In the past 5-10 years the buzz words in the automotive hobby are “barn finds” or “garage finds” and “picking”. This is just a car guy or gals way of explaining automotive treasure hunting. The dream is to find an untouched car or parts that’s been stashed away and forgotten in a barn, garage, yard, etc. and you pull it out and put it back into use. There’s practically an entire subculture in the classic car world dedicated to this with shows like American Pickers, Chasing Classic Cars, Backroad Gold, etc making it look like an easy process. I’ve been doing this sort of thing for quite a while and it can be as easy as knocking on a door and handing over a stack of cash, but the process to make these cars and parts usable again IS NOT. Any car that’s been sitting for more than a few years is going to need a LOT of work to get it ready to cruise the streets again. Not only that, there are some key steps you should take to avoid causing damage to the vehicle when trying to get it going.
Tag: Rust
How Do I Control the Thickness of Electroplate?
When you are using an electroplating process to coat one of your metal auto parts, it is important to know how to control the thickness of the electroplate you are adhering to the part. The thickness of a coated electroplate has….
How to Repair Rust With a TIG Welder- Rusty Door Skin Repair
There’s a handful of ways you can tackle repairing rust in your vehicle and all of them have their place. The most common would probably be cutting out the metal and MIG welding a patch panel in place. While this method is the easiest to accomplish, it can be difficult to blend the weld seam into the surrounding metal. I’ve done repairs this way for many years and they’ve turned out ok, but I’ve always wanted to master TIG welding patch panels and metal finishing the area for a seamless repair. I’ve recently begun switching a lot of my welding projects ….
How To Remove, Treat, and Prevent Rust
Rust is something we all must deal with at some point in our lives. Whether it’s maintaining your daily driver, restoring a classic, or just around the house, rust is a type of corrosion that never sleeps and is always attacking metal. Below are the common ways to prevent, remove and stop rust in its tracks.
Eastwood Retail Outlet Hosts Patch Panel Training Class
We’ve found that most car guys and gals are “hands on” learners. Sure you can read all the tech articles and watch all the Youtube videos in the world, but putting in the time practicing is where most of us really learn. We recently started holding small tech seminars where we let our customers learn from the professionals and get their hands dirty in the process.
Project Resolution- Paint Stripping and Final Teardown
We’ve been working on Project Resolution now for a few months and we’re finally at a point where we are ready to start going uphill making the car nice again. With the front end removed I was able to remove the inner fender “skirt” and assess the damage that was […]
Project Resolution Phase 3 Teardown
Since our last post we’ve been busy working on disassembling the car down to just a rolling shell. This meant we had to removed the entire drivetrain and start deciding if we were going to keep the original or get a replacement engine. The engine and transmission came out pretty […]
Parking Lot Gems- 1968 Pontiac Firebird
In Eastwood country the classic car hobby is still huge and it isn’t uncommon to see a lot of cool cars cruising when the weather is nice, but during the east coast winters it is pretty rare to see anything of interest rolling around. Recently I was grabbing some breakfast […]
Hang up the Lawn Chairs and put on the Race Helmet- Dan and Amanda’s ’68 Mustang Fastback
Dan Woods is a familiar face around Eastwood and he’s actually made some appearances in powder coating posts here before. Dan runs his own powder coating business he calls D&W Motorsports. Dan’s partner in crime is a long time Eastwood employee. Amanda and Dan are both really into classic cars […]