Painter Special - Flames

Glad you're here because today's show is going to be a little bit different. I read you guys his email so I can pick projects that you want to see. One thing that keeps turning up is flame jobs. Well,

I don't paint. So I asked a friend of ours to come down and share his skills and Rick Bacon's got some

customizing and painting model cars. As a kid evolved into a lifestyle for Rick. He eventually opened his own shop, the body shop for you in Sonora California,

specializing in custom paint, air brushing and pinstriping with a growing reputation for turning out top notch one of a kind paint schemes.

But his ability to

lay down some crazy flames earned him the nickname the arsonist.

What draws me to his art is not just how realistic they look but the personality he finds in every car.

So he agreed to come to the shop and give somebody a free realistic flame job. A bunch of fights ensued and I had to settle it

and I couldn't think of anyone more deserving than the guys with cars for kids. And if you don't know who they are, you should

created in 1990.

It is one of the largest car shows in the South,

raising money for various children's charities throughout the United States. In

16 years. Cars for kids has raised over $2.5 million. All the benefit Children in need. Founder Larry Price made a promise after a traumatic accident almost cost his son his life. Cars for kids were started on my son here to get killed when he was 12 year old to buy a cigarette.

Uh, when you have an injury,

that's life threatening, you'll start praying to the Lord and I've done some heavy praying. If you let him live,

we would uh do something to have

handicap

abused kids.

We're gonna keep doing it until

if you cover me up, maybe somebody else will pick it up.

If you ever ask him how he did this. He'll tell you we all did this

because he knows it takes more than one man to help Children all over the country.

One of the biggest attractions, cars for kids has to offer is heads up drag racing. Larry brings in some of the meanest professional top fuel drags throughout the country. Keeping the crowds coming back year after year.

It's all for the kids and he knows the cars are the stars

and here's their next exhibition racing.

It's not done, but it's already destined to be a huge crowd. Pleaser.

This 63 Impala has been shortened 2 ft chopped four inches and it's powered by a 496 big block ready to light up those massive slicks.

And best of all, it's a perfect canvas for Rick to send it over the top. A lot of potential. A lot of potential

right now. I mean, this is a beautiful car as it sits, it's a drag car, but it's just a generic black. What we're going to do is give this thing a personality. We're gonna make a pop when it goes on and down the drag strip. I want people to look at it and go holy crap. That sucker is on fire.

It's gonna be bad ass. Sometimes a car pull up and you just, you look at it and just instantly you get a whole scheme that pops into your head, it just matches it works.

This car here. Definitely. Definitely. I got it. It's all up here. I just need to get it down on the car.

Yeah, it's angry. It, it's a drag car. You know, this thing, it's, it's designed to go fast and look mean,

perfect.

Of course, preparation is very important. The hood wing and zoomies all need to be removed. The paint needs to be sanded to smooth it out and prep the clear coat

since I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to flame. I'll go ahead and prep the whole car.

Here's the fun part.

Actually, I'm lying like a bitch. This is the part that sucks.

No, nobody likes this part.

This doesn't look real glamorous and you're right. It isn't. But you have to get it done and get it done. Right.

I offered to help. I really did.

But like every painter I've ever worked with, they're a solo act. The best thing to do. Stay out of their way.

So, Rick, what do you got in your head for this thing?

Well, I'm gonna start right here in the front with it. I'm gonna pull the flames out of the grill in here. It's gonna look like the engine just exploded. It's on fire.

They're gonna come out of the front, blow down the hood in here, kind of break apart. Maybe put some sparks and some stuff in here blowing back a couple of little spots up here on the roof, not a lot

and down here in the sides where the zoomies come out. Those are the big tubes that come out the side for the exhaust

flames are gonna start here. Come up the fender down onto the door through the logo and extend back down here onto the quarter panel. Now in the quarter panel, I'll break it off with a few little sparks and some other little wisp and stuff in the back. I don't know, Jack about paint. So, what's the first thing we're gonna do here? Well, you're never too old to learn how to paint, but from the, uh, grain your beard though, you might be kind of pushing the limits. But it,

anyway, the first thing we gotta do is get some black base coat down on this thing and not everyone does that on a paint job like this. But I like to do it for the simple fact that it gives you a better surface to work off of.

Now, if you go ahead and skip this step,

you may see primer in some areas and your background may not be even under your flames.

Now, the first thing we got to do is get that logo down. I'll explain that later.

Now I take what's in my head

and let my hands lay down on the car.

There's a lot of black, you know, on the thing, there's some red showing in there. So you don't want to cover up all the black. Otherwise you're gonna lose your, your depth of field. And if you put too much fire on a car like this with a red background and the red cage and everything inside of it, you're gonna lose a lot of the effect of the flames.

So you, you need to have some of that black in there. So don't overdo it. You don't want to cover the whole car with fire. Otherwise the whole thing will be so bright, you'll lose the depth

and that's why Rick is here more arson after the break.

All right,

I'm glad you channel surface found us because right now everything else on TV. Kind of sucks.

So, let me tell you what we're doing today and pay close attention.

I don't feel like doing anything

in town, Rick Bacon, a high end painter from Sonora California Jones in a flame. Anything

also in town Larry Price. Founder of the cool

charity cars for kids.

They use outrageous drag racing events as their draw in his trailer. This blown shortened chopped 63 impala Rick

in love with this naked canvas.

He got a vision.

Then he got to work

back to me

struggling to ask an intelligent question,

Rick. That thing is awesome, man. You done yet or what, what's going on? Well, actually I'm not, a lot of guys would stop at this point and clear it and it looks good. It really does. But I like to use this as a background graphic from there. I'm going to put a red candy over the top of it. It's going to take the

colors and push them back and give me good foundation for my brighter colors that I'm gonna put on after whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa brighter colors. How many,

how many do you plan on putting on there? We got six more colors to go, man. Dude, I'm leaving you alone. Get to work, man.

The red transparent candy starts with two different converters. We got from auto body color.

Then I added some candy concentrate till I got the heel that I wanted

as you can see it doesn't change the design,

it just changes the tone a little bit.

And now what I'm gonna do is follow back with the same Molly Orange that I used in the first step. The only difference is I'm gonna cross my patterns.

And what that's going to do is give it a whole another layer,

make it look a whole lot deeper

and pretty much just keep playing with it.

This is where the foundation for the highlights begin.

Now for the fourth layer of paint, another transparent candy mixture this time, orange.

Now, even though the airbrush foundation was the same color, the red and orange overlays are creating a wide range of shades.

Can you remember when I put this logo down on here? It was white if you're wondering if I'm going to leave it on there? No, I'm not vinyls for your walls, not for your car.

I used it as a mask

so the logo will be black

with some flames blowing through them. Of course.

OK. We got all of our bad grind colors down on here. And at this point, I've used mostly oranges and my deeper reds and orange candies gives it a whole lot of depth and the fire is looking really good. And what I got in my mind is exactly what's coming out on the car. The next step though is going to be to come in with some lighter colors.

Fire is just, it's its own thing. It's a living breathing

consuming thing and it just does whatever it wants to. And so that's why I say it, it more, tells me what it wants to do more than I tell it.

Just when I think he's done,

he throws down some candy yellow

and adds some tone down white.

It's always a good feeling when you're coming to the end of a project. But it's also kind of sad, especially one like this that you have fun with.

OK. Finally, the last color that I do on this thing now, I don't do this on all the drops. But once in a while I like to put a little bit of purple pearl on there gives it a little bit of extra pop out in the sunlight.

It's been phenomenal watching Rick do his thing

and judging from the clear code he's laying down, he's done.

We'll see the results later in the show.

Now, I'm no Ford fanatic, but the 69 Torino fast back has always wet my whistle and I believe it's the perfect platform with unlimited potential.

This week's muscle car flashback, the 69 Ford Torino, GT

Torino

Torino

Torino, 1969

she was from 68

back in the late sixties and early seventies. You'd buy a Torino if you wanted Ford performance and more room than a mustang,

you could get anything from a weak little six cylinder

all the way up to a screaming 429

Brian Baker's 69 Torino GT had a 351 Winsor

but a car like that. And a high school kid. Well,

you know what's probably gonna happen.

So we found another one just like it

and he spent 10 years making some minor modifications.

My goal was to have one brand new

because you can't buy a new one. I restored this one to be as close to that as I could. But with

some modern conveniences,

first thing he did was stroke that 351 out to 395

stuck some forage rods,

roller rockers,

a hot cam custom aluminum heads

and a 750 demon

and made it look stock

on the outside just about everything's original or a real close reproduction,

but it's making close to 500 horsepower

and that's almost twice what it had from the factory.

You have to get up under it to see if anything looks really different.

Well, I converted it over from a three speed automatic to a four speed. This is a three speed transmission with an overdrive and it's been updated with heavy duty bands and clutches and a shift kit and a deep sump aluminum pan

because I changed to an overdrive transmission. It's longer than my three speed was. So I had to have a custom drive shaft made

and to make it look stock, I painted the factory stripes on it that my original drive shaft came with.

This car was a 60 footer when Brian got a hold of it, it looked good from a distance. But up close man, it was rough.

Everything inside is dead stock except for the shoulder belts and some extra gauges.

The Shelby wheels were a factory option

and the power to spin them comes through a stock nine inch rear

Ford called the Torino an intermediate pack in 69. Today, it's a big car 3400 pounds, 18 ft long. That overdrive lets the engine spin around 1500 RPM. S at highway speed and you still got plenty of pedal.

Well, you want to camouflage things so that people don't notice you've added things and improved. And for the most part, we've achieved that because uh 99 out of 100 folks don't really know what's been modified and what hasn't been modified.

Brian says he took the rest of modern approach just to make the car drive better without spoiling the original look Ford made more than 60,000 fast back Torino's in 69.

So it's not like he's destroying anything rare and priceless. The only thing he's tearing up is the road.

We've all had cars that we let get away or totaled,

but Brian has proven that dreams don't have to die.

We're back

after 40 hours of labor, nine stages of paint

and enough curing time to write a novel.

It's time to give it back to Larry

look like it's actually on fire right there.

And the zoom is, I was just too perfect of a place to, to start. Look here if you get looking

with this little deal right here.

Uh huh.

Well, that, that, see, that, that's your guardian guardian angels. So that's, yeah, so that's gonna keep you off the guard rails.

See what, what, why sending him up. So, he's looking straight down the center of the lane.

See that? Yeah. see that way. He knows if you start going off somewhere, he's gonna grab you and pull you back straight. I'm,

I'm watching out for you, man.

I love it.

Great. It's gonna blow, it's gonna blow a lot of people's minds. I tell you

blue mine, you know. Very cool.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun, fun project.

Everybody's gonna enjoy it.

I'll tell you, listen,

this is a piece of artwork.

I'm, I'm gonna let you autograph it,

but I ain't gonna let you mess it up.

So what you're telling me is you like it.

I like it. I love it.

I love kids are gonna love it. Now, of course the kids are gonna love it

that end.

Oh man.

Ok. Do I need paint or is that enough?

I'm even gonna put my finger out like those pinstripes do

concentration at its finest

may as well. Get a magnifying glass to read that.

It's an honor pleasure.

And I think you need a

while. Larry heads to his next event.

I decided to show Rick a thing or two.

So, uh, you got a kiss. Hey.

Yes, I did. Did you?

No, I don't deserve one. You're the one who did all the painting.

But, uh, I figured I'd show you my mad skills.

I'm pretty impressed actually, as you should be.

Wait a minute.

That's me.

Spiked hair and all.

I appreciate it, man. I appreciate you coming by and doing it for me. It was awesome.

That was

cool. I think everybody learned something.

I even learned something I really did.

So did I be, be careful because you might get kissed when you don't know.

You don't expect it.

Rick Bacon Painter first class later.