Since having Frank home, things have slowed down quite a bit. It’s sometimes hard getting motivated to go out and work in the heat as summer closes in, and getting used to doing car stuff in the garage has been hard, after having the run of a fully-equipped shop at my disposal. But, gotta get busy… I want to have this thing ready for the GAFB Car Show in October, after all.

Finally got the tail light panel installed, along with the tail lights, flip-open gas cap (cover), and rear marker lights. My wife slaved in the hot sun to clean up the tail lights before I put them back in – and she did an awesome job!

So here we are in front of the house, thanks to the Goodfellow Auto Hobby Shop closing. Very cool truck from Clark’s Auto Salvage… and the driver’s name is Rusty (a little bit of NASCAR irony there  ).

Drove it around through the alley to park in the driveway. Felt a little weird driving it on a ‘normal’ street (don’t tell SAPD, though  ).

All tucked in with about 3 feet all around – don’t want anything scratchin’ the new paint!

Yup. The Auto Hobby Shop is now closed for good.

I got an e-mail saying it was closed 2 Wednesdays ago, and have been scrambling to get it ready to come home. Still gotta get my boxes of parts tomorrow, but after that just gotta help Jim Eimer get his stuff out of there. Then – Done.

The worst thing about it, it that Jim and I were treated like pond scum despite the fact that we were literally running the shop for them over the weekends for almost 2 years after the low-life they hired to replace Jim after re-directing him to Transportation basically stole from the USG to support his meth habit. When they finally fired him after AFOSI found AHS property in local pawn shops, the whining little maggot of a Flight Chief (who’d given us nothing but crap about our cars taking up so much space while we worked on them) came to us hat in hand asking us to run it for them until they could find someone to hire. No problem, but we’re not paying stall fees and we’d like to not get hassled about how long our projects are taking as a result of running your shop. He agreed, and having sold our souls, so began our torment.

When they decided to shut it down – just 18 months later after never actually getting around to hiring someone to replace the meth-head, they didn’t even come talk to us like men who’d saved their bacon after firing the meth-head (despite taking advantage of us). We received e-mails saying to get out, and when we showed up to begin that process, they’d changed the locks – effectively, seizing our property, and told us we’d need to be escorted while we were there. WT Actual F?! We ran the shop for 18 months… gratis… helped turn a small profit and grow patronage, and now we can’t be trusted?!

They’ll eventually open it back up, but at a GREATLY diminished capacity – there will NEVER be the level of greatness experienced at the Goodfellow Auto Hobby Shop ever again, as from the early ’90s when I arrived and started using it, through the Don Myers years, and when Jim Eimer took the reigns as manager in the early 2000s through the early 20-teens when it was shut-down because of some elitist asshole MSG Commander’s disdain for such commonplace things.

Too bad as well – all it’s doing is screwing the military out of yet even more of the meager ‘benefits’ they have. I was hoping someday (after I retire from my Day Job) to become one of “those old farts working at the Hobby Shop who can fix just about anything” that I’ve come to respect and admire over the years. I guess those dreams will be fading from existence now.

If I ever run into that POS MSG Commander, I’ve a good mind to punch him in the face… but, since I value my job too much, he’ll never know just how lucky he really is.

So, the Mission Support Group Commander (Colonel Bernardi) has made a VERY unpopular decision to shut down the Auto Hobby Shop for a handful of reasons, but the most apparent being that he’s an upper-crust elitest asshole that could give two sh!ts less about the rest of us peons he lords over (“Why can’t they just go to Midas or someplace to get their oil changed?” he was heard uttering). Well, not everybody can afford $400 oil changes on our Porsches like you, dickhead. His ‘official’ rationale is that there’s a big inspection coming and that AHS is basically an eyesore because it’s got car stuff all over the place. Well No Shit, Sherlock – it’s an automotive shop, after all.

This plays out a bit later in this story, but for now, Jim and I are on notice that we need to “Get our Shit and Git!”

I’m in a good place – I can take my stuff home any time and finish up there, but Jim’s kind of struggling with his Galaxie and not exactly pushing hard to get it ready to go. This turns out to be the last weekend we can actually work on our cars with the shop open and other folks being able to use it.

With some adjustment of the holes in all affected sheet metal, I was able to get the front valance installed. Had to be extra careful because it’s a painted piece – but… no scratches! Whew!!

With some adjustment to the driver side quarter panel, in the way of a new mounting hole, I was able to get the rear valance installed, along with the bumper, and get the exhaust pipes located in the cut-outs. Still gotta adjust the quarter end caps and line up the trunk lid, but that can wait for another day.

After picking Frank up from the painter, and paying a bit more than we’d agreed one (despite my having to do the custom striping that saved his hood f00k-up), I had Clark’s Auto Salvage get him back to the Auto Hobby Shop. Little did I know his days there were numbered.

So first thing today, I located and installed the hood locks and the NACA ducts back into the hood. Gonna take some adjustment on the hood locks, but they look great!

Here’s my ratty old original driver seat. Between the vinyl being ripped up, the foam all but flattened and dried out, and the seat frame feeling less than sturdy, this one’s done.

TMI Products Sport Seat upholstery and seat foam. Everything on these seats is new except for the frames themselves. Gotta stick ’em in the sun to relax the new skins for awhile.

Compared to the ratty old driver seat, these seats should be awesome! What a PITA to recover though – I have a whole new respect for anyone that does upholstery.

OMG!! It’s actually shiny! Still gotta adjust some of the body panels ever so slightly, but it’s SHINY!! 

More shiny!! This turned out SO nice! Looks like the tire even got some paint (yeah… those nasty old wheels are SO outta here).

The TuTone hood template was such a PITA to work with, I actually wound up restriping part of it by hand. Turned out sweet – even though it’s technically supposed to be flat black (I like the glossy much better… and I can actually wax it, too).

The body shop guys worked nothing short of a miracle on the quarter panels – it looks Awesome!! 

OK, so this wouldn’t be complete without Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story.” The painter told me up front that he sucked at striping, and put the TuTone hood black out template on too far back and off-center to the passenger side by around an inch. The body guy thought it looked fine (that’s why you’re paid to sling Bondo and sand it all off again, Dude).

When Bernie called me about the stencil, I went over and told him I could restripe the driver side to match. He sat back, watched me do it, and thought about offering me a job when it was done. Yeah, it’s still too far back, but not enough that anybody else who isn’t intimately familiar with these cars would notice. Not perfect, but I’ll take it.

IT’S SHINY AGAIN!!!

This is the first time the car’s been this far back together since I’ve owned it. The body guy is still lining a few things up, and then it should be ready for more primer and some base color after masking everything off.

The body guy worked a small miracle getting the quarters squared away. Can’t wait to see this thing with some actual color on it!

The big bummer is that the urethane bumper isn’t taking the primer (not even the flex stuff Mike sold me). It’s soaking it up and cracking like a big dog… so I’m just going to order a chrome bumper for the front – it should look pretty awesome with the pewter color.

Which begs the question: why can’t a paint and body guy make the primer stick to something that’s supposed to be painted? Should I be concerned?

Holy Cow! The body guy has [almost] all of the body work done! The hood (lower left) is coming along nicely – in this light looks almost gold in color… but nope, it’s paint code ‘V’ – Ford Light Pewter. Can’t wait to see some more color!

Those guys are working miracles – my mistakes with the quarter panels have disappeared! He’s planning on shooting color next week! SO excited!!

Off to the paint shop!!! Yesterday, we got it lined up to go on the trailer, and it just quit – like it was afraid to go get shiny or something. I swapped the Duraspark module this morning, loaded it up, and took it to the man who’s going to make it pretty again. I’ll be taking him the doors and rest of the small parts on Saturday. SO Excited!!! 

The hood is back on!! This is the first time the hood has been on the car (as in, “properly installed”) since I first took it off in August 2010.

A few weeks ago, a painter who’d been recommended by the paint store came by to check it out. He liked what he saw (for the most part) and said that he could indeed make Frank shiny again. He had some projects and jobs ahead of us, but he’d give a call when he’s ready… probably in a few weeks.

I CAN’T WAIT!!! HE’S GOING TO BE A CAR AGAIN SOON!!

Here’s the hood after soda blasting – it took care of pretty much everything but the surface rust under the factory color – I guess the flat black held its own after all.

After spending pretty much half the day with 80-grit sanding discs and the DA, here’s what I came up with. Now it’s almost ready for primer.

And after spending half a day hard sanding the hood, I decided to use some chemical stripper to get the rest of the old factory paint off. MUCH faster!

The paint stood no chance against the stripper – it cooked for about a half hour, then I unceremoniously scraped it off into the trash bag.

Even though [to my surprise] the shop was open today, I managed to get the areas I stripped paint from yesterday sanded down to bare metal. All that’s left to strip off is the trunk opening surround and door jambs.