'70 Monte Carlo Part 3

Today on a special muscle car search and restore edition, we help this old Monte shed her top

and show you how to permanently delete the vinyl nightmare that came on so many old cars. Then our giveaway Monte Carlo G machine gets a brand new look with the help of several volunteers to get it painted.

This is what we started with

a

plain Jane small block 1970 Monte Carlo and it was in need of some help starting with a 6 L Ls built by the horsepower guys that kicked out 517 ponies. Then we made some templates to plate up the frame for strength and did a whole pile of welding.

But the results well worth the effort. Then I from extreme built us a full float rear end

while our frame was out getting powder coated gun metal. Great.

After a little while in the oven, she came out real nice.

Then the engine went on the frame along with the headers and the steering box was put in place

and we plugged in the starter.

Next, we got to build a performance suspension system onto that freshly reinforced frame and that was about all she wrote for the chassis time to give that body some attention.

Hey, guys, we've been making some pretty awesome headway working on our old Monte Carlo here today. We're gonna conquer something that somebody back in the day actually paid for because it was an option on this old car and that is this vinyl top. Now, often times vinyl tops can actually cause a lot of problems because when they start drying out,

they crack

and, well, that causes moisture to get up under him and cause a whole lot of rust.

Now, our old vinyl top doesn't have any rips or snags in it or anything, but it definitely has some discoloration on it. This thing's got to go.

Now, the first order of business is getting this trim off and to do that, I'm gonna use a simple putty knife.

I'm gonna start out here in the middle of this piece of trim

opposed to here on the corner because there's a lot more clips right here closer together whenever you start in the long spot of it. Well, since there's further apart,

it gives you a little bit of wiggle room just in case you need to twist this piece of trim. So

I'm gonna slide this little putting knife down off into the trim and then slide it up

until I find a clip.

Yeah, I got one.

I'm gonna push it forward

to release the clip

and then find another one.

Now, these clips only work in one direction. So if you're trying to push it one way,

it may not be the right direction you're pushing, you have to push from the opposite side. It all depends on how the person installed it

before they put it on.

Now, you wanna use a something flat and thin, kind of like this putty knife, not a screwdriver

because otherwise a big thick screwdriver

would screw up your trim.

Taking time to remove this stuff gently can save you some time on body work later.

If you get a little too aggressive of prying the trim off, you can gouge your car all up in the process.

Now, a lot of times on the little corner pieces of trim, there's actually a screw or bulge or something from the inside of the quarter that has to be removed before you can take that piece of trim off. And this one

is that way.

Now with the trim out of the way, it's time to start removing the vinyl part of the top, there's no real graceful way to do this except for just peel that stuff back.

Yeah,

luckily, the adhesive holding this top on has lost its elasticity and bonding strength.

If the top had been put on only a couple years ago, well, then it would have needed a whole lot more persuasion to be removed.

Now, with the canvas removed, you can see pretty much what gave the old vinyl top. Such a bad name from back in the day. This top doesn't have any paint on the top of it. It's just pretty much raw steel. They did that trying to save a few extra bucks instead of having to paint all the way out here. But what problem that caused was when that vinyl top starts to crack. Well,

it's water on top of raw steel. That's not a good mix.

Still ahead. How to get the goo off. When you're dealing with a vinyl top, then it's Peyton time.

Hey, guys, I'm glad you made it back. We've got the trim and the vinyl off of our roof on the Monte Carlo and we're ready to start taking off the rest of it.

Problem is it's the goo and it's the most difficult to get off of there.

There's several different ways you can try.

Here's a couple of them for you. Now, the first way I wanna show you is by using a sander. Now, with our top being so old, the glue is not very gummy. So sanding it off would probably work pretty easily.

Now, you want to use a very coarse grid of paper because if you use something real fine. Well, as soon as you start sending

all that goose is gonna build up onto the paper, cake it up and you won't be sending off anything at all.

You can see it's just balling up

so it wouldn't take very long at all.

I bet another thing to keep in mind whenever you're sending off a material like this is the sand from one side to the other. Don't be hopping around and skipping because of the heat from the cinder. Well, it can make the glue read here to the panel.

Another way that's often tried is with a chemical like this stuff here. It's DX 440. It's a pretty concentrated wax and grease remover.

So let's give it a shot.

I'll use a Scott Pro Shop towel to hold the solvent in place. Instead of just letting it roll off the panel.

It also helps to keep it from evaporating so quickly so that it has time to loosen up the adhesive.

Well, those two seem to work pretty good. I've got one last one to show you.

Now, what we've got here is pretty much a razor blade with a push handle on it and you just wanna lay it on the panel,

try not to dig into it.

And then

right across from

with the glue being as old as it is, this is a really efficient way of getting it off of the car. Matter of fact, I'll just go ahead and finish this up

using this blade tool.

Now, if you've ever done very much scraping at all with a razor blade, you may have noticed this. If you ever try to use one of these to do some scraping

there seems to be like a sharp side and then like a jagged side

if you put it in and then you try to do some scraping and it seems like it's digging in.

You might try flipping the razor blade over because I've had to do that a time or two and it seems to just cut a whole lot better.

Now, we went ahead and covered up our glass because we don't wanna run any risk of messing it up. Because the next thing we're gonna do is get rid of these little bitty ot studs that hold the trim on. Now, you may run into some that look like a little pop rivet. But hey, the order of business is still the same on them. We're gonna use this grinder.

Ain't a whole lot to it.

So y'all watch out.

Now, I just gotta grind off the rest of these studs and then we'll be able to start the body work on our old Monte Carlo. Now, if you've got a car at the house that you wanna get rid of the vinyl top, don't be afraid of taking it off. It ain't a whole lot to it. It's just pretty labor intensive. So give it a shot,

stick around and see what it takes to unleash the two tone beauty hidden within your ride with help from several volunteers. Our giveaway money, Carlo G machine finally gets painted.

Hey, welcome back. We're gonna pick up this next stage. Of fun with some lizard skin thermal insulation on the bottom of the body.

It's gonna knock down the temperature on the inside of the car a good bit

and it gets top coated with a couple of layers of semi gloss black.

As for the body work itself, we've got a long way to go in a short time to get there. So we brought in some top notch paint body guys that we know to help get this thing straightened right out.

She may recognize Chris Ryan, the owner and operator of Ryan's Rod and custom outside of Greenwood, South Carolina.

He's been tinkering with cars since the hardheaded age of 10 years old, helping his Pappy do body custom and restoration work in his Pennsylvania shop.

He also brought along Mike Jones, one of his body and paint guys.

After we get all the old paint knocked off the metal, it can make its first trip back into the spray booth for some filler primer.

We're getting ready to,

uh,

do the first

primer

on this vehicle.

So, uh, we'll go ahead and mask off what we

need a mask off protect that does not need to get primer. We'll come back later. Second round of primer, take care of this.

Uh, once we get it ready for paint, we'll go back in and make sure everything's prepped ready to go.

Tony Cono runs EVO time customs out of Fort Worth Texas doing anything from Classic Resto to mini trucks and much, much more

he opened his shop after he was inspired to strike out on his own by his late friend, notable builder Chris Burchell.

Boy, we sure are glad to have him with it.

I'm the one right out of the gate that gets to lay on the primer.

The first goat goes on top of the body works spots to give us a little more material to block on.

Then I'll hit the entire body with a layer to even it all out.

Then it's time for the real fun.

Not

right now, what we're doing is blocking the high build filler primer. Uh

We're going over with 180 grit at this point, we'll re prime

and they continue to block in with 3 2400 in preparation of paint.

This cat right here would be Justin Nichols, owner of Nichols Pain and Fab in

Waseca Illinois.

Not only can he do you some custom metal artwork but custom paint, airbrushing metal work and all kinds of cool stuff is right up his alley

including patching these fenders for.

I'm mixing up some PPGK 38 Urethane primer that we got from single source. That way old Chris can spray on a couple of coats and before we know it, we're gonna be ready for some color.

This is a coat of PPGSK 38 which is a two K Urethane primer.

The beauty of this stuff is the way it stands out super slick, which gives us an excellent service to apply color.

Pretty soon. She's gonna be ready to put on her prom dress

in a few. We'll tie a bow on this paint job by laying down some color and clear.

Well, we busted out the little squirt bottles to wit in this primer.

And Tony's gonna show you how to keep those body lines nice and sharp. Give yourself a nice tape line.

Get our block in 400 a little bit of water,

just sand right up to that tape line.

So we get a nice

Chris body line

line up your line again for your body line.

Same thing just opposite way. Now,

there we go.

Nice crisp line.

Now we can shape it the way we want it.

Meanwhile, Justin's doing some dup the color guide coat on the deck lid

right now. We're putting the guide coat on the car and what that's gonna do is it's gonna put the dark color in the low spots and this is the final step. So this is what's gonna make the paint job that much better. See right here is a low spot. All these little holes and this is, this is what you want it to look like.

Progress is really rocking on the

mani body now and before we know it, the cars in the booth getting the jam sprayed body color,

Mike was the man to draw the short straw. So he dove into a shoot suit and laid down some silver.

All right guys, the next step that we're gonna do is where we're gonna marry the body and the chassis back together. That way we can do our paint job

and have our lines just right.

The rendering that we're working off of shows you what our goal is for the paint job. Two tone silver and black with a green stripe to bust them up. We'll start with the sealer and mask the car to the floor to keep the overspray from getting on the underside.

Well, all right guys, we're pretty much ready to start spraying on our Monte Carlo Tony's mixing up some sealer. He's gonna be the trigger man on this thing.

It's fixing to get good.

The sealer is the last thing to go on before we start spraying paint on it. It provides a tie coat to promote adhesion between our body work and our base coat.

And it also provides a uniform canvas

for the paint.

Our first color to go on is this punch you in the face green,

which is going to make up our stripe.

After that dries, the green gets mask over.

This part is important and requires a steady hand along with a keen eye.

It doesn't take much to wind up with a crooked line.

Then we'll send in a pair of them gun slingers, Chris and Tony will hammer down the black on the top side

after that,

the mask has to be reversed.

What we're doing here

is taping off the black and the stripe so we can paint the charcoal bottom.

Then both of them jump back into the suits and lay down the silver on the side.

Now, that's talent

last but not least the clear coat. The iwata guns that they're using to spray on are a couple of the LS 400 supernovas with a 1.3 tip.

These are high volume, low pressure guns and they're perfectly suited for spraying on clear,

but

we had to stay late several nights. But I tell you what this old girl has made quite the transformation.

This car is really starting to look like something now

that granny green done went. Bye bye. And this two tone look really gives the car a totally different feel. If you have any questions about anything you've seen on today's show, go over to Power Block tv.com.