14 replies to this topic

[starlifter]

It took me 3 years to get the insides right, make it safe and pass inspection. I finally had a week off to get to the body. 12 hours a day for 8 days - I finally have my Blumo! I'll take any comments or suggestions. I'm having pushbars fabricated and the local police mechanic is going to install my unity spot. Drove around today for the first time. Ahhh, the joy of high fives, thumbs up and watching every head turn to follow me!!!



Here's the album of how the week unfolded. I'm happy to answer any questions anyone might have!

Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket

[sigmfsk]

Nice bluesmobile! Incredible work painting it in your garage. Its impressive seeing pics of people's builds. It reminds me how slow I am.

For the driver door, did you add the lower left red "rust spot" as an artistic duplication of the screen bluesmobile? I don't think I've seen that touch before.

It looks like you have aftermarket wheels; do you know how wide they are? I'm betting they are wider than the maximum stock width of 6.5". If you know the width and offset, I'd appreciate if you could post the tire & wheel info here:
http://www.bluesbrotherscentral.com/forum/bluesmobiles/10222-widest-wheels-tires.html
I think I have good handle on what will fit in the rear, but I don't have much knowledge on what will fit in the front.

thanks,
arthur

Attached Files

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[ChiTownJohn]

Yeah nice work and a car in great shape too!
The numbers are steadily going up in the Bluesmobile section!


john

[TI4438]

This is awesome.If these cars were plastic model kits,we'd be participating in what is called a 'group build'.Everybody builds something of a similar topic.
You definately gotta throw on some black,stock rims.
Definately a baddass Blumo!

[starlifter]

yeah, the wheels are huge. It's actually a dilemma for me. I know I should have stock black rims, but those wheels came with the car and even though the chrome isn't movie accurate - they ride really nice. I'm going out of town for a week so I can't measure them until I get back but here are the numbers off the tires.

front P215/70R15
reat P245/60R15


yes, I added the primer spot purposely on the drivers door for a little more authentic touch!

[Ghostbluesman]

Beautiful car, SL...you should be proud!
Rob

[Steam McQueen]

starlifter said:

Here's the album of how the week unfolded

Awesome! That's some nice work, Starman! I loved the slideshow.

[Bismo]

Great stuff, congrats and thanks for sharing the photos!

[Bagman]

Nice job!

What happened with the ride height you were asking me about? I never heard the end of the story.

[Bagman]

Also, can you briefly describe your painting? Like, which paint type/color, how many coats, how you set up your garage.

Thanks,

[starlifter]

Bagman said:

Nice job!

What happened with the ride height you were asking me about? I never heard the end of the story.

I'm still working on that. I gotta get someone who's experienced with Torsion bars to come take a look. It's entirely possible I'm missing it but I think the cross bar was removed by the previous owner. I don't want to take it to a mechanic and put my inspection in jeopardy. I'm gonna find someone I trust to come to the house, throw it up on the ramps, take off the wheels and go from there. If I can just get 2-3 more inches in ride height it will make a big difference.

I'm on a business trip right now. later this weekend when I get home I'll list all the paints, how I cut my stencils, and a complete description of my 'process'.

[Bagman]

starlifter said:

I'm still working on that. I gotta get someone who's experienced with Torsion bars to come take a look. It's entirely possible I'm missing it but I think the cross bar was removed by the previous owner. I don't want to take it to a mechanic and put my inspection in jeopardy. I'm gonna find someone I trust to come to the house, throw it up on the ramps, take off the wheels and go from there. If I can just get 2-3 more inches in ride height it will make a big difference.

What city is your car in? And I think you'll want to get an alignment if you adjust the ride height since adjusting the ride height is step1 of the alignment process.

[starlifter]

Finally got home and had a chance to collect my thoughts on last week. For those interested, here's how the week unfolded. I didn't have much of a plan, I just knew that if I worked about 10 hours a day I could get this car done in a week. Hope this helps......

Day 1. stripped the vinyl off the roof. Unfortunately there was more than just spot rust underneath. 2 small holes, quite a lot of divots that needed to be filled. I sanded off the glue, took a grinder to the rest making sure I didn't take off too much metal to weaken the roof. There were still quite a few divots to overcome so I used an epoxy filler primer. I was going to spray it on but quite frankly, some divots were deep enough it would have taken 10 coats. Instead I took a paint brush and literally hand painted the roof, allowing the primer to fill in all the holes. I can't recall the name of the product, I'll try to post that later. After handpainting and allowing 8 hours to dry, I sanded the crap out of it to get it smooth. While the roof was drying I spent the day removing all the trim, front grill, DODGE letters etc. I also taped off the trim that is glued on and can't be removed such as the door guards and the trim along the edge of the hood. There was side trim that needed removed, I tried to save it but in the end it was a lost cause. Ripped them all off, took a cutter to the posts that held the trim on to cut it off, ground down the rest. There were a couple of holes where that trim is screwed through the doors. I used tape behind it and then liberally applied Bondo. Before bed, I hit the roof with another coat, this time using my spray gun and a 2.0 tip.

Day 2.

start with sanding, sanding and more sanding. the roof in particular. There was no way it was ever going to be factory smooth sheet metal, but I wanted it as close as possible. Ended up having to hit the filler primer one more time. Fortunately it sets up in 2 hours so I was able to get that part of the roof done by the afternoon. Finished the side trim sanding, removed the reflectors, lights, monaco emblem etc. Started taping off everything that wasn't going to be primed. I thought I would get to the primer by day 2, but difficulties figuring out the taillights (see previous posts...:-) ) and a few other hiccups slowed me down. Also, I sanded the entire car to cut through the clear coat. I wasn't going down to bare metal - I wanted as much protection as possible but I used 80 grit paper to scuff it up enough to hold the primer.

Day 3.

Sand the roof. again. Pull the car out to wash it down and clean it off with degreaser. Let dry. Back into the garage. Time for grey primer. whoo hoo!! Used a 1.3 tip gun this time. I put on 2 coats of primer. I sanded in between with 320 grit paper. I also sanded after the final application. If I haven't mentioned it - I hate sanding. Not much to do this day expect prime, wait to dry, sand, prime, wait to dry sand. I thought about hitting the white this evening but wanted to give the last coat of primer a good 12 hours.

Day 4.

taped off to apply white paint to the roof and front doors. Much like day 3, day 4 was spent applying a coat, waiting to dry, sanding, applying the next coat. I did 3 full coats of white this day allowing the last one to dry overnight.

Day 5.

Exactly the same as day 4 except now, the white areas are taped off and I'm painting the black. Here are the paints I used for the body:

Nason Brand
414-49053 acrylic frost white
422-05 chassis black
422-23 grey primer

I should also add, I didn't really set up my garage special for painting. I hung a couple plastic sheets to protect the door and some shelving but otherwise everything else was uncovered. I knew the paint would get everywhere so I set to fans to get a light breeze blowing outwards and simply opened the garage doors. yeah, my concrete floor his a dusting of black now, but overall it wasn't too bad. I did my spraying in small doses and other than spraying the grey primer I didn't stir up too much of a cloud of paint.

Day 6.

Started the day with my final coat of Black. I ended up with 4 coats total. Today was 'create the stencils' day. I believe I have found something I hate more than sanding. I started with that stencil set sold on ebay. You guys know the one I'm talking about. Came with a Star, 'to serve and protect' and the P1's. also had 2 fake illinois plates. I come to find if did NOT have the numbers on the side of the car nor the POLICE/176 for the trunk. Also, the stencils were not negatives, they were positives. I think that makes a difference. For example, I didn't want to paint the quarter panels white first to lay down a 'to serve an protect' stencil and then paint over with black. Fortunately there was a redeeming quality to the kit. The vinyl sticky images were themselves covered with low-tack sticky paper so I painstakingly cut around every to get my negatives. Then I used green masking tape to lay a straight line across all my locations and with my wife carefully removing the backing I was able to lay them all out on the car. That's how I got 'to serve and protect' and the P1 to look evenly spaced and level. If you look at my slideshow you can see how the stencils looked laid down in negative form. It was very delicate cutting out the letters and you can see it wasn't a precise job - but since I was going to scuff them up anyway, I figured it would be ok. Also, the star in the kit was a star only, and didn't have the circle in the middle. On that stencil i actually taped the star to the car and used the green masking tape to outline it. Then I placed a 10 inch round plate in the middle and used low-tack frisket paper around that. An exacto knife to carefully cut out the inner sections and I'm left with a star/circle stencil.

Now, on to the letters on the side and trunk. Again, thanks to jknlwud for doing all the measurements. I know some have taken screen shots and used those, but I didn't have the resources or time to do so. I scoured free font sites and found a font at 1001freefonts.com. Look under headlines section for Mister Belvedere. I thought that was pretty darn close. I used that to create my phone number and the trunk stencils. For the phone number on the sides I went with 520 on the font size. For POLICE/176 I went with 650. At a craft store called Michaels i bought a pack of low-tack frisket paper. Easy to see through and so I was able to cut out the negatives. I will also say if there is a Hell, the person who designed low-tack frisket paper should have to spend eternity there attempting to cut out designs and then peel back the sticky part.

Nevertheless, though it took all day I was able to get the car stenciled up, papered off and ready for paint. For all these, I used rattle cans instead of my spray gun. The star/circle is simply rust-oleum flat black. 'to serve and protect', rust-oleum flat white. The P1 is multiple colors. First Rust-oleum almond as a base, then a hit of flat white then a light dusting of black. The POLICE/176 is actually 3 colors as well. Krylon Ruddy Brown primer (which is also what I used for the primer spot on the drivers door), flat white and flat black. I did not put any of these colors on solid but would do light passes in random patterns/lines.

Day 7:

Remove the stencils. start distressing the lettering. I used ultra-fine steel wool grade 0000 for the job. Just basically started rubbing everything out until I liked how it looked. Not a long day, but I spent about 6 hours removing the rest of the masking tape and putting all the trim back on. It also turns out that despite my precautions and taping - some of the black chassis paint ended up on the white, even though it was masked off. Turns out I could use the steel wool on that as well and it cleaned up pretty good also adding to the 'distressed' look of the car. lucky me I guess.

Day 8. reconnected the battery, checked out all my lights (i had replaced all the bulbs since I was pulling dang near everything off). Did a little more work underneath. As Arthur knows, I have some suspension issues that need addressed. I may have to replace my torsion bars and the cross bar anti-sway support. Not sure yet, I need someone experienced to check it out. Fortunately, the 74 dodge hardtop I offered to sell here a few months ago only had one interested individual, but the sale still fell through. Thus, I have all the spare parts I need. I'm going to canibalize it down over the next year to fix all the little things with my sedan. Stuff like the clock, fuel gauge etc.

Anyway, fired up the engine around noon - did a final safety check and the wife and I hit the road for about 5 hours. Total blast tooling around in my new Blumo!! Hope this diary of my week is helpful. I'm a complete novice at this stuff, not a mechanic and this was the first car I ever attempted to paint. I'm sure I made many mistakes - but it's supposed to look like a beat up ****box dodge, right?

As an epilogue, I think I have a guy who can fabricate push-bars for me and the local cops referred me to the shop where they have all their work done. The guy in charge is hooking me up with an S6 unity and says he can get the 216L bracket. we'll see! I'm probably gonna have some questions for those who have added the pushbars. I'm wondering if I'm gonna have to remove the bumperettes i have right now or if the bars will fit around them. I have an 8-track ready to install, some old packs of chesterfield cigarettes for the dashboard and some band posters for the Palace Hotel ballroom. My buddy the state trooper is gonna write me a bunch of citations to litter up the back seat with. Hopefully just a couple more weeks until these final details are done.

My kids (who didn't want to help with the sanding) are now clamoring to drive it everywhere. I think not........:-)

[Bagman]

Awesome post, thanks.

[starlifter]

Bagman said:

Awesome post, thanks.

happy to help. now get that green monster done and let's cruise chicago!!!!