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Mission creep:



Rusty's tires were all unable to hold air. That made loading and unloading the car a nightmare. And the car was unable to be moved from it's initial resting place. I need to be able to move the car so that I can pull the engine and trans before winter time.

What started as removing the wheels to have the old tires removed, morphed into "why not clean up the wheels while the tires are off?"



Then it was rust removal and paint prep



Primer, then sanding



Painted with Massey Ferguson Red. 8:2:1 was the ratio I started with. A painter friend of mine recommended doing more hardener for more gloss and a harder finish. That's what I did and it seemed to work well.



Wrapped with 235/75-15 Hankook Kinergy with thin white walls. They were about $90 on Amazon. I wasn't feeling straight black walls, and I certainly wasn't going to spend the money of wide whites. There were no used tires available that would fit, so new tires were what I had to do.



The tires on the Panama are 225/75-15 and they almost seem a little undersized to me. I wanted to try the 235's to see how they fit and looked. Now I have spare wheels and tires for both my car and my brother in law's '52. I'm cautiously optimistic that I can return Rusty to the road, though probably not with a full restoration.

-Kevin

Nice job, Kevin. Cleaning up the rims helps prevents flats from leaks. I have a new set of wheels from David Moe via Flackmaster being checked for cracks and “trueness”, sand blasted and powder coated this week. The holes in the rims had gotten too big for safety. Over 450,000 miles of pneumatic wrenches will do that. Hope they look as good as yours.

Finally getting around to replacing my front grille. What color are these fill plates supposed to be? Silver? Matte gray?

I’m not sure of the color but I think they are either gloss or semi-gloss. With flat paint, they would be difficult to keep clean.

Matte silver. In the world of trim paints I believe it is called Argent

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Thanks, I learned something new today. I ended up painting them a silver that is mostly matte...kind of a satin. Close enough I hope.



I also bought a set of front bumper fill plates a while back, because the Panama was missing them when I bought the car. The front end had been disassembled in the past for paint and for some reason they never went back on. The set I bought was rough. Had to do a lot grinding, hammer and dolly to straighten, then filler putty to get it mostly smooth.



Then painted with single stage paint that I had custom mixed to get close to what was sprayed on the body. It's the same stuff I used for my door jambs. Pretty close match next to the body.



Removed the old grille



Moved the parking light bezels to the replacement grille (they had less pitting on the Panama than the donor). I also had to source new mounting clips as it didn't have any. Also had to tap all the mounting holes in the donor grille because they were filled with junk from plating.



I am working on installing the new grille. The fit against the fenders isn't as good as the one that originally came on the car. But should be good enough I think. Still have a few bolts to get in there to hold everything in place.

Finished up the refresh on the front. I had to drill holes in the grille for the side wings... That was intimidating



Everything else went together with new hardware since much of it was missing. The new grille is much cleaner than my original. It was obviously in rough shape before it was chromed, as some of the edges are rough. The emblem doesn't fit as well, so they must have polished off a good amount of metal. But overall an improvement. The body color fill plates are nice. My bumper is disgusting and needs to be repaired and rechromed.

Test fitting 3 cars in the shop. We moved Rusty McRustface into the shop on the rolling wheel casters. The cheap HF ones are more difficult to use than I had hoped. I may pick up some of the nicer ones that jack up individually. I think the rolling wheels might be bigger.

I need to get working on Rusty's engine, which is stuck hard. Once I get it unstuck (if I can) then I'll remove it from the car and rebuild. Might try and do some floor replacement for practice.

But in all honesty, I'm mostly testing to see if I can fit a third car in here during winter.... Hopefully a '56 400. I need to convince my wife it is possible. And necessary. If there is space it should be filled by a Packard. So far she is not convinced.

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First part of the plan is working, better luck convincing the wife.

It looks to me like there’s room for a couple more!