BadGirlPage7

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"BADGirl" - Holden Gemini Page 7

The Bodywork Part 3:

The Engine Bay.

I Totally Stripped the Engine Bay, Stripping it Back to shiny Metal with Steak and Butter Knives, Thank Heavens for Factory Paint Jobs . Most of the Paint Didn't Even have Primer Under it and Basically just Flaked off . Next Came the Job of Smoothing up the Factory Wrinkles, Spot Welds and Joins, a Job a Lot Bigger than it Both Looked and Ended Up . Who Needs Skin on their Knuckles or Fingers ? At This Stage things got Really Cool Because the Kid's Were Watching and Enthusiasm Started to Kick in, They Wanted to Help, So Seeing as They Were a Better Fit in the Engine Bay than Me, I Armed Them with Butter Knives and Let Them to it . God Bless their Enthusiastic Little Hearts !

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Smoothing the Inner Guards .

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Applying the Etch Primer. Smoothing the Radiator Support and Firewall .

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More Etch Primer !

The Final Bodywork Stages, Almost There.

Ok, After my Boyfriend's Gump Neighbor Dobbed Us into the Local Council for Working on My Car (After His Son had just Completed Building up and Spraying an LC Torana in His Driveway I May Add !) We moved the Car to my Mothers Address, at Least it was Quiet with Great Neighbors on This Side of Town ! We All Got Stuck into the Scraping of Paint and Cleaning Back Years of Gunk, Even the Kids ! At last the Decision to have Kids Was Finally Paying Off ! This Project was Supposed to Take a Few Months, It Ended up Being 5 Years ! We Had Four Kids when We Started this Project, We Ended Up with Six ! So Much for Plans and Deadlines Hey ? Well as We Had already Completed the Rear of the Car, We had Trace Coated it With a Heavy Coating Of ?? Yellow Trace Coat ? This I believed was Acrylic Lacquer, But when it Came Time to Sand the Trace Coat Back It Wouldn't Budge ! It Had Set Like Concrete ! First We Tried Dry Hand Sanding, Then Wet Sanding, even Linishing Paper ! Then the Heavy Duty 1/2 Sheet Orbital Sander with 36 grit ! Not even Thinners Soaked Rags would Move It, So it was Out With the Sanding Disc (Read Discs !) on the 7 inch Polisher / Grinder and Redo the Rear Again ! ...... Sigh! I also Figured, Now was as Good a Time as Any to Finally Trim That Rear Edge Off Of the Boot Floor . At This Stage the Painter (#1) Started Taking a Great Deal of Interest in the Car and Suggested to My Boyfriend that the Roof Deflector Would Look Better Molded in . This Ended Up Adding Something like Another Months Worth of Work to Our Load, If Only We had Been Able to See a Little Deeper into The Painters Intentions .

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Getting There, the Bonnets Almost Complete, Still Have to Mold in the Roof Spoiler at This Stage .

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With the Body Taking on More Colour, the Idea of the Final Look is Getting Closer .

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Just Have to Sand Off the Trace Coat Applied Previously to the Rear of the Car, Shame It Had Set Like a Coat of Concrete though !

All In Etch Primer, Ready For Paint.... Or Not?

Alright ! The Body Work was Complete! Ready for Paint Now . We Had a Local Spray Painter Lined up to do the Paint Job, $4,500 Worth ! The Guy Had a Baking Oven And a Reputation for Doing Really Good 2 Pac Paint Jobs . He was Talking about Candys, Pearls, Flames, Graphics, Even Bought in the Local Paint Reps From Some Large Companies to Look the Car Over to See if They Wanted to Sponsor the Paint Job with Some of Their New Release Paints . But As We Soon Discovered it Was All a Ploy to Stall Us Off So As He Could Close the Doors of His Business to Go On and Become an illustrious Taxi Driver, May He Rot in Hell The Rip Off ! Well as it Turned Out, after Countless Phone Calls, I Finally got a Hold of His Wife, Who Was Under the Impression We Were Stalking Him, so We Set Up a Time to Call So She Could Listen in on the Conversation . In the End, She Rang Us Back, Seems His Wife Had a Heart, and Was a Lovely Person Who Eventually Offered Me $2,500 from Her Own Business . But Only on the Condition a Friend of Hers Paint the Car, And She Would Be Handing the Money To Him In Two Stages, Half Up Front, the Other Half on Completion, Fair Enough, He Was a Good Friend (Was) of Ours as Well and at Least We Would Have Paint On It, Not Quiet What We Were Expecting, But at Least Not Like How Her Husband Had Dropped it Off To Us, with Half the Body Sanded Down, and With a Major Thunderstorm an Hour or so Away in Our Driveway ! So Off it Went To The Second Spray Painter ! If Only She, and We had Known That the Second Painter was As Much a Rip Off as Her Husband Was ! Well in all Honesty the Second Painter at Least Contributed Towards a Base Coat (With Hundred's of Runs) for Paint Job Number Three . He Received the First Payment then Wrangled the Second Payment Out of Her, and Blew it All on His Dirt Track Race Car ! The Loser ! So, On We Go ! Next !