Rusty Car

From a very young age, I have been fascinated with fixing those things that are broken. Such things as window glass, appliances, and cars, especially cars. Cars have always been an interest of mine for as long as I can remember. I have removed and installed automobile glass, painted cars, refurbished cars, and sold cars. You name it and I have fixed it. I can remember the very first day I ever laid eyes on a car as if it were yesterday. My brother came driving down the long, windy driveway of my family home in Binghamton, New York in what appeared to be a Cadillac Deville. I say what “appeared to be a Cadillac Deville” because the car was so rusty it was hard to tell exactly what it was. But as the car came closer and I saw the blue paint, the shiny hub caps, and rusty door jams a waive of excitement runs all over my body. The beautiful car stops right in front of me and my brother gets out of the car and shouts, “Hey Selim, you want to go for a ride?” I ran and jumped in the car before he even finished his sentence. As we are driving around our neighborhood, I find an old school textbook on the subject of auto body repair. It appears to be from the 1970’s from the way the students were dressed in the pictures inside it and the brown color the pages had turned. Skimming through the pages of the book, I find a chapter on removing rust from the exterior of a vehicle. I remember that I saw the rusted door jams on my brother’s new car and so I ask him ever so politely, “Please let me try and remove the rust from your car?” My brother turns to me and replies, “Are you kidding? You don’t know anything about repairing cars.” And he lets out a little giggle. I become so angry because my brother never takes me seriously. I know I can do it if he will just give me a shot.

When we arrive back at the house and my brother goes inside, I begin to develop a plan to remove the rust from the door jams of the Cadillac while my brother is away on a trip over the upcoming weekend. That night I can hardly sleep as I keep on picturing exactly how I am going to repair my brother’s car tomorrow. I set the alarm on my night stand table early for the nest morning so I could get a head start. My eyes open and my thoughts begin to drift. Suddenly I remember that today is the day that I will begin working on my brother’s car. I jump out of bed and throw on my clothes and I outside staring at the huge blue car. I look around and see that it has snowed while I was asleep. I think to myself that it is going to be pretty cold outside today and so I decide to run back in the house to grab my extremely warm black down winter jacket and grab a bite to eat. Now, I am ready to get to work. First, I begin by grinding the rust with an angle grinder which may not be the best tool to use but since my tool collection is limited it is the only tool that will get the job done. I grind the rust until the rust disappears and good metal begins to show. When I get to the good metal, I sprayed the door jam metal only with a self-etching primer which will prevent the door jam from rusting in the future. From there, I patch up the holes with fiber glass, a screw, and a wooden paint stirrer. I use the wooden paint stirrer and screw to hold the fiber glass in place while I finish patching the hole. Then, I pick up the angle grinder and form the fiber glass and then I fill it with Body filler and use a body filler grater to level it and again, fill it with body filler in the spots that the grater did not it meaning they were low and still needed more fill and grate again until the grating process reveals filler with grate marks throughout. Then I sanded the edges of the paint and the filler with 80 grit sandpaper by hand and then filled the whole area which had already been sanded with filler. After the filler dries, I sand the filler with 80 grit sandpaper using a sanding block when possible. Then I follow with 180 grit sandpaper and beyond the original 80 grit sanding of the paint to ready the area for primer. I then use an air compressor, an air hose, and a spray gun to prepare to prime the jambs. I mix the primer with the hardener in a mixing cup and pour it through a strainer into the paint gun and using a piece of cardboard to protect the areas I don’t want to prime. I then prime all the areas with a two-part urethane primer. Since it uses a hardener it was ready to sand in just a couple hours. I check the primer in a couple of hours and it feels dry so I sand the primer with 400 grit sandpaper and all good surrounding paint that I intend to taper into with paint using 1000 grit sandpaper which at that high of a grit it can be buffed back to a high shine or it could be used as sand scratches for painting over. I mask off the areas to be painted and used lacquer base color mixed with lacquer thinner and I spray it only on the areas that had been primed until they were completely covered and I could not see under the paint and then I add more thinner to the color to taper into existing color until it looks satisfactory. After that, I mix lacquer clear with thinner and spray only the area with the color and thin out the color until covered and then I spray clear just beyond the areas sprayed with color. After the clear dries I buff it with a compound by hand because lacquer is soft and buffs easily to a shine. After all was said and done the door jambs looked like they were original from the factory. I was very happy with the results and knew my brother would never doubt my abilities again.