Topic: When deviating from the factory painting practice

[mtinkham]

I have a question regarding the painting process.  If one chooses to not follow the practice of painting the fenders off the car - like the factory, are the cowel and leading edges of doors painted prior to fender installation?

When I saw the pictures of DM_1964 beautiful Caspian Blue convertible, I wondered about whether everything was "jamb" painted first - headlight buckets, door openings, cowel areas, trailing edge of fenders, etc.  What about the fender lip - I would assume there are some fasteners in place securing the fenders - any special tricks to ensure full paint coverage below the bolt heads?

Any input would be appreciated.....formulating my plan for painting a 67 Coupe.

[67gta289]

This is probably one of those things where you get 5 people together and end up with 6 opinions, but here is how we did the last one.  A piece of 1/2" thick plywood laying across the aprons and bolted down as the fenders would if they were there.  It stuck out about 6 inches over on each side, and was away from the firewall several inches also.  The fenders were then bolted through the plywood in a couple spots with washers smaller than those on normal fender washers.  This way we could get the fender lips.  The hood sat on the plywood and was pulled forward a bit so we could get the cowl "lip" also.  Headlight buckets and quarter panel extensions were bolted to the car, but I added spacers so that there were gaps.   Everything was in position related to the final resting places.  We had a side panel for vents, parking lights, bumper guards, etc. so they would be vertical, and a side table for hood vents so they could be painted when flat. 

Doors and deck lid painted on the car first - so all jambs were taken care of.

A couple of pics included.  Hood and some other things were already removed at this point. 

[Brian in PA]

That's a great idea.

[J_Speegle]

Since your building a NJ car you have it a bit easier since you will not need to worry about body color in the front wheel wells (like you'll want on the rear ones)  forward of where the splash shields attach to the body.

While your at it don't forget to figure out how your going to make it look like the rear valance was painted on the car also - so don't let the body color flow from the rear of the car onto the rear cross member and floors at the rear. Real easy to pick these out when viewing the cars from below