Hues and Glosses

Now that I’ve really (and truly) decided on a color scheme for the LeMans, I need to find the paint to execute the plan.

For the exterior, I may have really lucked out in finding a great deal on the correct orange. My source for Kirker’s Wild Pomegranate paint, Bob at Discount Autobody Supply, just so happens to have a gallon of Carousel Red for fifty percent off. While they don’t ship gallons of paint, and his office is too far to drive to, he is going to be at Chryslers at Carlisle this weekend and that’s less than two hours from my home. The lovely Loriann has agreed to join me on my mission as long as I mix in some bike riding and a night at a nice hotel or B&B.

The interior is another story altogether. While the outside will be one-hundred percent gloss as most cars are from the factory, a correct interior is a mix of not only color (black and white), but also gloss. Paul Zazarine’s wonderful book “Pontiac GTO 1964-1972 Restoration Guide,” of which I own a copy, details all the different paint colors and glosses for the interior. His book says the upper instrument panel should be 0o gloss (flat) and the rest of the interior paint should be 60o gloss (semi-gloss). Black being black, finding it in flat and semi-gloss won’t be a problem. White, however, is not always white, and a search of the internet supported that. There is a multitude of whites available and a multitude of opinions as to which white is right. A number of restorers posted that Ford’s (gasp) Wimbledon White is a good match to the factory’s white. While I can find a spray can of that color, it’s for exterior touch-up and not semi-gloss.

So, when I visit the Discount Autobody Supply booth at Carlisle this weekend, I will try to get a pint of Wimbledon White, some flattener, and some instruction from Bob.

Orange You Glad You Went To Goodguy’s?

“Why did you pick that color?” the lovely Loriann asked me when I was showing her my paint plan for the LeMans. At the time, she was pointing to the swatch of Wild Pomegranate Red Metallic. That question has been haunting me ever since.

This past Friday I met my buddy Bill at the Goodguy’s car show in Columbus, OH. Early in the day I told him about all the sleep I’ve lost while trying to settle on a paint scheme for the LeMans. Being the wonderful friend he is, he spent the rest of the day pointing out different colors and schemes, each time telling me that that green or blue or whatever would be the best color for my convertible.

As we walked around the thousands of cars, it wasn’t the red cars that grabbed my attention - it was every orange car. I’ve always wanted an orange car, but I’d never been able to find the right shade for the LeMans, so I’d settled on red.

Saturday afternoon, we were wandering around a corner of the fairgrounds, when up cruised a ’64 F-85 hardtop heading towards a parking spot. The ’64 Oldsmobile has a body much like my LeMans; the car was painted orange; and I was smitten. I accosted the driver as he exited the vehicle and asked him what color his beautiful car was painted. He replied with two words, “Hugger Orange.”


As I excitedly snapped photos of the car, I noticed the interior was black, and immediately I began to wonder how the orange would look with the white interior I had planned for the LeMans. Since Hugger Orange is a popular Chevy for the late sixties, it wasn’t long before we came up on a ’67 Camaro with exactly the scheme I’d now envisioned for my car: Hugger Orange body, white vinyl top and interior upholstery, and a black dash and carpet. It looked perfect to me, so that’s the scheme I’m going to replicate for the LeMans.


Hugger Orange also has a connection to Pontiac. Carousel Red uses the exact same code and was offered on ’69 and ’70 GTOs as well as ’69, ’70, and ’76 Firebirds. According to the internet, the same color was also known as Medium Orange, Firecracker Orange, Ontario Orange, Monaco Orange, and Red Orange and offered on other GM products throughout the seventies.

So, for the time being (and I hope permanently), the paint scheme of orange, white, and black are set.

A Slippery Slope

As regular readers of my blog know, my plan for the roadification of the LeMans has been quite fluid. I had thought, many months ago, that having the car back on the road by the beginning of summer was a possibility, but that’s not happening. Then I had thought that I could just whip out the bodywork on a couple of doors abnd shoot them in paint by early spring, but, thanks to constant rain, that’s not happening either. Now, I’ve decided that the interior is going to change color, so that should be dealt with before the exterior. So, where does my current plan stand? Here’s a clue - I just received a new water pump and heater core.

How does “slippery slope” fit into this? Well, for me, it goes like this: Remove the doors, so I should also paint the inside of them. Remove the fenders which required removing the fenderwells, so I should also paint them. The fenderwells look so nice, I should also paint the radiator support. With the radiator support out and the fenderwells off, I should also paint the engine. Before painting the engine, I should replace the leaking water pump.

So, there you go. From a simple shooting of exterior paint to the exterior, interior, and engine bay all re-done. That is the slippery slope.

As of today I’ve got the wheelwells primed and painted - each underside with satin black and each topside (facing the engine bay) with semi-gloss. The radiator support is also primed and painted with semi-gloss. The radiator has been drained and removed. The water pump, alternator, and power steering pump are all off the engine.



Now I need to determine what parts of the engine get Pontiac blue paint applied to them. From photos on the web, I see that the block, harmonic balancer, heads, intake manifold, oil pan, timing cover, water pump, and valley pan are all painted Pontiac blue. The water pump’s pulley wheel, the two alternator top brackets (bent sheetmetal), air cleaner, and the power steering pump are semi-gloss black (60% gloss officially). Finally the two large, cast brackets (A/C compressor and alternator/power steering) are left natural. Now on to the cleaning.

It’s a Process

As I announced in my 3-3-18 post, I’ve decided to bump up the priority of Mikhaila’s Corvair (named Scarlett) so that she can have it to drive sooner (within a few months) rather than later (within a few years). I should state here that, for the first time, one of my children has more cars than I do. In addition to the aforementioned Corvair convertible, Mikhaila also has her daily-driver MX-3 and the Golf GTI we’re working to put on the road. Speaking of the latter, this past weekend she and I got the new clutch installed, the transmission put back into place, and everything reinstalled and hooked back up. Yay team. We did all this in very close confines (see above layout). Once I confirm the clutch take-up is where it should be, I’ll drop it off the jackstands and drive it out of the garage. That’ll allow us to move to the next task, replacing the heater core. For that, though, I’ll drive the LeMans out of the garage and put the GTI in its place. There’s no way I can strip out the interior and dash in its current confines – it’ll take the entire garage.



During the, hopefully, short time the LeMans is outside, it’ll be under a tarp with most of the loose parts pieces piled in a corner of the garage.

Once the GTI has its heat restored, it’ll leave the garage and Scarlett will take its place. When Mikhaila’s not available, I’ll be working on finishing LeMans’ body and interior parts. Could be a busy Spring – I sure hope so.

Interior Color Scheme

To while away the hours until the GTI clutch job is done and I can get back to work on the LeMans (and write some blogs and post some videos), I’m trying to come up with things to write about.

To preface this post, I'll state that the body paint color current leading the race is Wild Pomegranate Metallic. Now on to the post.

Serendipitously, while on YouTube this morning, one of the recommended videos was of a beautiful ’65 LeMans convertible – red with a black top and white interior (is that black over red over white?). As I watched the show, I was struck by how nice the interior looked with the red body paint extended into the interior onto the doors and the bottom half of the dash. As I reminder, here’s what the factory intended for a white interior like mine has (photo taken off the web - not mine). Comparing this to the interior of the YouTube car, I like the bling.

versus

Some Here’s some more '65 interiors to feast your eyes upon. Nice stuff, eh?



Something else else that popped up on YouTube was a set of short videos of a low-mileage (68,000) '65 4-door with the original cloth interior. One thing I'd never noticed before was the Grand Prix style concave rear window that came on the 4-doors. So much of this car is so very cool.

Here's the link to the tour of the car's exterior.

Here's the link to the tour of the car's interior.

Here's the link to more of the car's interior, as well as driving.

Metal and Weather Get In The Way of Painting Progress

For a while now I’ve been talking about my struggles with paint color and how I believed that shooting a door or other body panel in each of the top candidates would make it apparent which color I should go with. I wanted to have done it sooner rather than, what it’s turning into, later. What’s been hampering my progress? Well, it IS winter and I don’t have a heated paint booth. Even if I did, though, I’m still struggling to carve out enough time to properly prep both doors for primer. I’m also working on the front fenders hammering out dings and patching a rusty area. All these efforts are documented in my YouTube videos which now number 21 episodes. The latest ones are: 19-Sanding Bondo, 20-Fenders, Doors, and Gauges, and 21-More Sanding Plus Making a Patch.

With my progress drawn out, I’ve had the opportunity to fall in love with another color. Recently, I read a Facebook post from Rusted Iron Customs showing their beautiful 1963 Tempest convertible. The paint job was flat black over House of Kolor’s Tangerine Kandy. I asked their painter, Matt, what color primer this was shot over and he replied PPG K36 (gray). I’ve done some more research on the paint, and it’s recommended that the transparent paint be shot over a silver or gold basecoat. From the photos, though, it sure looks gorgeous over the gray. I’m toying with the idea of getting a pint of the paint off eBay for $30. I’d also need a can of reducer ($25) and one of catalyst ($50). That’s $105 I could easily spend elsewhere, so this color may be off the table just due to the cost of painting a sample panel.

I’ll be getting some time in the garage tomorrow evening, so I plan on finishing the patch job on passenger fender by cutting out the bad metal to match the patch I’ve made, welding it into place, and grinding back the weld flush. The five day forecast has daytime temps in the high-forties and low-fifties this weekend, so I might strip the outside surfaces of the fenders, finish sanding the doors, and shoot all four pieces with epoxy primer. When motivated, I can work in an un-heated, well-ventilated garage in that kind of weather.

A Tempest on the Track (Part 4)

To preface my last post in the series, this is not a current build. It is only a dream. No Tempests were harmed in the making of this series.



When I ended yesterday’s post, I promised my next missive would cover mods I would make to the body. Let’s get going with the interior since it’s easy – everything must come out. Okay, not everything – I’d keep the headliner, any good interior vinyl panels, and the dash. Factory carpet with its layer of sound deadening is dead weight, so it’s out to be replaced by clean, painted metal surfaces. Stock seats weigh a ton and are completely incapable of keeping you firmly behind the wheel when pulling a 1G turn so they’re out to be replaced by a couple of lightweight racing buckets. Two instead of one because I’m smart enough to know riding along with a good driver at the helm is great way to improve one’s driving abilities. No back seat since I don’t want any backseat drivers along for the ride, and the racing seats and rollcage I’d install will make getting into the rear nearly impossible. The aforementioned rollcage would have a horizontal bar behind the seats to mount the shoulder belts of two five-point harnesses (driver and passenger).

Finally, I’d want to do something with the exterior. The car must be orange…., or red……, or beige with an orange stripe or two. If you’ve read any of my blog posts right before this series, you’d know I’m struggling with what color to paint my ‘65 LeMans. Picking a color for this car would be just as difficult for me. Maybe I’d just ask the lovely Loriann (my wonderful wife and talented artist) to make the choice for me.

Yesterday I posted a photo-shopped image of Keith Collier’s very nice ’61. I showed it lowered with bigger rims and low-profile tires. Today, I added a front splitter and racing seats to the photo, which I’d also do to the real thing. I’m on the fence regarding a rear spoiler since part of my attraction to the ’61 is the down-sloping rear end. The ’62 with its fins and the ’63 with its more square-ish rear end might get a spoiler though.

So that’s it. A Pontiac that could take on the twisties with plenty of aplomb. Will I ever build it? My previous daily-drivers were Corvairs modified for time trials. I loved them and I miss them, so chances are very good I’ll have a vintage track car again, and it may as well be from the Wide-Track brand.

More Room

I thought that getting the LeMans running would solve my workspace issue. I would just start up the car, drive it out into the driveway, throw a tarp over it, and have the entire space (minus all the garage stuff - workbenches, tool chest, spare engine, etc.) to strip paint, hammer dents, prime panels, and work on one of the family's daily-drivers when required. I've changed my mind. I don't want the LeMans outside, and I think I can make it work.

Through the magic of AutoCAD, I can show the current floorplan versus the proposed one.



The LeMans will be on wheel dollies, so when I need the welder, I can move the car around and get to it. But since the car is so rust-free, the only welder usage I think I have ahead of me is pulling out a few dents. My hope is to implement this rearrangement Friday evening.

Speaking of bodywork, it's looks like this coming Saturday will be warm enough for me to open up the doors and get out the paint stripper. Sunday will be cold again, but I'm hoping that the heaters will get the garage up to temp so I can lay down some epoxy primer over the bare metal (after extinguishing the kerosene flames first).

Last weekend I went hunting for LeMans documentation I knew I had from back in the day. My hunt was successful, so part of episode 16 of my YouTube video series includes sharing the stuff I got from Pontiac Historic Services. Links to PDF files of the different literature follow:

• PHS Cover Letter 
• Build Card and Decoding 
• AMA Tempest Specs 
• The Tempest Line Story 
• The Tempest Engineering Story 
• Storage Suggestions

By the way, the arrow is currently pointing at Atomic Orange Candy for the LeMans exterior.

I Hate Making Decisions

It seems like every video I've recently posted on YouTube contains some mention of my struggles to settle on the right paint scheme for the LeMans. It's been a monthly, if not more frequent, activity scanning the web for different colors. Currently, at the top of my list is Sunfire Red, offered by GM in 1964 on Pontiacs.



It was code WA3240, which also appeared on Buicks as Coral Mist.

Last spring I went to the Charlotte Autofair with my buddy, Bill. My shopping list included paint, so, with the above two images residing on my phone, I wandered the rows of vendors at looking for an affordable source for this color auto paint. Early in the afternoon I came upon a table stacked high with mixed cans of auto paint. Each can had a color name, but nothing else to indicate what shade lay within. The booth's salesman wandered over, and I showed him the GTO photo on my phone and asked if he knew if there was a match on his table. After a bit of searching, he unburied a quart can of Wild Pomegranate Red Metallic. He then produced a paint chart that convinced me to spend the $35 for the paint plus catalyst. Discount Autobody Supply carries Kirker paints, as does a number of other online sources.

The more I stare at it, the more I like it better than Sunfire Red. It's got some orange and gold to it.



These are the other colors under consideration.

Iris Mist

Go-Mango

Spicy Orange


Next I need to lay out the interior decisions that have to be made. Arghh!