Archive for the ‘Eastwood Pro Restorers’ Category

Nick’s Newest Project (It’s not a Bug!)

Sep 30th, 11 / 0 Comments

Nick is known around the office as “The Bug Guy”. He has had his hands on more VW Bugs than many twice his age! Now that Nick’s family is growing with the addition of another little one, he began searching for something that he can take the entire family to shows in (and still have elbow room!). So he looked to the VW Beetle’s larger brother, the VW “Type 2″ or as we all know them as, a VW Bus. He really preferred the early split window versions, but the prices for even rotted out carcasses were scary! Until one day, a local VW club member posted up on Facebook that he had one for sale in decent shape; and for a very reasonable price. Who says Facebook isn’t good for anything!

Once Nick got ahold of the owner, he got the same old story “used to drive it, was great, then I parked it to restore, and never got around to it”. Many years later parts for the bus were scattered among the owners friends and family, and the rolling bus was left to sit in his woods. Once Nick negotiated a price and sorted out what parts he actually DID have (how do you lose an engine .. I mean really!), he drug her home.

She is a 1966 “Kombi”. From the numbers Nick stated it originally was white on top and white on the bottom. This thing was painted at some point and the red is now quite pink!

After getting it home, Nick couldn’t resist buffing a section of the faded “pink” paint, and to his surprise; it actually rubbed out quite well! He plans to take care of the mechanical maintenance it needs, fix the previous owners shade-tree repairs, install a bug engine he has laying around, and lower it a bit for next season. The paint will get rubbed out, and proudly display it’s Patina for now.

As with any project, it could go astray, and a full on restoration could occur.. but for now we are just excited to see Nick rolling into our next Eastwood Summer Classic with this and his family! We will keep you updated as he progresses!

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Eastwood Chatter, Eastwood Pro Restorers, The Bug Guy

How to install your own Windshield Part 1.

Jul 6th, 11 / 0 Comments

 

If you’re anything like me, you like to try and do as much of the resto process as possible yourself. From pulling it out of the woods, a barn or a field, to engine work, and reassembling it all myself, I like the satisfaction of saying I did 99% of the work (even if it means twice the stress!) myself.

So a topic that comes up a lot with older cars is the installation of your windows, especially the windshield. Many cars even up until the 80′s and early 90′s had windshields that were actually just “pressed” into the car and not glued. But in the past 20 or so years these types of windshields slowly disappeared from automotive production and have been replaced by windshields that are glued into the car. These work great, but are horrible to replace and remove. Most installation shops won’t even touch the older style windshields, or if they do, they won’t warranty their work if they break a windshield. This is particularly scary if you have a car or truck that has an obsolete, rare, or expensive windshield and seal. Over the years I have learned to do this method myself on older European cars, and I decided to make an impromptu video the other day chronicling the process on a car I have been restoring at home. This first video is the process of actually preparing the windshield for installation, and the supplies you will need along the way. The process is pretty much the same for any older car with a “press-in” or “rope-in” windshield, so these basic tips can be used on anything from a 70′s VW to a 40′s American Classic!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the installation process! Feel free to comment and let us know if there are any other videos you’d like to see from any of our other tech experts!

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

Stripping made easy!

May 26th, 11 / 2 Comments

I love getting “deals”, so anytime I can get a deal on an old rare car part, I usually jump on it. I’ve found that there is almost always a reason why the part was a deal. Could be damaged, dirty, incomplete, etc, but normally it is going to require some extra elbow grease. This is especially true with old wheels. Once I’ve determined that they are straight and free of any major damage, I begin to dig in and see how may times they have been painted or powdercoated over. Most of these old aftermarket wheels have a least a few coats of paint or powder on them! In the past I’ve media blasted my wheel parts. This works well, but it is very tedious, time consuming, and often times frustrating if the wheel or part has intricate cutouts or crevices. Even with media blasting, it can be difficult to get in every little nook and cranny to get the old layers of paint and corrosion off.

Recently I came up with a quick, easy, and relatively low-cost way of stripping old painted wheel parts. This is especially good for any of you guys/gals out there without access to a blast cabinet and all of the accessories needed to properly media blast. All you need is enough of our Powder Coat and Paint Dissolver to fully or partially submerge your wheels or parts in, and a cheap trash or recycling bin. These work great for using as little dunk tanks. At the least I like to have my parts halfway suubmerged, then flip them every so often.

This time around, I was doing a set of 4 wheel centers. I chose a narrow, but tall plastic trash can that i could soak 3 at a time in. I used 2 gallons of the dissolver, which allowed me to have 3 centers halfway submerged at all times. As you can see in the picture above, these centers I had started to try and strip before I started this article. I tried using some aerosol paint stripper I got late one rainy night at the local Wal-Mart. Needless to say, I spent an entire evening with brushes, plastic scrapers, etc., and I still barely got 1 1/2 faces stripped (I hadn’t even touched the backsides). That will teach me to be impatient and try and use the incorrect product for the job! So after my frustrating evening with the centers, I brought them here into the shop and submerged them in my make-shift dunk tank.




I let the wheels initially soak for about 15 minutes, at which point I like to (did I mention I can be impatient!) give the dissolver some “help” and rub the areas that were exposed to the dissolver with my (gloved) fingers. Already at this point you should be able to start seeing the color just washing and rubbing right off of the parts. Now, you can just leave the parts in for a longer period of time with no care and it will remove the paint or powder, but I’ve found my method above GREATLY speeds up the process.

Once you resoak the area for 10-15 more minutes, the powder or paint should really just be washing right off. At this point I flip the part, resoak the side that hasn’t been exposed to the dissolver yet, and then repeat the process. The nice thing about stripping parts this way vs. media blasting is that you can really multi-task, and if you are anything like me, you probably have 18 other mini-projects going on in the shop at the same time. This way you don’t need to be strapped to the blaster the entire time the part is getting stripped!

Once I had the majority of the heavy powder/paint off of the centers, I took them to the shop sink and used tap water and a plastic bristle brush to get any small bits of powder out of the crevices in the letters as well as clean the dissolver off of the entire wheel.

After a good rinse, the centers are ready for powder, paint, or polish! Since I previously had some welding and machine work done to the lugs and backing pads of these wheels, I will be powdercoating the faces to get a nice even finish on them.

For clean up, I just grab a funnel and pour the left over dissolver right back into the containers and store them for the next stripping project. I’ve stripped a ton of parts with the batch I am currently using, and it still works great! I hope this quick little process can help some of you save cash stripping off old paint and powder, as well as save you some time!

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Eastwood Pro Restorers, Matt's Motor head Talk

New Carb Renew II. Ultimate paint for your ugly Carb

Mar 17th, 11 / 0 Comments

What do you do when you have the best? You try and “one-up” yourself. For years Eastwood Carb Renew was the standard in fuel resistant carb paint, but we recently outdid ourselves. We improved upon the formula, and added extra fuel resistance, all while keeping that original look of a fresh carb. Check out some before and after photos of J.R.’s Carb for his Ford Capri using our new Carb Renew II!

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Eastwood Chatter, Eastwood Pro Restorers, Matt's Motor head Talk

Save Your Hands! Metal Buffing Made Easy.

Mar 2nd, 11 / 11 Comments

As I’ve mentioned in other entries, I am a bit of a rare-wheel “fanatic”. I seem to spend more time seeking out and deciding on the wheels I am going to be running on a project, than I do picking a paint color! Because of my love for rare, old wheels; I often end up with a set of wheels that need a lot of love. In the past I have been a stickler for polishing wheels all by hand. This means starting with 6-800 grit sandpaper, and working my way all the way up to wet 2000-2500 grit paper, and hand rubbing the finish out with Autosol. This takes a LONG time, is messy, and often left my hands sore for days after polishing up a set of wheels. I considered using a buff motor, but as with any DIY’er, I am always on a budget and I couldn’t justify buying a buff motor and supplies.

Here at Eastwood, we put together a Polishing/Buffing Kit that makes my life so much easier when it comes to polishing up an old set of alloys (and doesn’t break the bank!). The kit comes with the essentials to get that mirror-polish look that everyone wants. I took the kit home and found a good way to turn your regular home electric drill and vice into a buff motor.

I first laid out the kit to see everything that I got with it, and pulled out specifically the buffing pads and compounds I would need.

For the job I was doing, I was restoring some polished aluminum lips on a set of vintage three piece race wheels. The lips were quite tarnished from years of use on a dedicated track car. I had previously used a few of our Hot Coat Powders to coat and restore the rear barrel and center portion of the wheel. Here are a few shots of the parts I powder coated. You can see in the first picture an example of how the lips looked almost gray before I used some buffing magic.


Before I began, I decided to get the dirt, grime, and residue from the sticky wheel weights off of the lips. The buffing wheels and compound will not work miracles, they do need clean/residue free metal to begin with! I used a can of PRE, a rag, and some elbow grease, which made the residue came off quite easily, even the old duct tape residue they had over some of the weights!

Next, I got the drill clamped into the vice and a polishing wheel into the drill. At first I tried an upright position with the drill, but I later found that clamping the drill into a horizontal position really made things more comfortable for me while buffing. I decided to start with a triple stitched buffing wheel and the brown compound. The brown compound is quite aggressive, so if you have a part that still has some shine to it to begin with, you may want to start with the less aggressive gray or the white compounds to avoid causing yourself more work.

You can see below that even just starting with the brown compound, the difference between the area I had worked and what I started with. Luckily I was only working with 13″ wheel lips, so this process went quite quick.

Although the stitched pads seemed to be the best buffing wheels for the job, there were some heavily tarnished areas in the valley of the lips that I couldn’t get to with the stitched pads. I changed out to a small cone wheel, and it blew right through the tarnish.


I also began using the softer “pear shaped” buff cylinder with the white compound to get the base of the lip where it bolts together. These spots are important to get nice and polished, as the bolts are so close together, it is nearly impossible to repolish them by hand with rubbing compound. So the better they look to begin with, the less work it is to maintain that finish in the future.

After a few hours of work I had all 4 lips polished, and WOW what a difference! You can really see the mirror polish coming out when doing the last step with the white compound. For the final step I used a microfiber rag and some Norton Detailer to remove any final buffing compound residue. Finally after assembly I could stand back and admire the difference between the wheels before and after.

To keep the mirror polish in place, and seal the lips from further tarnishing, I like to use our Metal Protect for an invisible barrier and easy cleaning in the future.

As I mentioned, any of the Eastwood Buff Motors will do the job just as well, but sometimes we can’t always justify the space or money required to own one, and have to come up with creative solutions like this. Feel free to comment with any of your tricks, tips, or hints when buffing!

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