65 GTO

[Thumpin455]

Not THE man, but a man with LOTS of time on his hands. Im just like everyone else, the only difference is I am not afraid to try something.

So today I got more filler and did some more sanding/filling/sanding and sneezing gray boogers. Also took it off the jackstands so I could reach the roof easier and so I can use the jackstands under the 70 when I swap engines. The body lines are starting to come out and I filled some of the smaller dents. Tomorrow some high build will go on once I get the filler smooth, it has some low spots causing trouble.

[milner351]

I will always love aluminum slots! Amazing the transformation this car has gone through, great work man - perserverance should be your middle name.

[Thumpin455]

Perseverance? Nah... Nuts, Crazy, Bored, or perhaps Mentally Challenged for working on rusted cars. The funny thing is now after I am this far into this one, two 65s with much less rust have surfaced for the same money and one of them runs! I could have a fleet of them....

[SuperBuickGuy]

don't forget, awesome.... you do a good work

[langleylad]

Keep the old ones alive and out of the bone yard , my motto is don't be afraid to fail ! . Great work .

[Thumpin455]

Thanks again guys.. Its passable, not going to be a show car by any stretch, but I am being more anal about this one since its for someone else. The flat body panels will show any ripple, high or low spot very easy so it has to be flat and smooth. I wouldnt say awesome, the pics make it look better than it is. Though making the metal look good and doing it right comes from the motivation that I will be posting pics of it everywhere online. I dont want it to look like the kid making videos of his camaro with booger welds and scary workmanship..

I have a fondness for aluminum slots too. I want to get a new set for this car, or some Rally I steel wheels in 15x8. I have four sets of slots, but none the 15" wheels match, and all of them are oxidized. The 14" wheels wont clear the disc brakes, thats why they arent on the car right now and it has those space savers. I have a set of Centerline Champ 500s, but they are so 80s...

[Scott Liggett]

Wow. It's amazing what one can get done when you live in the middle of nowhere with no girlfriend or TV. lol.

[Thumpin455]

Yeah made the girlfriend into a wife, but I do the cooking (cuz I am good at it), and she takes care of the dogs when she isnt doing something with the fire department.

I still watch things, but its on the computer. Mostly it is science programs. The last few days I have been watching Neil Degrasse Tyson lectures on the universe. Astrophysics is very interesting to me, even though I cant do the math it requires. So I guess its all a learning thing, learning to fix cars, and learning about everything around us too..

[Scott Liggett]

It's amazing how much more interested I've been in learning things long after I got out of school.

I hope the wife is working with the fire department and not the cause they keep coming over. Maybe it's a good thing you do the cooking.

[DanStokes]

I'm down with Neil DeGrasse Tyson too. I've also been following the Morgan Freeman show "Thru the Wormhole". Makes you shake yer head and wonder where you left your brains. Topics like "Is time real or something we made up to make the world simpler?" At first you think you know the answer but as the show goes on you're not so sure. Mr. Freeman is just the presenter (although I think he's PLENTY smart) but the experts they interview make me realize that I can't even understand the questions never mind the answers.

But I'll bet neither of those guys could take a rust bucket old Pontiac and turn it into a real, viable car with many miles left in it. So we have our genius, too.

Dan

[langleylad]

I've told my two boys that your never too old to learn and if you learn something new every day you've been blessed . I've never had any lessons on paint and body or been shown how . I bought a mig , hammer & dolly set , etc.... and jumped in with both feet . I've read a few books and have watched the pros on tv and the net and am very pleased with how the S10 turned and have had lots of compliments . You've just got to try .

[Thumpin455]

I am always learning something new, have a wide range of topics I read up on. So far I havent found anything I dont understand or follow. I thought of the time thing a few years back, to me its a construct made by us to make sense of things. We have a day night cycle and seasons that let us know time is passing, so we made up a way to tell how many seasons it has been that allows us to predict sunrise, sunset, tides, and other things.

One of my favorites is math. We have a number system based on fives and tens, ten doubles. Well that is probably due to having ten fingers and toes. What if we had three fingers on each hand, or six fingers on each hand and ten was 12? The math we have now wouldnt make any sense to us. Prime numbers would all be different. Binary would be the same since its 1 or 0, but the rest would be different. My high school algebra teacher didnt grasp that concept very well. Thinking that an intelligent alien life form would have the same number system is being a little arrogant and human centric.

Did some more filler work, got it pretty smooth, filled in a few low spots, then shot some high build on it before calling it quits for the night. This stuff really lets me see all the problem areas, the gray kinda lets them blend in.m A bit of blocking, more smoothing, and fill the lows, then a coat of gray high build with a black guide coat. The front fenders need a bit of work, then they can go back on to get blocked with the doors. The hood hinges showed up today, so that means I can bolt it on and get the fenders right. With luck I could have it painted in a week or so!

[tardis454]

After reading this, the ghost of John Delorean is smiling.

[SuperBuickGuy]

I struggled with math until (in my college statistics class of all places) the professor said something that brought it all together for me... he said "math is just a foreign language that is used to describe something." the trick, in my case, is getting the math professor to say "we're describing the path of a baseball being throw" or "we're describing the path of a planet with x working on it (or lots of x's)"
after that, it really did become pretty simple (and no, I don't memorize the rules; I simply remember where the rule is stored).... then I went and became a lawyer perfect, no?

[langleylad]

aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh , I'm confused . Thanks alot guys ! .