Tonight is the first night it is supposed to have a slight chance of rain. As you can see the hardtop is no longer on, and I haven’t had the time to install the soft top yet. So I picked up this nifty Bestop cover that will keep the rain out. Pretty cool actually, takes only a few minutes to put on and take off.
I got my new plates in the mail yesterday and just got around to installing them. They are personalized plates that say “JP 12”. Check them out:
Kind of funny that the very first things I bought after I got the Jeep were new fenders, and they were almost the last to arrive. I picked these up on eBay from pershingautobodyparts03. They did a great amount of work to get these things to me and ensure that they were OEM quality. I am extremely impressed at the quality and especially the price. There is absolutely no way they made any money on these things after eBay fees, PayPal fees and Shipping. They were only $220 shipped, which is probably a hundred dollars cheaper than anywhere else.
Finally got around to installing the new Delta 150 foglights on the front bumper. They actually match the original Jurassic Park lights pretty closely as long as you can get the old style light guards like I managed to get. They have a very similar cross hatching.
In order to get them to fit on the front bumper, their brackets needed to be turned around. This gives them enough clearance to clear the fender horns.
To test out the new foglights, I drove the Jeep…. like this:
It took quite a bit of time for the first coat of the Herculiner to setup in the rear. I have applied another coat and a half to the back area, and am fairly certain that is all done. Now came the time to do the front area, and that is a major pain in the ass. The rear area was more or less for practice. It was a smooth area without a lot of corners and cracks.
The front is much different. Lots of it needs to be applied with the brush, and the areas to be rolled on are quite difficult. It took another 2-3 hours prepping, masking and painting this first coat. It will take 4-6 hours to dry, so a 2nd and hopefully third and final coat can go on tonight for it to be ready by tomorrow.
One of the projects to work on while the Herculiner was setting up was the Sound Bar. When I took it off on Friday I noticed that the speakers were all ratty and full of holes. I guess that is why it wasn’t sounding as good as it possibly could.
So I stopped over at Best Buy (actually had to travel quite far) to pick up some 4″ Pioneer Speakers for $45. They are no longer carrying these tiny speakers as very few cars still have speakers in this size. I soldered the connectors onto the speaker wires and installed them under the old covers. I hope it sounds good!
I am now finally getting around to putting down the Herculiner. I had originally planned to start this back on Friday. Now that it is Sunday, I’m a bit behind. This is due to the rust spot that had to be patched yesterday and the VERY subborn bolts that were broken off.
The first step in applying Herculiner is to clean up everything. You need a very clean (and rough) surface to apply the paint to. I used a wire wheel to scuff up the surface and then hit it with the scouring pad that was included in the Herculiner kit. The kit by the way is available at most autopart stores and costs about $90 for the kit.
The next step will be to mask off all the areas that you don’t want the coating. It is going to be very thick, and very strong. You don’t want this covering up drain holes or flowing into bolt holes. This is one of the most important steps in the process. If you get the Herculiner somewhere you don’t want it, getting it off will be difficult.
For the holes I used silicone hole plugs. These things are typically used in Powder Coating situations where you don’t want powder getting into holes. Nothing sticks to silicone (except silicone), so hopefully I can just yank the plugs out of the holes and remove the herculiner sitting on them. We will see… but so far this is the easiest solution.
The application of Herculiner is fairly straight forward, but this stuff is pretty thick! Its not going to be like normal paint, as it has chunks of rubber in it. Using a paint brush you first go after all the corners and hard to reach areas. Then using the roller, you apply a thin coat. It should be thin, almost transparent. It would be wise to thin the Herculiner with Xylene for this first coat (I however did not).
The first coat needs to set for 1 to 4 hours. So I think I will work on something else while it is setting.
The rusty area that we found yesterday was wire wheeled and the bad area was identified. The area to be cut out was marked in yellow paint. There is a little bit of rust extending out of this area, but it is for the post part surface rust. The remaining metal is plenty thick for securing to.
Here the bad metal was completely cut out. A 1/2″ thick border was left to secure to.
A 16 gauge patch panel was cut out to fit over the area.
The panel was tack welded into place and then a bead was put around the whole patch.
Next step will be to seal the underside with seam sealer and paint. After that.. we start prepping for the herculiner!
Today was a big day for progress on the interior. It was decided that I would be stripping the inteior and laying down a layer of Herculiner to hopefully subside any eventual rust on the body. The Jeep is in such a great shape that we were hoping for the best as far as hidden rust spots were concerned. After the doors and hard top were removed the first step was to remove the carpet and rear seat. This is a very easy task, its just a lot of fishing carpet around mounts and removing bolts.
When it came down to removing the rear seat, the first level of resistance was reached. Three out of the four bolts holding the front of the rear seat down snapped off. And they snapped off nearly flush with the surface. Getting them out will be still one of the hardest things to do.
Moving foward into the Jeep the front seats and carpet are removed. Here you can see the first glimpse at the floor rust. Like the rear seat there was some issue getting out the front seat. Two of the bolts proved to be rather difficult to remove, but came out after some finessing.
The rust on the driver side floor pan was initially viewed as horrible surface rust. As we chipped away at the rust, it was obvious that the floor would need to be replaced. There should be plenty of solid metal to weld a new section of sheet metal in place. Normally I would weld in a replacement panel, but I would much rather have this done over the weekend and not push the project back into the next week.
The rollcage bolts have been removed in the rear, and the cross bar was removed with the sound bar. Unfortunately four of the front bolts on the rollcage were sized, and stripped out several Torx sockets. We could not apply enough torque on the torx to remove the bolts. The solution was to purchase several cheap Torx sockets and weld one to each bolt. With a much larger cross section making contact with the bolt they broke loose easily with a 2 foot breaker bar.
The UPS man came today with a few presents from eBay. The first is a set of Half Doors from a 1994 Jeep Sahara. They will be right at home on my 1993 Jeep Sahara. They are the wrong color (a shade of dark green), but the door panels are correct and they have the screen accurate pouches. Only cost $450! (ouch!)
Also in is a new (used) windshield frame from a 1989 Jeep. The glass is cracked and is in the process of being removed. It is virtually rust free, except for a few marks of surface rust that will be easily neutralized. A nice catch for only $180 shipped. (about the same price as a cheap aftermarket windshield frame).
