After the morning bike ride the next two hours were consumed block sanding the brushed on 2K primer. Brushing it on is sure easy on clean up, but it’s fairly miserable for block sanding. Sprayed on primer would have taken very little effort to block out by comparison.
Once sanded smooth it was wiped down twice with wax and grease remover. Then I started thinking about a way to hang the darn thing so I could apply the paint. A simple solution presented itself when I remembered keeping a heavy cast iron base weight out of an architects’ lamp. It weighs at least twice as much as the grille piece. A mount was created using a length of all thread and a few nuts and washers. The grille bar has a heavy steel strap where the original tin emblem backer bolted on. It was rested on the all thread and clamped tight with a second nut. Since the cast iron was dirty, it was covered with aluminum foil, along with the turn table underneath.
Here’s how it looked after about 6 heavy flow coats sprayed on directly under the heat lamps in an 84 degree garage:
A tiny dust spec settled in the first mist coat, which I picked out with tweezers. Amazingly no additional debris landed in the paint. The picture doesn’t do it justice, it really came out nice and shiny smooth.
Here’s the emblem retaining strap holding the bar up. The color looks off because I forgot to turn off the heat lamps before taking the picture:
The center emblem was finished yesterday:
Originally I was going to paint the background black and leave the letters white. Then I thought about painting the letters (only) black. For now I’m going to leave the whole thing white. I’m thinking leaving it white will minimize the emblem and give it more of a factory appearance. I guess the proof will be in how it looks after installation.
And here’s the back of the emblem/former horn button. The sides were trimmed down so the mounting tabs would be lower than the factory threaded bosses in the grille bar. 90 degree brackets where pop riveted to the sides and mounting bolts attached. Six pieces of .080 plastic styrene were Krazy glued to the perimeter. This forces the cap to be centered in the grille opening. The holes in the grille strap were drilled to fit the bolts in the cap, so pushing it into place both centers the cap and aligns the letters dead level.
There’s so much paint on the bar, it’s going to take until tomorrow to cure sufficiently to allow handling. The only thing left to do is assemble the parts and stick it on the truck, after which I’ll correct the up and down fit of the fog lights. I’m getting anxious to see how it looks when completed.