Painting Work is Done

I pulled all of the masking tape and paper out of the engine bay this morning and paint work turned out great. No over spray and a good clean surface on each. The paint doesn't match perfectly in the engine bay because the original paint was subjected to 9 years of oil and road grime, but it looks good enough to me. Check it out:




I fit a few of the parts together to figure out how I'm going to mount the AC compressor. After a couple hours of work, I think I've got it sorted. I made a cardboard template for the base plate and fabricated a small piece of angle iron that should work out as a top bracket. Now I just have to see about having that metal cut up properly. A plasma cutter is what's in order.

Masking Up

This morning I discovered a black hole of time under the hood of the car. It took me more hours than I thought conceivable to mask the engine bay off in preparation for paining.


This is the right or passenger side...


and here is the left, or drivers side. Like they say, put the time in masking properly before you paint and you'll be that much happier with the end result. If that's true, then I should be apoplectic with joy once I peel it all off. I've already primed the pieces, so tomorrow, I'll paint. I figured that I'd paint everything that's permanently affixed to the car red (BMW 314 red), and everything I bolt to the car will be black.

Paint Prep

After a week spent in cool San Francisco, I'm back in the desert heat and ready to resume work on the car.

Today I worked on getting all the proper holes drilled in the support structure for the battery trays so that I can anchor them down properly. Then I worked on cleaning all the new steel off, as well as all the body work nearby so that I can mask it up and begin paint work. Not all together exciting, but necessary if I want to keep it all from rusting away and looking bad.

Later I'll start masking it all up and I'll post a picture or two for all to enjoy.

It looks like the soonest I can expect the batteries is going to be mid October. Later than I would have liked, but that's how it goes. It will give me time to finish just about everything else before they arrive. With some hard, smart work, I'm hoping I'll be able to build the cables, drop them in and be ready to go shortly after they show up.