. After some more cutting of the old inner wheel arch and the inner trunk corner, we were ready to begin cutting and mocking up the new replacement panels. Using a piece of painters tape, we were able to mask off a nice straight line on the new panel as well as the body of the car so we could cut the replacement panel at just the right spot. Again using the shears, Mark cut the new panel to match. After some minor tweaking, we were ready to call it a day and begin installation the next day.

After a good nights rest (for some of us), everyone jumped right back into it. First thing to do was get the inner wheel arch welded in place. Regardless of how rusty the area was, Mark was able to dial in the 175 welder and get a nice weld on the arch. Since the area around the new inner arch was so “scale-y”, we decided to brush on liberal amounts of Rust Converter. You can see in the one picture below a perfect example of converted surface rust. The Rust Converter turns almost a purple-like color once it has neutralized and converted the rust. Neat stuff to watch on such a large surface like this! After lining up the replacement quarter we used an item that is life-saver if doing a large panel like this by yourself or with limited help. These “Blind Grip Panel Holders” or Clecos go through the spot weld holes we drilled out and match up with the spot weld holes in the new panel. this perfectly aligns the panel and holds it to be spot welded around other portions of the panel. These were an eye opener to me, no more propping blocks of wood or using jacks and large clamps to hold a large piece in place when you can just install these panel holders quickly and the panel is aligned! These are definately on my list of new “must-have” tools. Finally Mark jumped around tack welding the panel to the car, being sure to go from end to end to avoid heating the panel up too much. Even though this is a test vehicle, we still have pipe dreams of some day fully restoring and painting the “Ol’ Girl”, and it would be a headache to try and smooth out warpage in that large of a body panel. Lastly we treated and spot primed the areas we welded and the car is now ready for our next job on it. Bit by bit this old car may just see the road again!