Project Boondoggle (or, so I went and bought a Z!)

[Patcon]

Yes, excellent job!

[charliekwin]

4 hours ago, grannyknot said:

Ah come on man, give yourself some credit, they asked about the paint because you did a damn fine job on it.

Ha, that makes sense and honestly it never crossed my mind! (Not here fishing for compliments. Just dense sometimes.) I always like talking to other people about their cars, but who did the work seems to rarely come up.

[charliekwin]

I don't have the stomach (or budget!) to take on big projects like audio or motor right now, so I'm keeping idle hands busy with some of the little things that have been bugging me for a while but never got around to fixing.

Stripped the ratty paint off the wiper arms and hit them with some satin black and put on new blades that'll probably never be used. Someone commented on them this morning, so time well spent.

On to the tail lights, which were really bringing the exterior down. Something had melted the right one, the chrome foil on the bezels was lifting and torn and the lenses (esp on the left) were rather faded. I also wasn't crazy about the graphite color I used on the panels -- too light, and too matte.

So I ordered a new (used) tail light assembly from Z Car Source and was not too happy to find that the one piece of it that I really needed was also the only part of the new one that was damaged 🙄 Ended up cutting the broken end off the new one and then super glued on the end from my old one. I tied to match up the seam with the lens pattern and it's...good enough. Meguiar's polishing compound brought the lenses back to life. 

I used Duplicolor Perfect Match GM Iridium on the panels, which I'm much happier with. The bezels I'm still not sure about. I bought 3 different kinds of "chrome" paint, which are all just silver (here's a test of two -- Duplicolor and Krylon. Not chrome and not even close). Supposedly you can get better results applying it over gloss black, but it didn't matter. I thought about leaving them black, but it was a little too 1980s retro for my taste.

I can live with them for now, but might try wrapping them in chrome vinyl one day. Still, I'm a lot happier with the view back here now.