Project Blackheart

[Meotchh]

Just leaving the guy's house/farm in Fresno, the temp was cooling off as I pulled away
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Stopped by to visit with Greg Hess on the way up, he was amazed at the basket case
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Piss break!
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Still following me up Hwy99
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Yup it's still there...
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[Ford Builder]

Looks like a pretty solid car over all it may tired .

[Rlessary]

Cant wait to see the end result.

[Ford Builder]

We need a update?

[Chalky]

Hi All, sorry it's been a while since I did an update, but things have been REALLY busy at work and there has been some.....flux in my life Suffice to say work on the t-top is continuing, many parts have already been built, the cars been on the rotisserie getting it's floors repaired and the bolt on panels get their second coat of filler primer tomorrow.

But, if all goes to plan, this will be following me home on Saturday

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[Meotchh]

That's been around the block & hardly gone anywhere in several years.

[Chalky]

Well, with a little help from Josh & Satera Fenley and my Aussie mate Lawrie, XGF154517 is sitting in my garage. Haven't done much to it yet apart from take stock of what is there, clean the crap out of the interior, start drying it out and start cleaning the engine bay.

Also hooked up a set of jumper leads to the battery cables from my '93 LX today and most all of the electrical systems, apart from windshield wipers, seem to be working. Having said that, I will be going through the whole electrical system very thoroughly after I've had a chance to dig in a little more. Then it's onto planning the "Blackheart Transplant".

For fun, here's a couple more pics of what I'm starting with. Hey, she's a little rough, but at least I don't have to replace a 1/4 panel on this one

[JTurbo]

Chalky, I'm confused. I thought the t-top car was getting the transplant from Blackie?

Congrats on the new addition....

[Chalky]

Joe, that was the original the plan, I really wanted a hot rod, "Blackie" and the t-top was supposed to get a stock resto. Now the plan is back to more of what it was going to be......sort of

[TheSVOTrust]

Does that mean you will use the E and G Leather you got from me?? (Because I need that ONE 84 seat you forgot in Sturgis!)

[Chalky]

For now yes. Mark tell me what seat you need, position and year, I have about 7 in storage.

[TheSVOTrust]

How quickly we forget ! It was the seat you where to drive to Sturgis on! 1984 Cloth Drivers seat with good piping!

[Chalky]

So, Happy New Year everyone It's been a while since I updated, but I've gotten a lot done. I removed the seats and carpet, which I hit with degreaser and took to the local carwash and hit it with the high pressure soap. It came up pretty well apart from the usual fading with no holes or tears. I did get some funny looks from the girls at Dutch Bros Coffee when i drove through with a carpet ratchet strapped to the trunk of my '93 coupe though!!!

Also found some rust under the asphalt insulation under the rear seat. I removed of the insulation much as possible, that stuff is stuck HARD!!, and hit the area with ospho before giving it a coat of Rust Stop white paint. I'm going the Flat Bob route and replacing that factory stuff with some duct insulation and also added some of that to the floor pan under the front seats.

I have also painted the spats, tail lights and tail light panel. The car was fitted with black spats, one an E4 one an E5, most likely due to the common E6 spat crumbleing issue. Grabbed a spare set of E4's I had and prepped and painted them. The tailights were in good shape, just faded, so i masked them up, which takes about 2 hours, and scuffed and painted them. After a light polish they came up really well.

I also painted the tail light panel. I've been playing around with this idea for years and decided to try it. I was going for that old school muscle car look and think it came out pretty well. You may have noticed that I used semi-gloss black instead of charcoal grey. Well, I had a bunch of sg black and no grey so that was part of it and I also prefer the look of black and white to black and grey. Next job is pull the dash, switch heater boxes and paint the engine bay, then we might be ready for a driveline!!!

[MikeFleming]

Sweet - thanks for sharing.

[JTurbo]

Good progress Chalky!!!

[Ford Builder]

So we know what you been doing in your spare time , looking good

[FoxBuddy]

I have also painted the tail lights. The tailights were in good shape, just faded, so i masked them up, which takes about 2 hours, and scuffed and painted them. After a light polish they came up really well.

Do you have any more pictures on the procedure to do this? I'm planning on doing all of my trim next year (fingers crossed) and the masking, scuff, paint and polish order you did on the tailights confused me.

Nice work BTW! Thanks!

[Chalky]

I mask off the lenses and give all the parts to be painted a mild scuff, a few light passes, with a red scotchbrite pad. Then I clean with DX-330, mask of the backside, re-clean with DX-330, wait for it to dry and then do two coats of Dupli-color da-1699 primer followed by three coats of da-1603 semi-gloss black. I prefer the Dupli-Color stuff because I've been using it for years and have good experience with how it flows and how thick I can spray it before it runs.

After the lenses were done I noticed a couple of scratches in the plastic so I thought it would be a good idea to hit it with some headlight restorer cream and a power ball. It can also take some of the ridges off the freshly painted stripes which gets them closer to original. You could buff the lenses before masking and paint, but mine were fairly faded and would've removed the lines which I needed as a guide for my tape lines.

One day I'm going to make a tool that allows me to re-stripe without masking, but that's for later.

[Chalky]

Hi All, been a while since I did an update but saw Joe's post and decided to get back in the game!!! Haven't had much time to work on the car recently, what with getting my '93 LX tarted up for the 50TH, then the trip to Vegas. I've also started work on a new TV series, TNT's "The Librarians". https://www.facebook.com/TheLibrarians Sorry for the shameless plug

I've been working my way through several areas of the car. Had the dash out to replace the heater box with one I fully rebuilt. I've decided this car WILL have heat AND A/C!!!! New heater core and Evap. fitted as well as all new foam seals in the box.

I decided while the heater box was out I would repaint the engine bay. There's nothing worse than having a nice car with a crappy looking engine bay, ask me how I know, so I decided while I don't have an engine in the car I would rub it back and repaint it. I pulled everything out or aside and wrapped all the remaining stuff in aluminium foil. Primed and painted it and seem to have come out really well.

Someone's gonna ask, I used Ace Hardware "Rust Stop" gloss white because I had some left over from doing the floors and it's a pretty decent match for 9L!!!! It's also $5 a can.

After that I've gotten around to getting everything back together. Been going through boxes and finding stuff that'sready to go and using some of my replated hardware. Figure I'll just send another batch out when I'm done. Also, you can't see it but there is an intake tube from an '82 GT running to the lower part of the fender as a CAI. I've also modified the airbox with a 3" pipe for better airflow and there's a K&N in there. All the wiring has been checked an re-wrapped.

Moving to the other side, I've bolted in a new brake booster, the coil and re-wired the 200amp fuse for my 3G alt. Looking at the main power harness, it's pretty hacked up so I think I'm gonna swap in the one from 6GF207907 which is almost perfect. BTW, don't worry about the messy onion heads, thy're getting replace with MM CC plates as soon as I can get the car on a lift. But that's another story.

Anyways, hope to get it close to ready to drop the driveline in next weekend. Enjoy the pics.

[Kendal Coker]

Lots of good work. Keep it up. later Kendal