Stiggy Pop
In the cool kids club
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2011
- Location
- Granville, MA
Current:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1/6/13 I bought this 1979 242dl in Hadley Mass. The original plan was to just get it up and running with a b230ft, but it has turned into a bit more of a project since then. I have been building it with the help of my Dad, tbricker mikezohsix, and he deserves a lot of thanks and credit (especially for letting me hog the garage).
Day 1 shot:
The owner was a nice older guy who drove the car for a few years before putting it in a barn in 2002, where it sat until I dragged it away. He had planned on doing a v8 swap so had spent some time repairing the body; rockers and quarters were replaced with all new metal and "the last guy doing real LEAD body work in Mass" did all the work for him. The quality of the work looked really good, and it was a nice complete 242 on the east coast for scrap value... couldn't pass it up.
Sporting beige on brown
Inside was pretty musty and a little mousey, plans are TBD
Last it was on the road. Will need to do some repair at the windshield corner eventually.
This was empty thankfully
Because of the body work the outside of the car looked great. However, the barn had a dirt floor so when you look under the hood
And underneath
Floors were pretty solid, but lots of surface rust and a few punky spots. Altogether not bad considering the circumstances, and nothing really scary so we were still feeling positive about the car as a starting point.
lovely
The b21f spun freely but had no compression and the clutch was seized. So started pulling it out
and pressure washed decades of grime away, again a bunch of ugly surface rust, but nothing structural or too significant.
It was obvious I was going to need a donor car, so I started looking for a late model manual 240. In the meantime I started thinking about cleaning up and prepping the body.
At first I thought I would spot treat some rust underneath, but the more I scratched around the more I wanted to expose it all and try and seal it off. There weren't any holes big enough that made us want to cut and weld sections in, so we decided to treat it from underneath and fiberglass the holes that were there from the inside of the car. With the best intentions, and not fully understanding what I was in for, I headed underneath the car with a $16 Harbor Freight pneumatic scraper and got to work. A few years ago I worked at a marina in Vermont and had to sand and paint a 34' tug boat by myself. This was equally as miserable and tedious.
The dry undercoating wasn't bad, and the scraper chipped through it quick enough. But the gummy stuff was tough and I had a LOT of area to cover with a 1.5" blade. I buzzed away at it for weeks on nights and weekends. For the tougher stuff I had a spray bottle full of kerosene and would soak it in and then peel it away with the scraper. I also did the same with the hood.
Many moons later I emerged soaked in kerosene and with an undercoating free car. I used a needle scaler to break off some of the crustier spots, and gave everything a thorough grind, scuff and sand.
I decided to use a rust inhibitor called Rust Bullet, reviews were good and it seemed like the right kind of thing for what I was trying to do. I was happy with the way it went on, really seemed to soak in.
After spending all of the time scraping and cleaning underneath the car, it felt a little anticlimactic to just have it be black undercoating again. So we ended up giving both the engine bay and underside coats of primer and beige.
I actually struggled with the paint a little bit. Despite what the internet tells me, my build plate from the passenger side strut tower does not have a paint code on it.
So I started guessing. Now some of the car was repainted obviously, but even going off of the back of the gas door which is definitely original I couldn't get something to match. This was all Limco Supreme Plus single stage acrylic, which painted nicely.
The left in this pic is 122 - mojave beige which was way to yellow
the center is 137 - artesia beige, this was too pink
the right is what I ended up with after several trips to the patient paint shop, 137 base tinted to match the gas door. I'm still not sure what color it is.
Good for under the hood, and not bad overall.
During this time I had found a donor car, it was a kinda rusty '91 245 m47 car. It was LH3.1 so I bought a 2.4 harness and was getting ready to swap over the drivetrain less the engine. Confession: the test drive of this car was the first time I had ever driven a 240
It wasn't overly clean underneath, but I had had the car on the lift in my Dad's garage for a couple of months at this point. I really needed to get wheels back under it so we could at least move it in and out. After all of the work making things look good, I was less than excited that this was the stuff I was going to bolt onto it. But needed to press on, and settle with what I had. After all of this work I was just looking forward to putting things together.
Right before I dug into the '91 a dark horse emerged and changed the direction of the car.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1/6/13 I bought this 1979 242dl in Hadley Mass. The original plan was to just get it up and running with a b230ft, but it has turned into a bit more of a project since then. I have been building it with the help of my Dad, tbricker mikezohsix, and he deserves a lot of thanks and credit (especially for letting me hog the garage).
Day 1 shot:
The owner was a nice older guy who drove the car for a few years before putting it in a barn in 2002, where it sat until I dragged it away. He had planned on doing a v8 swap so had spent some time repairing the body; rockers and quarters were replaced with all new metal and "the last guy doing real LEAD body work in Mass" did all the work for him. The quality of the work looked really good, and it was a nice complete 242 on the east coast for scrap value... couldn't pass it up.
Sporting beige on brown
Inside was pretty musty and a little mousey, plans are TBD
Last it was on the road. Will need to do some repair at the windshield corner eventually.
This was empty thankfully
Because of the body work the outside of the car looked great. However, the barn had a dirt floor so when you look under the hood
And underneath
Floors were pretty solid, but lots of surface rust and a few punky spots. Altogether not bad considering the circumstances, and nothing really scary so we were still feeling positive about the car as a starting point.
lovely
The b21f spun freely but had no compression and the clutch was seized. So started pulling it out
and pressure washed decades of grime away, again a bunch of ugly surface rust, but nothing structural or too significant.
It was obvious I was going to need a donor car, so I started looking for a late model manual 240. In the meantime I started thinking about cleaning up and prepping the body.
At first I thought I would spot treat some rust underneath, but the more I scratched around the more I wanted to expose it all and try and seal it off. There weren't any holes big enough that made us want to cut and weld sections in, so we decided to treat it from underneath and fiberglass the holes that were there from the inside of the car. With the best intentions, and not fully understanding what I was in for, I headed underneath the car with a $16 Harbor Freight pneumatic scraper and got to work. A few years ago I worked at a marina in Vermont and had to sand and paint a 34' tug boat by myself. This was equally as miserable and tedious.
The dry undercoating wasn't bad, and the scraper chipped through it quick enough. But the gummy stuff was tough and I had a LOT of area to cover with a 1.5" blade. I buzzed away at it for weeks on nights and weekends. For the tougher stuff I had a spray bottle full of kerosene and would soak it in and then peel it away with the scraper. I also did the same with the hood.
Many moons later I emerged soaked in kerosene and with an undercoating free car. I used a needle scaler to break off some of the crustier spots, and gave everything a thorough grind, scuff and sand.
I decided to use a rust inhibitor called Rust Bullet, reviews were good and it seemed like the right kind of thing for what I was trying to do. I was happy with the way it went on, really seemed to soak in.
After spending all of the time scraping and cleaning underneath the car, it felt a little anticlimactic to just have it be black undercoating again. So we ended up giving both the engine bay and underside coats of primer and beige.
I actually struggled with the paint a little bit. Despite what the internet tells me, my build plate from the passenger side strut tower does not have a paint code on it.
So I started guessing. Now some of the car was repainted obviously, but even going off of the back of the gas door which is definitely original I couldn't get something to match. This was all Limco Supreme Plus single stage acrylic, which painted nicely.
The left in this pic is 122 - mojave beige which was way to yellow
the center is 137 - artesia beige, this was too pink
the right is what I ended up with after several trips to the patient paint shop, 137 base tinted to match the gas door. I'm still not sure what color it is.
Good for under the hood, and not bad overall.
During this time I had found a donor car, it was a kinda rusty '91 245 m47 car. It was LH3.1 so I bought a 2.4 harness and was getting ready to swap over the drivetrain less the engine. Confession: the test drive of this car was the first time I had ever driven a 240
It wasn't overly clean underneath, but I had had the car on the lift in my Dad's garage for a couple of months at this point. I really needed to get wheels back under it so we could at least move it in and out. After all of the work making things look good, I was less than excited that this was the stuff I was going to bolt onto it. But needed to press on, and settle with what I had. After all of this work I was just looking forward to putting things together.
Right before I dug into the '91 a dark horse emerged and changed the direction of the car.
Last edited:
