Jamming, And A New Windshield

OK....Finally....something NEW to do....

Part of what took the car so long to get home from painting is that it needed to be jammed.  That is, the door jams, sills, and the trunk jamb, and the front fender edges under the hood need to be painted the same color as the body.  Also, the door edges themselves need to be painted, in order to match the exterior.  This is quite a hassle for a paint shop, since the electronic, air, and hydraulic connections, as required, make the moveable panels VERY hard to remove from the car so they can be properly masked.  Jamming is often as much of an expense in itself as is the rest of the repaint.  In my case, since the job was free, there might be a very long delay in getting the car home if the painter was to do the jamming.  So I said I'd do it myself.  The picture above shows the left side cleaned and ready to jam.  I did mask it to some extent, mostly to keep the paint from going into the cabin.  The doors themselves only needed protection for the outer color coat.

At the left is a close up example of what I was starting with.  This is the driver's door front jam, with hinges, as it looked after coming home from being buffed.  There is lots of dust, and the dirt and grease collected over the life of the car is in there, too.  I used Oxyclean and water to clean it up....that stuff works amazing, on grease, oil, and whatever else is in the way.  The job would have been best if the doors had been able to come off, but with that huge loom of wires at the bottom of this one, that is a very difficult thing to do.  So I cleaned them all as best I could, then used a scuff pad like a Brillo pad, to roughen the paint so that the new paint would stick. I got several spray cans of the same graphite pearl paint that was used on the outside, and did one side at a time, then I did the trunk.  As of this instant, the hood is not done yet.  Cleaning the SHO insulator pad is another thing I need to investigate before I dive into it, so that the  pad will not be destroyed by my cleaning efforts.

This is what the left side looked like after I was done.  You can see the glossy finish on the back door under the door latch.  Since the window frame portion of the door is still black, there was no need to paint it higher than the base of the window.  The body jams are painted all around, since the entire body is painted graphite.

Windshield time....take a break!

While I was in the middle of doing the trunk jams, the Safelite guy showed up and put the new windshield in for me.  They had taken the old one out long ago, so that there would be no masking marks around the edges....they took the back window out, too.  It only took about five minutes to put the new windshield in, since the base had been prepared already, and there was no cleaning or scraping to do.  The car has zero deductable on glass, so there was no charge.

The windshield was really easy to install, because the adhesive was already hot before the guy arrived to do the job.  They keep it hot in a small warmer they have in their truck.  It is about as easy to dispurse as putty for sealing a bathtub or window.  Once that stuff is cold, however, it is a royal pain in the butt.  I had been told in the past that if I was going to use it for anything, I could rest it on top of the engine, fastened securely, and then drive the car around town, running errands.  The heat generated is just the right amount to warm the adhesive to the proper temperature....then it comes out nicely controlled using a home putty gun.

The windshield aligns really easily....I already had the cowl panels out, for cleaning, and the wipers hadn't been on it for months.  The new edge seal is a little wider than the original was, so there is a bit of interference with the roof weatherstrip where it goes down the front edge of the doors.  I'll have to trim that off a bit after all the other stuff is done.  It will be nice to just have "little things" to do to this car....it's almost there now.

OK....Break is over.....Back to work!!

OK...I'm doing the trunk now.  The inside of the decklid is already done...that was easy.  Just use the Brillo pad, after washing the whole thing down with Oxyclean.  Then mask off the portions I don't want painted, and shoot away.  There was a lot less oil and grease here, so it was easy to prepare.  I had gotten a roll of masking paper at the shop where I got the paint, and several rolls of inexpensive masking tape....there are many levels of quality of tape.  For taping paper, the cheap stuff works fine.  The various levels of quality define the tape's ability to form a clean line between one color and another....no seepage under the tape by the paint.

Above shows what it looked like just before shooting, and the left shows what it looks like now.  I have several good trunk gasket seals, and I made sure to use an old one when I had to crawl into the trunk for wiring work.  A good one is on it now, for a new look.

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