Another coat?! Save me dolly

Many inventions/discoveries have effected us all. Of course the internet and it's cornucopia of porn sites. But the invention of craigslist is great. The world's largest garage sale. No more traveling to questionable neighborhoods. People's crap comes to you right on your own computer. My most recent find on craiglist is a set of wheel dollies. $60 bucks and I have a good set of 4 dollies. Steal. Now I can move around my firebird and make more room in the garage at will. Assuming of coaurse I move all the spare parts off the floor and out of the way. But tonight I moved it all by my self and faced it towards the garage door without crunching the wall. So this week I can start sanding off the por 15 coating on the firewall and give it a coat of primer and SEM trim black to match the top of the dash. I wanted it closer to the opening of the garage so the dust won't completely settle all over my tools in the garage. I also picked up a good random orbital sander to get the job done as well.

Glossy

The flat black for the top of the dash works alright, but the front instrument panels needs a little gloss. Rustoleum Black Satin (7777) worked great. Hit the front with a couple of coats. But plane on adding one more coat tomorrow. also got around to sand/prep/painting the glove box door and matching it with the same black. The back of the door still has the original sticker so I masked it and will not pull it off. I will work around it, it's been there for 40 years and will be there for another 40. I had ordered some new dash knob bezels and cleaned the knobs up some. I took a good scrub to all the faux woodgrain bezel covers for the center dash, ash tray and radio cover. All look good. once I hit the dash with a final clear coat I will start installing some of the instuments.

Dash Painted

So after a good wipe down with a degreaser I got to work on the paint. Masking is essential and time consuming. And you always find a little sliver of paint where you are convinced that you put tape over. Got two coats on it and killed every bug in the garage by evacuating the area of breathable air. Ventilation was good in the garage but the smell of drying paint still is nausiating. The finish is more of a flat black and I am considering making the forward portion more of a semi gloss. I don't want the top to be glossy though because of sun glare.

Got a little work done today. Began prepping the dash for paint. Going to use SEM Black Trim on a suggestion form Yellowbird. Hope it turns out okay tomorrow.

Been a while since I last posted. Home repairs set me back a little. Took a couple of weekends to completely gut the dash. I made sure to label all the electrical connections and documented where the were routed. I removed the engine wiring harness, circuit breaker box and interior harness. Also had to do some research to take the ignition, headlight, and light knobs.

Need to also transfer the VIN plate. Got a rivet gun from the new Home depot that opened up close to the house (Man land - as my wife calls it). Two rivets later - its on. Way easier than I though it would be.

I needed to borrow a welder. Easy right? Found a coworker that had a wire feed MIG. Went to his house, took a look, and left it there. I found that exposed wires, a huge empty take and total lack of safety told me not to borrow it. Found another coworker. This one was small and no gas. So I'd attempt some fluxwire welding. After turning it on it tripped my circuit breaker on my extention reel. Problem: the motor was stuck. That's what happens when you use a 10 year old welder that has been sitting outside.
Fine I'll get my own- Trip to Northern tool. Got a small wire fed and a tank of Ar/Co2.
Practice practice practice.... Good thing I saved the old panel to get the voltage and wire speed right. BTW - the web is awesome- DIY MIG - lessons and video.
This weekend, hot as hell. Scratch that. Hotter than the red hot hate of a thousand suns. Saturday I got to it though and prepped and painted the new part. I planned on attaching it with some plug welds. Got it test fitted and marked it off. So today I got into the garage and set it all up. 3 hours later - its on. Just need to ground down one side tomorrow.
I guess my first major project on the car is complete.

Dash Pad removed

Ground the rest of the panel off and cleaned up the welds on the edge of the dash. The new one has been shipped and would get here within the week. Now I need to prep the area for welding. I am also planing to to repaint the instrument panel. need to find some black gloss paint and wired brush the old off.

Spot weld cutter

Took a trip to northern tools to pick up a spot weld cutter. Unfortunately they only had the spring loaded kind and the harden bits. So it was a little squirrelly when I tried to cut some of welds out. Just attached to the old electric drill and started drilling them out. I took a punch and made a small hole for the cutter spring guide. Technique wise, I sped up the drill to its highest rpms and slowly dug in. It was more successful that way - couple of runaway holes though. 28 holes later, the front dash and the upper dash are separated. Allot of small shaving were everywhere.