My '83 GLX T-Top Coupe Junk Yard Find

[ZephyrEFI]

I hope y'all don't mind all of the posts with little crap like this. I want to make it so anyone else doing the same thing can have an idea on what I did.

Don't mind at all! I love seeing someone else solving problems that don't have obvious solutions like i often have to on my project!

[84StangSVT]

I hope y'all don't mind all of the posts with little crap like this. I want to make it so anyone else doing the same thing can have an idea on what I did.

Don't mind at all! I love seeing someone else solving problems that don't have obvious solutions like i often have to on my project!

I agree with Brad on this. Your posts with the little stuff are almost gold. There are a lot of us that also have the same little issues, but most of the time they haven't been documented on how to fix them.

I quite enjoy seeing the little things you are doing. It helps us unimaginative folks out tremendously.

[Davedacarpainter]

Got this in the mail today, thanks again Jon.Who's the hand model now?

I haven't done much lately because I've been painting some side jobs to make a little extra money. Everything takes time.....

Though, within the next week or so I will pick up the driver's door finallly and strip it down.

[jlehma13]

Ha, don't quit your day job. Can't wait to see it shiny and new again.

[Davedacarpainter]

So I decided to take a look at how to disassemble the emblem this morning. Looking from the side you see that it has a collar that holds the clear cover to the base.

I thought I would try to use a razor blade to split the collar from the base. Going slowly around the perimeter it worked. Apparently this isn't super glue that held it there. there is also a small amount of the glue to hold the shield part of the emblem to its' base. So now I can sand down the clear plastic cover and clear coat it. The collar is black plastic with silver paint around the rim (silver sharpie time).

The shield part is a little puzzle to me. I never paid this close of attention to it before. I thought the background was something like a pearl white. It's actually a thin metal disc that has been spun on the visible surface plus a coating on it. I need to research what a new one looked like. Was it just a spun aluminum look? Or maybe a pickled whitish look? I used a small amount of spit and my thumb to wipe across the right side and you can see a small amount of the coating peeled away.

You can also see the painted red, white and blue paint of the shield. Ford didn't accurately keep the color in the squares, good for me. This will be a small pita to mask off.

[jlehma13]

Dave,
This is an nos emblem. I'll have to get some close-ups for you.

[BLUECRAPI]

Is the shield piece aluminum? I see a bit of brown or pitting a the top in the photo which would tell me no, but it's so hard to tell from a photo. The whiteness looks like oxidized aluminum but the new old stock one looks white with bright colors...

I have the same emblem on my horn pad and it looks just like the one taken apart. I was unsure what I wanted to do with it. Watching with interest.

[jlehma13]

I believe it's unpainted and machined. I won't be near the part until tomorrow but will provide better photos if no one else has.

[Davedacarpainter]

Is the shield piece aluminum? I see a bit of brown or pitting a the top in the photo which would tell me no, but it's so hard to tell from a photo. The whiteness looks like oxidized aluminum but the new old stock one looks white with bright colors...

I have the same emblem on my horn pad and it looks just like the one taken apart. I was unsure what I wanted to do with it. Watching with interest.

That brownish look is just glue residue. It seems to be aluminum.

[Davedacarpainter]

Dave,
This is an nos emblem. I'll have to get some close-ups for you.

Thanks Jon. That's what I need to know, if it's just a spun aluminum look or white. Though the white could just be oxidation. If it's just aluminum look, I'll clean off the old coating and clear coat it when I get the cover.

[what'snext]

spent all day starting on page one and surfing until the present. I've done some very serious builds in my time but nothing that comes close to being as admirable as yours. Thoroughly impressed sir

[Davedacarpainter]

That's awful nice of you to say. Thank you. I'm just a guy enjoying a car. I paint cars for a living because I enjoy doing that. Taking something damaged or old and ugly and making it nice again. These little bits and pieces I'm doing here, this rusty old car, this is me, it's who I am. I'm glad that someone else can take some sort of enjoyment from it as well. It's like I'm sharing something worthwhile about myself. Again, thank you for your kind comment.

[jlehma13]

Here's the best pic I could manage. It is definitely not painted. Metal finish that is spun.

[Davedacarpainter]

Thanks Jon.

[droopie85gt]

Dave, I don't know about you, but I like watching all these shows on restoration. Whether it's a car or a Coke machine, when someone takes something that's about to be sent to a landfill and not only saves it but restores it back, that's awesome! I have found a new show where this guy (wearing a Cowboy hat) restores old houses and I am amazed by what can be done to 100 year old woodwork that's been painted 20 times. Same way with what you've done, especially to the interior and hvac pieces....who will see it? Not many, but YOU'LL know it's there!!!

Drew

[Davedacarpainter]

Thanks Drew, you're probably going to like what I'm going to do to this steering wheel emblem then. I'll show it in a couple days when it's done.

[Davedacarpainter]

So I did something finally and it's really small.

After disassembling the emblem I started to clean off the residue from the field of the emblem. Luckily I removed the dang little black pinstripe that's around the wreath and crown and in the middle around the center part of the shield.

I'm not sure of how many hours I spent on this silly thing, a few.

I wanted to add an accent of the green I used for the GLX emblem on the hood somewhere in the interior, so I sprayed the background that color.
Getting that pinstripe back on the emblem was immense fun. I spent 30 minutes masking around the shield,then i had to use an exacto knife to remove the paint from the channels where the black goes. I snipped off a couple hairs from a touch up brush and laid the black stripe back down. I have a jeweler's magnifying visor that i used to see what I was doing. Crap! I didn't realize my hands shook so much!.

So I got the stripe back, then I used a tooth pick to put the red, white and blue in the middle of the shield. The colors aren't perfect, but i just might be sick enough of this little sucker to say it's good enough! Also in the picture is the lense that covers the emblem. I sanded it down and cleared it at the same time. It still looks decent in the end. What do y'all think of the green?

[82GTforME]

That looks good Dave! You doubt you would have never replicated the original finish. With a first or second glance over your work I don't see huge flaws standing out.

I think it will contrast the black wheel nicely. Can you mock it up with it for us?

[ZephyrEFI]

Wow, super cool!

[droopie85gt]

That's really cool! What a custom touch! Makes me feel even lazier!

[jlehma13]

A whole page of this thread dedicated to the horn pad emblem. I love it! Looks amazing.

[Davedacarpainter]

I know it's little stuff, I've run out of parts to work on till I can get back to the yard to get the driver's door.

BTW, what a pita that little emblem was!

[dagenham]

The only problem I see is the green kinda looks like gold. Although after all the effort put into that tiny piece it is worth ten times its weight in gold!!

[Davedacarpainter]

It has a lot of gold pearl in it. I wanted a green accent for the car, but not one that would stand out like neon.

I wanted green because it's my youngest boy's favorite color. It makes me feel closer to him, I know, silly.

[Davedacarpainter]

I've been working on my red '86 GT a bit, so I haven't a lot to post at the moment here.

Thursday I'll get the driver's door and run it through the mill. After that, I'll need to move the car home. Right now the red car is a shell in my garage. I'll move it out soon. It's pretty well painted, but I've decided to do something that will keep it from being the next one running.

Ive decided to use the drivetrain from the red car and put it in the blue one. Here's a picture of the engine, it's a 5.0 that was overbored slightly (.030) to clean up the cylinders and it's pretty well built, but I'm going to change a few things about it. My brother convinced me a Trick Flow stage II would be a good cam for it. I've decided to swap out for a different cam that is more streetable. If i had expendable cash I would also get some different heads from AFR. The GT40X heads will do for now.

I have a T5 that I will rebuild to run behind it.

I was going to just get the V6 running that's currently in the blue car. The fun meter pegs a little higher in my head though thinking about this engine in the blue car.

Ive done some fairly extensive work on the red car that makes me want to build a nice stroked 351 for it. I'll probably even buy a salvage 351 soon and start the tear down on it.

The red car will be worked on a little here and there over the next year, but my main focus will be the blue one. Once the blue car is my DD, then I will go nuts on the red one.

Though the update posts will only be just once every month or so for the red car, do y'all think I should start a new thread for it? It's an '86 GT t-top hatch back. It would probably take about a month of posting on a new thread to get you up to date on what I've done to it.

Oh well, tell me what you think.