If you click on the pho­tos, they should open up to full size.

The “Gray Lady” is finally back home with her new gray coat.  Fin­ish is pretty good, if I decide to take it a step fur­ther and wet sand and buff her she will be per­fect.  The color is just what I hoped for, I’d say it is within a half shade of the orig­i­nal.  I opted to paint her with a stan­dard color that was as close to orig­i­nal as pos­si­ble because I intend to use her as a dri­ver and I wanted to be able to just touch-up or patch any dings or scrapes that may appear down the road with­out hav­ing to repaint the whole car again.  I could have opted for cus­tom paint and matched it per­fectly, but it would have pre­sented a prob­lem down the road if repair work was needed.

I would rate the body work at a solid 10, they did a great job and there are absolutely no issues that I can see.  How­ever, I was sur­prised with the over­age on the final bill, I knew we were going over time­wise but I wasn’t expect­ing it to be 35% over the orig­i­nal esti­mate, that kind of rained on my parade a lit­tle.  Turns out we had to invest about 90 hours in body­work and prep, but this far into it, it would make no sense to be cut­ting cor­ners, so I just gripe about it for a while and move on.  It turns out that the sec­ond coat of primer that we added at the last minute involved about an addi­tional 2 hours in the paint booth and prob­a­bly about another 14 hours of sand­ing.  Ah well, it is done and now we can move on.

The pip­ing and but­tons for the uphol­stery are due to arrive at the end of the week, and all of the new rub­ber parts should be here by Mon­day.  So not much will hap­pen for the rest of the week, but by next week we will be going full tilt again.

Until then.….….……

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We took a ride down to New­port, RI (well actu­ally Portsmouth, RI) to check out the Caddy’s rep­re­sent­ing the New Eng­land Chap­ter of the Cadil­lac LaSalle Club.  The show was a fund raiser for a local club that had an area set aside for the CLC.  There were many fine exam­ples there on dis­play, many from 1956 & 1957 and a whole slew of 1959’s among many oth­ers.  Again I was dis­ap­pointed to find no 1958’s, what’s up with that.  Either I am rebuild­ing a car no one wants or they are very rare, but they sure seem to be pretty scarce.  Ho Hum, guess I’ll just have to show them when the “Gray Lady” arrives.  Along for the ride were my friend Paul who has helped me quite a bit with the car and his son Adam, an 11 year old in awe of every­thing automotive.

My favorite was the 16 cylin­der Caddy, but there was a wide vari­ety of vehi­cles from about 1912 up through the eight­ies.  They had a good turnout with what I would esti­mate to be more than 250 cars rep­re­sent­ing many dif­fer­ent makes and mod­els.  After a cou­ple hours, we motored around the New­port loop down Bel­lvue Avenue past the man­sions before head­ing back over the bridge and stop­ping in Jamestown for lunch at the Acme Oys­ter House.  All in all we had a great day.…

The Gray Lady makes her trip back home next week and then we will be busy putting her back together.   Until then.….….…

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They painted the doors, jambs, posts, inside trunk lid and under the hood yes­ter­day.  I breezed by after lunch today just to take a peek, check the color and reas­sure myself that we had made the right color choice.  “We nailed it,” I’m tick­led pink with the color and it all looks super.  Every­one at the shop agrees that we are as close as we are going to get, it looks great in the garage and they tell me it looked even bet­ter when she was rolled out in the sun.

Even though I’ve still got plenty of detail work on parts back at the shop, I’m really get­ting the itch to get her back to the shop and start putting her back together, a project that I’m sure will be painstak­ingly slow.  I was informed today that tomor­row is D-Day, their sched­ule opened up and they intend to fin­ish paint­ing the body then.  She is sched­uled into the paint booth for most of the day and I wasn’t really expect­ing that to hap­pen until next week.  Looks like she will be return­ing home some­time mid­dle of next week.

We’ll know bet­ter on Sat­ur­day, but some­time Tues­day, Wednes­day or Thurs­day, weather per­mit­ting she will go back up on the flatbed for the ride home.  I was told today that my “pass­port” into the shop has been revoked and I’m not going to be allowed to see her again until she is fin­ished and ready to be picked up.…. Guess they can do with­out me stand­ing over the painter’s shoul­der telling him how to do his job   So this is the last body shop post until we have her on the truck on the way back and begin the next phase of our project.

Until then.…

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I was informed that she was rolled into the paint booth yes­ter­day and they began to paint the inte­rior parts.  I’m look­ing for­ward to going by tomor­row and check­ing her out, if for no other rea­son than to check the color before we get to far into this.  In the mean­time, my uphol­sterer called to say she had bro­ken down all of the pieces and had the cov­ers off and taken apart and asked if I wanted to come get the frames and paint them.  I made a quick trip over and picked them up to bring back to my shop.

The frames are all in great shape except for the back of the rear seat, which is quite rusted due to damp­ness from the trunk.  I will work on those and get them back to her soon, but she still has plenty of work mak­ing pat­terns, cut­ting mate­ri­als and get­ting ready to sew it all back together and of course none of the sewing can begin until we receive the pip­ing from SMS and I hope they are not going to delay me another Month.

I’m busy work­ing on the inner fend­ers, replac­ing the splash aprons with all new rub­ber, clean­ing them, paint­ing and putting a fresh coat of under­coat on.  Also have been work­ing on the head­light buck­ets and tail light fix­tures.  Things are start­ing to fall in place and I am really look­ing for­ward to hav­ing her home, hope­fully within the next 10 days so we can begin assem­bly.  Mary Lee will be really happy when I start tak­ing parts from the house and putting them on the car, she’s get­ting a lit­tle tired of hav­ing her house look like an auto parts warehouse.

Back soon…

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We’re back from Dal­las and I popped in to the body shop to gauge progress.  The rest of the spot prim­ing was fin­ished last week and on Fri­day she was brought in to the paint booth and had another coat of primer applied.  She sat over the week­end and Mon­day after­noon they began the final block­ing and sand­ing.  When I was there, they were they were a good way through it and hoped to fin­ish by the end of the day.  If they were able to fin­ish, the plan is to begin paint­ing the doors, sills, inside the trunk lid and all of the other inside areas tomor­row.  If that gets done on sched­ule, once out of the oven, she will set and cure for the rest of the week and will prob­a­bly be painted next week.

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We stopped in to Maaco today just to check on things before tak­ing off for Dal­las.  Good News! The body work is com­pleted all of the pan­els have been spot primed and they have begun sand­ing the primer.  We are hop­ing to have the whole car sanded by the end of the week so that she can go into the paint booth for another coat of primer.  If all goes as planned then next week will be devoted to block­ing and sand­ing and hope­fully by the fol­low­ing week we will be able to start apply­ing color.  I can actu­ally see light at the end of the tun­nel and really look for­ward to get­ting her back and start­ing the process of re-assembling her.

Mary Lee and I will be away for 5 days, but will get right back to it when we return.

Until then.….

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As noted in prior posts the front and rear bumpers are com­plete and back at the shop.  While the car is out I’ve been spend­ing time pol­ish­ing and buff­ing trim, work­ing on the head and tail lights and gen­er­ally get­ting every­thing ready for the “Gray Lady’s” return from the shop.  This week, I worked on all of the bumper pieces, I coated all of the inside areas with POR-15 to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­ity of rust from the inside out.  They look beau­ti­ful, and all I can say is every­one bet­ter get their sun­glasses on for roll out, those bumpers are going to be blinding.

Head­light, tail light, and direc­tional lights have all been bro­ken down, media blasted and are ready for paint­ing before being put on the shelf to wait for instal­la­tion.  Wiring, sock­ets and back plates have all been checked and repaired as needed, the bezels have been re plated, so we are ready to go there.  When back, the car will be com­pletely fin­ished, with the under­side com­pleted (may need a lit­tle touch-up), body com­pletely refin­ished includ­ing the door jambs, posts and the under­side of both the hood and trunk lids.

A big dis­ap­point­ment has been my asso­ci­a­tion with SMS Auto Fab­rics, when I ordered the mate­ri­als a month ago I was told they were in stock, but the head­liner and car­pet set would have to be made up.  I asked them to send the mate­r­ial and not wait until the liner and car­pet were ready, they assured me they would, but of course did not.…  I called them at least 4 times over the last 3 weeks and every­time was told they would check on the sta­tus and let me know.  I don’t have to tell you how many times my phone didn’t ring.  I was writ­ing a scathing review of their cus­tomer ser­vice when UPS finally deliv­ered the head­liner and mate­ri­als yes­ter­day almost a month after it was ordered.  My uphol­sterer is PO’d because the seats have been sit­ting there for 3 weeks with no fab­ric, so I ran it over to them yes­ter­day.  Of course, now I find out they would pre­fer not to make the pip­ing, we need 75 feet, and asked me to track it down and get some.  So yes­ter­day I had to call SMSand order it, I asked about the delays with the prior order and was essen­tially told that they were busy and things hap­pen, no apol­ogy, just excuses.  Once again they assured me they would try to expidite the pip­ing but I won’t hold my breath on that one and fully expect another 1 month delay.  I run a busi­ness and know that my cus­tomers would not tol­er­ate ser­vice like that from me, but I do have com­peti­tors to keep me in line, unlike SMS.  I guess when you pretty much are the only game in town, you don’t really have to be good, you just have to be open…  If you go here, the prod­ucts are good but be sure to build in plenty of lead time.

I will try to get in another body shop update tomor­row, but a fam­ily emer­gency requires an imme­di­ate trip to Dal­las and Mary Lee and I are leav­ing Thurs­day morn­ing for a few days, if not we will be back to it next week.

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Mary Lee and I took a day trip up to the Saratoga Auto­mo­bile Museum to check out the Cadil­lac Lasalle Club spon­sored lawn show and to tour the museum.  The weather reports were kind of shaky but we decided to go any­way and were rewarded with a very nice day.  There were many fine Cadil­lac spec­i­mens on dis­play, we saw a very nice ’58 Fleet­wood Sixty Spe­cial, some impres­sive ’59’s includ­ing a beau­ti­ful Eldo­rado and even got to check out a ’58 ambulance.

The lawn show was due to break up around 2:00PM because it was a really busy day up there, The Dave Math­ews Band had a con­cert sched­uled at the Saratoga Cen­ter For The Per­form­ing Arts that evening which abuts the museum and the crowds arrive early.  We did man­age our way around the dis­play with­out feel­ing hur­ried, had some bar­be­cue for lunch and packed it in for home late in the after­noon.  We spent about 2 hours in the museum which was fea­tur­ing a dis­play of Amer­i­can Wood­ies from the Char­lie and Marie Mon­tano Col­lec­tion, all 13 of the Wood­ies on dis­play are owned by the same cou­ple!!  What an impres­sive col­lec­tion of Amer­i­can Car His­tory, I’d love to own one of those beau­ties, espe­cially the con­vert­ibles.  Take a look at my Photo page to see more pic­tures of these fine auto­mo­biles.  If you are any­where near the Adiron­dack Region, it is well worth the trip to see all of these cars in one place, they will be on dis­play through Octo­ber 17th.  The most impres­sive one was the 1942 Oldsmo­bile Spe­cial Series 66 Sta­tion Wagon that is cur­rently under­go­ing restora­tion and will be fin­ished after the dis­play is over, that car is one of only two known to exist.

On a side note, I am keep­ing busy buff­ing and pol­ish­ing trim parts, work­ing on light fix­tures and gen­er­ally get­ting every­thing ready to start putting her back together once she comes back from the body shop, hope­fully within the next 2 weeks.

Back at ya soon.…..

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Well that tur­tle has not got­ten off those tran­quil­iz­ers, but we are mak­ing progress, slowly but surely. Most of the body has been gone over with a fine tooth comb, all areas and pan­els have been taken down repaired where needed and then spot primed. I don’t want to con­vey in any way shape or form that I am unhappy with either the speed or qual­ity of this phase of the project so far, Joe Houghton and his crew over at Maaco Col­li­sion Repair have gone above and beyond in every way so far. I’m still very impressed, and those of you who know me know that if I wasn’t you sure would see it here. The right rear quar­ter was the last panel need­ing atten­tion and was being worked on today, so when fin­ished, that and the hood will be the last 2 areas to be spot primed. Then after sand­ing she will be on her way over to the paint booth for another coat of primer, then will be blocked and sanded before going back to the booth for some color. I’m hop­ing that we may be ready for paint around the week of the 14th. Larry, the tech­ni­cian assigned to work on her has gone above and beyond. He has found areas we had no idea we had issues with and repaired them even though they were not included in the quote. I am con­fi­dent we are doing the best job pos­si­ble within my bud­get and have seen noth­ing that causes me concern.

Now I’m stressed about paint color, today I viewed a sam­ple painted with the for­mula sup­plied and have to say it just is not going to work for me. Seems the orig­i­nal Prest­wick Gray Poly fin­ish was a metal­lic paint, though we could see no evi­dence of the metal in the orig­i­nal fin­ish and when it was mixed with todays mod­ern mate­ri­als, it looked good in the garage but when taken out in the sun sparkled way to much. I just feel that when all of the trim is added back it really is going to look to flashy and won’t feel right. So on Mon­day we are going to shoot 2 more test pan­els with plain enamel and no metal added to them. Once that is done we’ll make a deci­sion on how to proceed.

Until next time…

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It was a beau­ti­ful week­end, Mary Lee and I took a trip up to Stock­bridge, MA to visit Chester­wood, it opened this week­end for the sea­son and fea­tured a clas­sic car show on the grounds.  Chester­wood is the coun­try home, stu­dio and gar­dens of America’s fore­most sculp­tor of pub­lic mon­u­ments, Daniel Chester French (1850 – 1931). Sit­u­ated on 122 acres in the idyl­lic ham­let of Glen­dale near Stock­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, the prop­erty and build­ings were donated to the National Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion by French’s daugh­ter, Mar­garet French Cres­son (1889 – 1973). Inspired by the nat­ural beauty of the Berk­shire Hills, French pur­chased the Mar­shall Warner farm in 1896. Dur­ing the month of May, he left his per­ma­nent home and stu­dio in New York for six months and moved with his fam­ily to Chester­wood, where he con­tin­ued to work on over 200 pub­lic and pri­vate com­mis­sions. Many of French’s plas­ter sketches includ­ing mod­els of his Abra­ham Lin­coln for the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial are on view today in his Stu­dio as well as in the per­ma­nent exhibit, Daniel Chester French: Sculpt­ing an Amer­i­can Vision, in the Barn Gallery. Vis­i­tors to Chester­wood are invited to explore the beau­ti­ful for­mal gar­dens and wood­land paths cre­ated by French himself.  

Chester­wood is a National Trust His­toric Site owned and oper­ated by the National Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion and rec­og­nized as a National and Mass­a­chu­setts His­toric Land­mark. The National Trust for His­toric Preser­va­tion pro­vides lead­er­ship, edu­ca­tion, advo­cacy and resources to a national net­work of peo­ple, orga­ni­za­tions and local com­mu­ni­ties com­mit­ted to sav­ing places, con­nect­ing us to our his­tory and col­lec­tively shap­ing the future of America’s stories.

In April 2010. Mervin Richard, Direc­tor of Con­ser­va­tion at the National Gallery of Art, and Chesterwood’s Ger­ard Blache and Brian McEl­hiney put the fin­ish­ing touches on Daniel Chester French’s six foot model of Abra­ham Lin­coln for the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial, which has returned to Chester­wood after being on dis­play for over a year at the National Gallery of Art in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

We were able to tour the main house, stu­dio and exhibits in the barn while there, along with see­ing many fine example’s of the clas­sic cars on dis­play through­out the grounds.  In my opin­ion the best of show were the 1950 Jaguar MK V, which was pur­chased new and is still owned by the same fam­ily.  This car under­went a $92,000 restora­tion within the last decade.  Also very impres­sive was the Packard Limo, which I think was either a 1924 or 1925.  My vote for the coolest hood orna­ment was the red devil adorn­ing a 1947 MG.

Again I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed to see only one lonely Cadil­lac parked on the grounds, a fine exam­ple of a 1955 sedan that is all orig­i­nal except for the paint.  It was a won­der­ful day, with beau­ti­ful weather, in a very senic spot.  Hope­fully next year, the “Gray Lady” will occupy a spot on the lawn right out­side of the main house.  If the weather coop­er­ates our plan is to travel up to Saratoga Springs, NY next Sat­ur­day to visit the Saratoga Car Museum, where the Cadil­lac LaSalle Club is spon­sor­ing a show on the grounds of the museum.  The museum itself has a spe­cial show­ing of Amer­i­can Wood­ies, I think 13 of them are on dis­play owned by the same person!

Body shop updates will fol­low this week.…

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