Then there is the dust! Damn the dust, it was on every panel. It blows here 365 days a year, so I just have to make do with it and like everybody has said, "it's a terrain vehicle, it's not suppose to have perfect paint". But I have been told that a lot of the dust will be gone after the first washing, I hope so, we'll see.
I may have been too critical of my first time painting with a compressor and spray gun and to be honest, I'm very pleased with the final result. Yes I missed a few small areas - the doors, I will give them a rub down with 600 paper and redo them - and there is 4 small runs. BUT, the paint, overall was applied well, there was no orange peel, the paint was even over all of the panels with the same amount of shine. The panels actually look good. The next time, I will know better, but for the first time, yes, I'm very pleased.
I left everything sitting there till the next weekend and began installing the front end. The grill went on first and with this I painted all of the inner side black. Then I cut some strips of bicycle inner tub and glued them to the sides of the grill panel where they are in contact with the front fenders. I hope that this little trick will stop the corrosion.
When I was installing,
the fenders, it became apparent that things were going to be difficult. The
fenders wouldn't fit properly. Out came the angle grinder again and some
fine tuning was required for proper fitment. On the left side, there was
near no clearance for the blower motor and over on the other side, there was
no clearance for the master cylinder and reservoir.
With in a few hours, I had the wings loosely fitted, the
headlights ,the driving lights installed and working.
The next problem that I
encountered was with the vent flaps. I wasn't paying attention when I was
installing the bulkhead, because the hinges were fully packed with
zinc. Needless to say, the split pins wouldn't go in the hinges to far.
It took a full morning with a big hammer, a nail punch and the Drummel , to
clear the hinges. I took my time with them because I didn't want to damage
the zinc coating too much.
When I was finished, there was just enough room to insert the
split pins and then lightly tap them home. The vent flaps, by the way, work
fine.
A few days later I asked a friend over to help install the sets to the seat box and install the rear tub. The Ford Fiesta sets are bolted permanently in one position, so I set the drivers seat for me and the passenger seat for the wife. - I like the seat further back to her and she likes to recline more that me - The drivers seat is set about 3 cm further back on the seat box. It was one hell of a pain in the butt with the passenger seat, because of the tool box. I suggest having a kid close by.
Then before installing
the seat box, I removed the gear lever assembly and the steering wheel. This
helped by giving us a lot more room to work with. We lifted in the seat box
and then the rear tub. Now the landy is starting to look like the real
McCoy!
As you can see in the pictures, I installed wing top protectors on the
fender tops and 5 bar aluminum to the back corners.
