Joe Clark says:
>
> Ryan:
> Your autobody technique sounds a lot like mine!!! Kinda makes
> you wonder how Earl Schieb can paint a car for $89.95.
True story here!
When I was in highschool I worked at a very very nice autobody shop. It
was owned by two old Hungarian brothers who worked on things the old way.
Most of the cars were 1930's Mecedes, Packards, Rolls Royces etc.
Everything was lead fill and hand rubbed lacquer, and had to be perfect.
One of my teachers had a VW bus that he wanted to get painted, and some how
he convinced a buddy and me to help him do the prep work (mostly removing
the chrome and glass bits and making up the windows) and then get the car
to the local Earl Scheib. We figured that since a nice paint job is 90%
prep work, it would look alright in the end, certianly better than a $40
job might (the price back then was "I'll paint any car any color for just
$39.95").
We spent the weekend cleaning everything out of the inside, removing all
the glass (17 windows!) and doing most of the masking work. Then monday
morning trailered the bus to the paint shop. It was supposed ot get
sprayed later that morning. It didn't happen, they had to postpone until
the next day. That night it rained, but the next day was nice,
unfortunately the bus didn't get painted on tuesday either. The short of
it was the bus didn't get painted until friday of that week. We head out
there on Saturday morning to come pick up the bus, and we were shocked!
Apparently the poor thing had been left out the entire week, getting rained
upon, birds dropping their unwanted, ah, stuff on it, accumulating road
grime from the street traffic. Some of the masking tape had shifted in the
rain storm even. Didn't matter to ole Earl; he painted it just as it was
when it came time to roll the beast into the booth.
We stood in the parking lot starring at it silently for a good ten minutes
marveling at the gold paint covering huge blotches of bird poop, water
spots, and worse while the fellow proudly showed us how they had taken the
liberty of removing our masking job so we wouldn't mess up the paint job.
No, he didn't take the bus to Hans and Gunthers to get it fixed, I ended up
sanding down the gold paint and respraying it in his front yard myself. It
looked a lot better than the Earl Scheib custom job.
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Miq Millman miq@teleport.com
Tualatin, OR
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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