Build Thread 1978 Mercury Cyclone. The pig is in the pen.

jrichker said:

You talk to your car and I talk to my cat... Hummm... does you car give you as good advice as my cat gives me?

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After this, It is the only voice I listen to.

** A snippet from a previous "conversation"

So, like I always do, I stopped and stared at the thing for a really long time. I'd move to the pass side of the car and look down at the stupid looking thing, then I'd move over to the driver's side, and get down on one knee and look at it some more. I must've walked back and forth between the two sides about a dozen times, all while asking myself "How was I gonna blend that transition to where it actually looked like a smooth bend, instead of some wonky attempt at a 3 point turn".

Did you ever read the Shining? ( You had to read it to get the inference here, I don't think the movie went over this that well). In the book, they talked about someone who "shines". (Basically it's having ESP) When that pain in the ass little kid was running from his drunk crazy assed dad, he mentally called the character played by Scatman Crothers to come and save them. The telepathed message was so strong, it was like it was screamed, it was so intense, it caused Scatman's nose to bleed.

So, now that that side note is set up,.......comes the rest of the story.

As I'm obsessing over how I'm gonna solve the problem with the the door/dash bar, a faint noise buzzes in my ear.

I ignore it.

A couple more switches between sides, and the noise, now definitely more of a voice, becomes more obvious. But,

I ignore it. There's nobody else in the garage but me.

I sit on my roll around thingy, and I roll between sides. Passenger side, ( I stand up) Driver side, (I kneel down. I kneel on the driver side to get a better view angle)

Then it hits me. HEY DUMB ASS! WHY DON'T YOU DO THIS?

The car is talking to me. Just like in the book, the message is so loud, I get b itch slapped off my rolly thing onto the garage floor.

It's an epiphany. I crawl to my feet, and stand with my mouth open while the car tells me that I'll have to weld the transition onto the top bar, and make a new cut at the middle of the turn. By welding the transition, I'll be able to blend the turn, I'll be able to create a butt joint where the door bar, and the dash bar will meet as opposed to the fish mouth that would just trash the paint. The butt joint could be gasket-ed, and I'd be able to cushion the bars to minimize any interference. I'll be able to make a domed cover to weld on top of the intersection that will look more like I planned it that way, Looking more like one bar instead of the two.

It's my typical SOP. Do it once, fix it twice.

Despite having a new path to follow, It's late, and I've been working on the junker for about 6 hours. I tell the car that it's late, and we'll deal with this tomorrow. No response.

Go figure.

5.0Droptop said:

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Now I remember.......
Aren't you the guy that lives in a drawer in one of your married friends master bedrooms, whose mission is to arbitrarily pop into a thread (after a really long hiatus) and basically stage a house party in it, invites countless others in, play really loud death metal, spill beer every where, break walls, and leave garbage everywhere?

Or maybe that's some other 5.0 Droptop

tannerc91gt said:

BangShift.com LS1 head on inline six

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Yeah, I saw that thing months ago when he was still mocking it up. It's on a 300, which has a different bore spacing than my engine. I have the best head I can get for my engine, although if something like that was even a viable " possibility" you gotta know I'd be trying it.

84Ttop said:

:crickets in here:

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Like I said in my last real update, I committed to staying on one thing, and seeing the hood through to completion.
That promise is/ has led to a complete psychotic break. And trying to get the thing finished is/ has literally driving me crazy.

I'm still not done with the hood, and if I had to assign a percentage to its stage of completion, I'd have to say that it's only 50%. And this is after 20 hours of body work alone and an entire gallon of 50.00 Bondo. When I pried the hood bracing from under the bottom of the hood, it created a low spot right on the center ridge line. Trying to get that ridge line restored between the scoops is proving to be difficult.
The ramps that lead into the scoop openings are different. One is steeper, one is slightly longer. Trying to even them out w/o revealing a high spot is also killing me.
The ramps at the rear of the scoops are different too. Similar to the front with the same issues to deal with.

It's not that there is a gallon of filler on the hood, more than likely it's on the driveway after sanding the bulk of it back off.

I know a real body man would have knocked this thing out in a day,...but I'm not a body man.
I just "play" a body man on TV.

Funny how things change.

All along I've been trying to follow the plan w/ this build. The engine, trans, chassis, suspension, electrical, and fluid systems have all followed the plan.
Additionally, the interior while it took me awhile to get going is following the plan.
The exterior body mods are also following the plan forgiving a couple of "on the fly" modifications to the design, but more or less, the things I wanted to make happen are happening.

The color has always been planned. It's always been Competition Orange single stage w/ some black accents.

Today, that changed.

Coming back around to "the plan", I always intended to paint the black Bullitts Gold. In an attempt to give myself a break from the maddening monotony that is hand sanding, and body work, I removed the 4 wheels and masked them so that I could do that.

Months ago, I bought a qt. of low VOC single stage paint and hardener from Summit. The color was called Gold rush metallic, and the chip (from best I could tell) looked like the right shade of gold to fit the bill.
The ordeal of masking the wheels was no picnic. While better than having to sand, bondo and breathe 50 lbs of the resulting dust, it still took about 2 hours of just taping, followed by..........what else?

Sanding.

Well not actually sanding per se', it was actually "scotch briting". Just enough to give the paint something to bite into.

When it was time to spray the things, I opened the qt. of paint, and mixed it 4 parts paint to one part hardener, strained it into my Home Depot Husky gravity feed gun, flipped the wheels over so as to be able to paint the back side first, and started to spray.

Heavy metallic, but very transparent, it took forever to get the things to color.

Only problem was that they weren't gold at all. The color on a black substrate was definitely much more green-gold than gold. Didn't matter how many coats it seemed, the green gold hue was what I was gonna get. After 4 coats however, it became apparent that if I was gonna have enough paint to be able to paint the front sides, I was gonna have to bail on the backside color.

So I flipped them over. I had 20 oz. of mixed paint to try to get the outside of the wheels the "gold" that I had planned for them to be.

That was not to be.

So here we are, at the fork in the road.

Orange don't go w/ green. Even if it's green gold.

So my choices are to rethink the exterior color to a more green friendly color, or repaint the wheels.

The problem w/ repainting the wheels is....they now have 4 additional coats of paint on top of the black powder coated finish.

And.....

They look freakin' gorgeous.




* the white dots you see on the spokes are actually the reflection of the camera flash*

That paint flowed like liquid gold. Seemed I couldn't screw it up. As good as these things look, It would be a damn shame to paint over them, and take a chance of something happening.

See, It's almost like an epiphany. I was actually having a hard time coming to terms w/ the orange color. It seems that the damn thing is everywhere.
If I keep the wheels the color that they are now, I'll go either w/ a gold-green, or a green gold. I can go either way, my interior is brown and black, and they both will work either way.

The only problem, is the orange engine. In a black engine compartment.

If we're gonna be truthful,....I'm not particularly in love w/ the orange engine, but,....let me tell you. I ain't pulling the damn thing for the sake of changing it anytime soon. It's just gonna have to be "Why the hell does he have an orange engine in a gold car?"

If we're really gonna be truthful it should be obvious to you that I lied.

I did not stay on the hood until I got it done.

It's either I paint the wheels and maintain my sanity,..or go bat s hit crazy sanding off bondo.

Painting the wheels now as opposed to waiting worked out for the best then. Had I painted the car the orange that is sitting in a box, and THEN painted the wheels,....I'd be..................PIS SED!!

I also did some forward thinking.

The front bumper is gonna eventually get a similar dork-n-dectomy, where I cut off the way too wide outsides, and blend them into the fenders. When you look at the front of a Fairmont, Ford used a plastic extension beneath a body line, actually "making" the extension part of that body line.


It just seemed stupid to me to re-make that plastic extension, keep that body line intact, and then come up w/ a way to assimilate it into the new front bumper.

I decided to eliminate that body line. And fill it in.

If I did it up front, I had to do it in back.



So I welded this strip over the body line.

And while I have yet to finish that side,.....



This side is close.

Doing that also solves the "road to nowhere" that leaving the old body line in back created. The body line actually ends, and then there is the bumper back there now blended into the body. Looked stupid to me. Now it's gone.

Since writing this, I just went down, and checked on the wheels. Still drying, but no longer tacky (no more danger of some damn bug landing on the paint) They still look wet.

Boosted92LX said:

I agree the quality of the paint job is there Mike, it looks slick. The color? Mmmmmm...

Even the words "green" and "gold" look off next to each other.

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You guys.......

You just have to adjust your perspectives...



The Completely Obscure Original Tuna boat Chrysler 300 Hurst, sporting a "I can do that" paint scheme.

or

The 1970 Hurst olds:



or



or



You guys really need to get out more.