99.9%

Brake lights are all working.  I bought new screws to hold the sockets in (that’s what creates the ground for the electrical)  Also sanded down the speed nuts and that seemed to do the trick.  In fact, brake lights and turn signals are all brighter than before and work properly when I have the head lights on (which used to be another problem).  This leads me to believe that I might have a faulty ground on the fuel tank sending unit… hmmm…

Seats are in.  Grill is back.  Bumpers and black and mounted.  License plates on.  Seat belts are tight.  I’m street legal again.

The final touch will be re mounting the SCOUT emblem on the sides.  I haven’t decided how to clean/treat/paint them yet, but something shiny will happen.

mc

Metamorphosis

Moonstone Blue has been achieved.  Goo is no more and we have renamed her VERA!

I bought my paint from Sherwin Williams.  It was a little upgrade in price, but in the end, I was able to pick the color that I wanted instead of guessing with the Dupli Color.  They were unable to match the exact Moonstone Blue color in their computer – even from all the old chip charts that I had.  But they had some old books and I found a 1967 Chevy truck color that caught my eye.  It was VERY close to Monstone.  I’m really happy with the result.

The job started out looking a little tough.  Tape and masking took much longer than anticipated, and mixing the paint with the reducer and the hardener was a bit of a messy chore.  Plus, after the first coat, it didn’t look like it was covering the camo worth a crap!

But things started to turn around after coat number 2.  In the picture above, the back half has one coat, front has 2.

By the time the 3rd coat went on, I was feeling pretty good.

Since I was painting outside, I got a few bugs trapped in the paint.  Sort of like driving around with little mini Han Solos trapped in carbonite.  But you can only see them if you get right up close.  I was aiming for a 10 or 20 foot paint job (looks good from 10 or 20 feet away) and I think I achieved a 1 foot paint job.

 

I still have quite a bit of scraping to do on the windshield.  Seems that some paint got in through my masking on the front and gave me a nice fine haze.

And a new dilemma… Now may tail lights don’t work.  Rear turn signals work fine, but the brake and tail lights = nuthin!  I need to get them fixed soon, because as soon as I paint some black bumpers and seat frames – this baby needs to get back on the ROAD!

mc

 

Still Ugly

In a perfect world, my Scout would be baby blue right now and be back on the road.  But in real life, you can’t paint outside in the rain.  Period.

I was only about 20% done with my taping job when my wife informed me that rain was on the way.  She was right.  She also just wanted me to work on a different project and the day’s weather patterns were very favorable to her needs.

Scout is still uglier than sin and partially taped for painting.

Notice I did some sanding on the doors looking for a city emblem.  No luck, just more royal blue paint.

The new plan is for my wife to take the kids on Father’s Day to her own father’s house and leave me at home to paint my truck.  This plan, although productive, makes me look like the bad guy who doesn’t want to spend Father’s Day with his family, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. So I think it will fall apart in the end and my truck will be camo until 2014.

mc