After repairing the major blowout on my air hose, I managed to finish sanding the drivers side so I could move it to the other bay. Another corvair job is coming in Sunday. Hopefully it won't take too long. Good to see my auto-exposure is working so-o-o well.

I know it looks about the same but there has been three coats of filler put on this side, two have been sanded off. I hope to sand the last coat tomorrow and move to the other side.
Wow, if you blow up the picture it looks like '57 Chevy fins!

Yay me! I finally got a chance to work on the little car. I laid out the template, drilled the holes and installed the modified Corvair rocker moldings. The left photo shows the retaining strip screwed in place and the right photo shows the trim strip in place. They were then removed and placed in storage with the rest of the parts. Tomorrow---more filling and sanding, the worst part of the whole restoration.

As you can see, the trailer is ready to go for inspection and registration. I can't mount the winch until I'm able to get the car on the trailer. The bed is eight feet long and five feet wide, I hope I can get the car forward enough to give me the correct tongue weight. I might have to load it on backwards so the engine weight is in front of the axle. We'll see, if nothing else I have a great utility trailer.

Apparently I don't have the hang of this yet. Too much time off. I stumbled across a good deal on a tilting, flat bed trailer to haul the Bianchina around on. Bought it, brought it home, took it all apart to clean, fix and paint and forgot all about taking before pictures. I'll post some when it's back together but not completely finished. I want to get it registered and tagged before completely finishing it. I'm planning on having an electric winch mounted on the front to load the car on but I'm afeared that might make it too hard to get a home built title. We'll see.

We finally finished getting my Dads estate finished, it will be listed tomorrow. I got back in the shop today and just futzed around getting used to it again. As promised, here are the before and after pictures of the cut down Corvair rocker trim. The finished length is 49.75 inches just to give you an idea of the scale. As soon as I can, I'll move the car into the working bay and install the mounting strips, drill all the holes and screw in stainless screws. I will then remove it all and store it and continue with the filling and sanding previously started. It's good to be back.

Haven't posted for a while but I've been sneaking in a little work on the car as time permits. I took a pair of 1965 Corvair rocker moldings and de- anodized them. I sent them out to be cut, shortened, heliarced, sanded, polished and buffed. When I get them back I'll clear coat them. Obviously they are for the Bianchina since I can't come up with the original trim pieces. I like these better anyway, they're streamlined so the car should go faster. GGGG I forgot to take before pictures but I will post pictures of the finished parts.
Being an executor is taking up wa-a-ay too much of my time.

I picked up the hood trim piece from a fellow Bianchina owner. When I received it, it had two screw holes drilled into the ends( I knew about them) I had the holes welded up (TIG), ground down, sanded smooth and then buffed out. I'm tickled to death with it. The story goes that they fell off of the car as it left the dealership when sold. Very rare piece.

I haven't given up, just busy with customer cars and trying to settle Dads estate. I'll be back on it soon.

I did some sanding and filling today. It looks the same but I wanted to try out my new camera.

I kind of cheated a little bit. While the customer car is still in the shop, I used a few spare minutes to fill some dings in the engine lid. I don't think I'll sand them until the bay is empty.

Did some more filling and sanding today, no picture, looks about the same. I moved the car back to the storage area to free up the working stall. Got a paying customer coming in.

It's been a long three weeks off but I finally got a chance to slip out to the shop and do some filling and sanding as shown above. I didn't know there were so many little dings and dents on there.

R.I.P. Dad, miss you.

I finally got a break from the hospital and nursing home so I managed to get a few hours on the body filler and sanding. Seems to be coming along okay, just seems slow. I guess I'm too impatient but progress is progress.

I painted the entire bottom today and touched up a couple of spots that looked thin. I also painted the bottom of both engine splash shields---not pictured. It's been a good couple of days. Now The finish body work begins, I sure was getting tired of cutting, welding and grinding.

Yesterday was priming day! I have three small pieces I've yet to do and then I can start on the finish body work. If any one is reading this and is interested, it took one and a half quarts of PPG DP50 primer to do the entire car. It is also $80 per quart set (primer and catalyst). I used my TIP Tools HVLP turbine spray unit to do this and you can see there is very minimal overspray any where. I did put plastic sheeting on the floor since I knew I would be spraying downward on the doors, trunk, hood etc. I should also mention this system is very bad for your lungs. I have and used a fresh air supplied hood while spraying. I looked like a bio hazard worker but I can still breath and no worries of the big "C". I also wore surgeon's gloves to avoid skin oil while handling the doors and other small parts. I am happy with the outcome and progress IS being made.

Still doing little catch up jobs preparatory to painting. Cleaned up the seam sealed seams with a razor knife and lacquer thinner then decided to test fit the carpet and console. Looks pretty good. Next will be masking, de greasing and primer----I think, may have to do something under the dash.

Been working on a bunch of little things, none worthy of a picture. I started by putting the lift under the car and removing the front half of the rotisserie so I could work on the front panel. I needed to shrink the left side some in order for the bumper to fit without hitting the body. That's when I discovered that there is supposed to be nuts welded to the inside of the brackets. After scratching around for the correct size, I welded them in place. One of the bumperettes needed a slight grinding at the bottom to fit correctly and I figured it's better to do it before they go to the chroming shop. Made a list of all the needed screws and bolts needed to mount the tail light housing and the front and rear bumperettes. Placed the car back on the rotisserie and painted the rear seat(GGGG) area with POR-15, buffed the stainless rain gutter trim and masked it so I could seam seal all the seams on the body with tube type sealer instead of the brush on type. I also went this morning and bought the epoxy primer, I was thinking of getting a gallon just to have on hand but at $167 I settled for a quart and a pint of hardener. I'll have to see how far that goes. I'm intending to prime the entire car, top to bottom, inside and out.

This is the area that I have to patch. It is a lot of compound curves so I'm probably going to weld a little, heat with a torch, bend a little, weld a little etc. until it fits and is all welded. The little patch around the screw hole was the toughest. The finished job is shown above, like the other side, it's a little lumpy but body filler will take care of it. The filler won't be any thicker than 1/8 inch anywhere on the body. I also did some work on the front hood to see if I could get the depression out where someone tried to close the hood without releasing the prop. I was about 98% successful but didn't take any pictures. Maybe next time. I think the next step is to go all over the body to see where if any seam sealer is needed. I'm pretty sure I've got it all but now is the time to check. Once it's ready it's time to prime it and then the body smoothing starts. (And I hate sanding!) I also removed the plastic screw anchors that were used to fasten the top of the bumperette to the body. It was then I discovered that there is supposed to be a welded nut on the backside of the tail light opening. After figuring out how to do it, I welded a nut behind each opening. The Bianchina parts book shows a special standoff nut(bolt?) is used there. It's male on one end and female on the other and is used to attach the tail light housing. Have to talk to my favorite machinist tomorrow.

I tackled the other fender lip today. It came out okay but it has a few depressions that will be filled with filler after epoxy priming. I was going to use body lead but after thinking on it decided on body filler being as it's much lighter than lead. Since the car only has 16 1/2 horsepower every ounce saved helps. You can see in the second picture that I've already cut out the rot on the bottom of the fender, I'll make a patch and weld it in tomorrow. I was able to find, clean out and retap the mounting hole for the rear bumperette. It was held on with a wood screw into a plastic anchor, real classy repair. Some where along the line it was filled with Bondo and instead of finding and using it, the old wood screw trick was used. Getting closer to priming.