DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

knapmann wrote:

coomo wrote:if your burning through paint,its generally because your not keeping the mop moving and/or mop is too fast.It musnt stop as heat will build up very quickly, plus mophead,(white foam) and panel must be kept wet.I dont know what mop your using, but Id recommend a Farecla unit.It has replaced my 30 year old Makita recently and does a great job,has a large grip on top plus its very light with variable speed which matters when doing large areas.
When your flatting use a thin flexible rubber block and another one to wipe away the water as you go, you can then see how flat the paint is and whether you have removed imperfections.You really dont need to go finer than 2000/2500 especially considering the paint shade.If your burning edges (it happens) a thin length of masking tape along edges will help.You can then polish edges by hand.WATCH the paint as you go,as soon as it shines leave it.It will help you stop mopping through.
Ive no experience of the compound your using.Generally industry standard is Farecla, 3M or Roar.

Sorry im probably not using the correct terminology Its not when polishing, it when flatting with 2000grit, when trying to smooth out the transition from new paint to older paint, in places i have been going through the older paint because its quite thinly applied in particular areas, I then have to apply more new paint and try again, Im getting there though!

Ah I see.If your need to blend into old paintwork, you can just use a grey scotchbrite to key the old paint.They are 2000 grit, so will polish with out flattting

So ive been plodding along one panel at a time, most of them have gone well some have been a case of 2 steps forward one step back.

Fitted my S sill trims and door seals and got my drivers door ready and polished up. Fitted the door today, in some ways I would like to say it took hours and hours to get it right but to be honest the body and panels are so good on this car, it just bolted straight up, a bit of a gap on the B-post was resolved with a 1mm spacer on each hinge. The only problem was that the lower bolting plate in the A-post would keep getting lost inside the box section so I couldnt get the bolts to it. Im not sure what the issues was. I assume the plates hang on a hook inside the post but if so my hook is broken or missing making life difficult even so, 30 mins later it was done and looks the business. Getting panels back on the car is so satisfying!





after fitting my door I moved on to the engine lid, much more trouble some, firstly there was a sheared bolt in one of the mounting threads. I had to drill and tap it out from M6 to M8. With this done fitting it was much more fiddly and needed much more adjustment to get right. Eventually I got there. I spent ages trying to fit the gas strut I thought was correct, only to find out after an hour of struggling that its not the right one (too long).





Hope to get my other door fitted soon!

Truly coming together at a pace and just rewards for the effort!
You must be able to see a clear light at the end of this tunnel now.

Nice reflections

911hillclimber wrote:Truly coming together at a pace and just rewards for the effort!
You must be able to see a clear light at the end of this tunnel now.

Thanks, yes its starting to resemble a car now. Its coming together fast at the moment but it will slow to a stop once I need to throw money at a few expensive bits.

sladey wrote:Nice reflections

Thanks a lot, I'm pretty happy with what I have managed to achieve, its not as good as a big money pro job and has all kinds of micro scratches in it if you look closely but its a big improvement from where I started and the car is not going to be a trailer queen. One day I'd love to get it resprayed to Ultrablau a 1969 only option colour that is very rare but I think looks amazing, below is one of the only pictures i have managed to find of an ultrablau car

Finally finished the rear passenger side quarter today, this has been a lot of work as it has had some repairs around the lower window frame area and needed a bit of a skim and respraying and blending in the paints etc. Probably easy work for a pro but it took a lot of perfecting for me. Just as I thought I was getting there I would realise it wasn't and have to try again and again. Im finally happy with it.







I was then able to finally fit me rear side windows , above and below



Also got the rear seat backs fitted. I still havent been able to find a rail that goes along the back of the deck though which the seats clip onto... very annoying!

Plodding along with bits and pieces, no major progress but small steps.

I built up my H1 headlights from the bag of loose parts. These were totally disassembled down to every screw and clip. Theres no diagrams of assembly out there that I know of. It took hours to figure out how these go together, I was up until 2am. These H1s are such a complex and convoluted design, what a total nightmare. Got there in the end.




Indicator housings up next, wow these can corrode. My rear left housing was totally shot, literally made out of rivets and fibreglass resin. Its only good for the bin. One of my front housings wasn't much better, so I only have one good of each I can clean up at the moment.








Next up is seat hinges, these were very crusty too, one mechanism was rusted solid and required a lot of freeing off. Another had a bent and broken lever arm. I managed to get them working, lubed and painted, trying to replicate the original rough texture paint.






I installed the door window frame. All was going well until I was fitting the window regulators and the window would not go up and down without great resistance, you could see the glass was getting forced up and down at an angle in the frame. Took me a good while to find the issue was the lower regulator arm has a sliding bolt connection at the window end which isn't immediately obvious (at least to me). It was seized tight and it is needed to have movement in order for the window to go up and down correctly. Once I figured this out all was well but it was 2hrs of frustration first.

Progress on the door stopped when I found out I'm missing the door handle crank mechanism near the arm rest and that I don't have any 65-69 door brakes. Without these I cannot progress to putting the card on etc.



I'm very happy to have managed to bag a set of these barely used repro tilt slider bases for my sport seats. I honestly never thought I would be able to find a set of these and would end up shelling out the full 1k for a new set at some point. It seemed like that would be a big financial hurdle one day but luckily I managed to get these for half the money. As much as I would like originals the money they go for is insane and not only could I never afford it I think the money would be better spent elsewhere on the car given they are purely functional hidden items





thats all for now!

Impressive work there - thanks for the update

Love seeing the original parts being bought back to life rather than incessant cheque signing.
Everyone has a tough time with the side lamp housings and many are evil and tight to get fixed and to fit them well into the apertures. Easy to crack the repairs when you bolt them in against the rubber seals trying to get them as flush as you can to the wings.

Very good progress, it all takes hours and hours too!

Nice work. It's a tough gig screwing these cars back together. Keep at it.

Cant believe the prices these orange bar badges go for.... Mine left much to be desired to say the least....



a lot of time later... much better... as much as I'd love a good patina one £300-400 for a badge is a bit steep for me, this one will do me fine I think.

Looks great, good recovery

knapmann wrote:
thats all for now!

You know that that bumper doesn't go on the back seat right ?!

Loving this thread, you're doing a marvellous job ! Its interesting to see that your indicator housings are corroded- I cant quite work out what my 73 ones are made of, but they are definitely not steel. Mine seem to be made of some kind of alloy, like die cast but softer. Never the less, however corrosion resistant mine might be, they suffer from brittleness, and bits seem to crack and fall of! One of these days, I'm going to try to see if the material can be welded or brazed.....

All the best !!

deano wrote:

knapmann wrote:
thats all for now!

You know that that bumper doesn't go on the back seat right ?!

Loving this thread, you're doing a marvellous job ! Its interesting to see that your indicator housings are corroded- I cant quite work out what my 73 ones are made of, but they are definitely not steel. Mine seem to be made of some kind of alloy, like die cast but softer. Never the less, however corrosion resistant mine might be, they suffer from brittleness, and bits seem to crack and fall of! One of these days, I'm going to try to see if the material can be welded or brazed.....

All the best !!

Thanks for your comments! Thanks for the bumper tip!

The housings are cast aluminium I think, they still corrode terribly it seems, most you see for sale have been repaired in one way or another. I assume they had no factory protection, just bare aluminium up inside the wheel arches, Im guessing salty UK roads just eats them away.

knapmann wrote:
Thanks for your comments! Thanks fro the bumper tip!

The housings are cast aluminium I think, they still corrode terribly it seems, most you see for sale have been repaired in one way or another. I assume they had no factory protection, just bare aluminium up inside the wheel arches, Im guessing salty UK roads just eats them away.

Oooh, so AC TIG needed, or some of that magic HTS-2000 aluminium brazing rod that we see on sale at every classic car show might do the trick for 20x less money.... have you had the opportunity to try leading at all on this resto?