ParkingLot Spotlight 6/07/2011

So you are out at the mall or grabbing some groceries at the store and you are headed back to your car in the parking lot and you catch something out of the corner of your eye.  It’s out of the ordinary, it really shouldn’t be there, especially parked between that 1998 Honda with almost no paint and the huge Cummings Diesel pick up with a bench car seat bungy corded to the tie downs in the bed, but there it is, glowing and out-of-place.

That is what these segments will be about.  Sometime there will be comments from the owner and sometimes I won’t have a chance to chat with them.  There is a fine line between loving cars and stalking. (Standing around while your milk getting warm and your ice cream is leaking out of the hole in the plastic bag, waiting for the owner is on the line.  Hey..it only happened once!!!…Come on now!!!..You’ve done it!!!)

Wandering around Southern Arizona wine country, we pulled into the one of the winery’s parking lots and I spied this beauty.

1964 Lincoln Continental Love the shape of the grill.

Yes! Convertible with suicide doors.

I’m on the fence with these wheels, but it’s still great looking.

Some 1964 Lincoln Continental facts:

Sales for that year was  32,969 roughly and approximately only 3,328 convertibles were sold.  The other option was a 4 door sedan (no two door coupe?  I’ll have to check on that).  The vert was sold for $6,938 and the sedan was about $700 less.

Only one engine was available for the Lincoln and that was the 430 with 320 hp. Which was good because the car weighted 5,000 lbs.  It was paired up with a 3 speed auto transmission which helped it reach the top speed of 110 m/h.

Longer wheel base was about 2 inches longer then the previous years at 126 inches.

 

Thanks for reading.

Tim

Wrenchin’ Tips – Masking

Having grown up working in my Dad’s body shops, was often given the honorable task of taping (masking) off the areas that weren’t going to get sprayed and areas, like windows and mirrors where you don’t want over-spray landing.   I learned a few tricks that help speed up the process, but more importantly help ensure a good clean paint job.  Removing over-spray is not a fun process.

I’ve tried the machines that merge the paper and the tape, great for straight lines, like the Coca Cola trucks we painted but for tight corners it just doesn’t work.

To save time, which equals a money saver and to get sharp clean lines, outline the areas with thinner tape, 1/4 inch works best.  After that use the tape and paper machine and run that along the previously laid tape.

Here’s one more.

I can’t possibly tell you how much a pain it can be to tape off emblems and name plates and it’s never clean.  Do yourself a big favor, figure out how they are attached to the sheet metal and purchase replacement them.  You know where I’m going… remove the badges and emblems.  That is the only way to do it right.

Clips for my 70 Mustang badges

Thanks for reading.

Tim