5875 Front end - Before & After

[DMCNY]

I've finally finished cleaning up the front end of 5875 to a more presentable condition. It's not perfect or Concours condition, but was in need of some serious attention.

It has taken over a month of working on it just about every night after work and days off. Just about all front end parts were removed, cleaned, sandblasted or scrubbed, repainted, or re-plated and reassembled.

Also replaced some hardware with stainless, angle drive, lower speedo cable, torn rack and tie-rod boots, steering column bushing and did a 4-Wheel alignment.

Here are some before and after pics.

Thanks for looking.

(The Before)

http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5898&d=1318217291
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5897&d=1318217268
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5922&d=1318218560
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5927&d=1318218666
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5917&d=1318218452
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5925&d=1318218619
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5856&d=1318215689
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5857&d=1318215689
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5865&d=1318215689
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5863&d=1318215689







(After)

http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6392&d=1319856842
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6821&d=1321224478
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6829&d=1321224699
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6822&d=1321224510
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6819&d=1321224421
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6456&d=1320118049
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6831&d=1321224744
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6824&d=1321224565
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6820&d=1321224454
http://dmctalk.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6827&d=1321224652

[Chris Burns]

:thumbup2:

Great job!

[protodelorean]

Nice job! They are SO nice to work on when they're clean like that.

[Morpheus]

Looks great!

[Loach43]

Many hours well spent. Looks fantastic!

[Mark D]

Looks great! I'm in the middle of doing the same type of restoration, and this is some excellent motivation for me to keep pressing forward.

[Jonathan]

Looks very nice Andy, great job. Out of curiosity, were you considering installing the front end recall kit reinforcement plates?

[jackb]

Scrolling through the before pics, I thought to myself, well, it's not that bad, I;ve certainly seen worse. Then I got the the first after picture, and my eyes got wide and I said out loud "Holy Shit". Amazing.

[DMCNY]

Thanks for all the great comments everyone!



Looks very nice Andy, great job. Out of curiosity, were you considering installing the front end recall kit reinforcement plates?

Jonathan, I had considered it. I researched the kit as best I could to find out why it was nessesary and exactly what it does. According to the recall, it was based on sway-bar end nuts coming off and ball joint nuts coming off and possibly causing damage.

Here is more description on the recall.

http://www.automotix.net/autorepair/recalls/23609-recall/

My car is a Oct '81 build. This puts it in or around the time of the recall being reported. 5875 already had the sway-bar end lock nuts installed (double-nutted with original) and upper and lower ball joint castle nuts with cotter pins installed. If this was something that was done by the factory or done by a selling dealer I could not tell, but was done.

Looking at the side brackets for the recall kit, you can see that it simply has 3 holes for the bracket to mount. 2 are used with the exsisting sway-bar bushing clamps and 1 on the side of the frame used with the exsisting radiator support bracket. IMO this does nothing to strengthen anything and only merly acts as an additional spacer. I could not justify buying the kit.

I looked the frame over with a fine toothed comb and could not find any areas of cracking or stress points. I also figured the car has made it fine like this for 30 years without a problem so I didn't see the need. Plus the car is mostly just a weekend warrior for me anyway. :)

This in no way implies to others that they shouldn't purchace the recall kit or if anyone already has one on thier car that I think they wasted thier time, it's just my opinion. I'm no engineer.

There are more detailed pictures with descriptions of before and after pics in my albums, too for anyone interested.

Thanks again!

[john 05141]

:jawdrop:

Wow!!
Very nice, I must say. You did an excellent Job.

John

[DeLorean]

Looks nice, personally, I'd still get those recall plate brackets in there.

[dvonk]

amazing work, looks great! :aniclap:

[DMCNY]

Thank you for the kind words guys. :)

[SIMid]

Wow! Fantastic effort! You must be wrapped!!

[sdg3205]

What did you use to restore the color of the frame?

[DMCNY]

What did you use to restore the color of the frame?


For the flatter, larger areas I used my Dewalt buffer w/ 3M Ultrafine machine polish and a foam pad @ 1500 RPM.

For the tighter, hard to get to areas and nooks and crannies I used Turtle wax polishing compound by hand.

I then hand waxed everything w/ Turtle wax Extreme cleaner wax.

[Mark D]

Did you touch up any areas with POR 15 and then paint over the top? If so what color/brand paint did you use?

[DMCNY]

Did you touch up any areas with POR 15 and then paint over the top? If so what color/brand paint did you use?

I did have to do some touch-up mostly on the lower cross member plate. Where the smaller 5 bolts go through to hold the fuel tank belly pan. I ground down the surface rust that was there to bare metal and treated it with aerosol Duplicolor rust converter.

I feathered out the epoxy in the areas that I ground down.

It took some testing to come out with a good color match. The closest aerosol color I could find was Krylon smoke gray, but it is a tad on the dark side if used straight.

What I did was used a light gray primer close to the color of the frame (Brite touch gray primer). Cover the repair area good with the primer and then you have to dust it off into the area around your repair to blend it. Then use a very light mist coat of the Krylon smoke gray over the top of the primmer. You want to see a bit of the light color from the primmer peeking through the mist coat of the smoke gray. This takes a bit of practice, but turns out to a nice match. Dust off the edges of your repairs with the smoke gray, too just like you did with the primmer.

I then sprayed Duplicolor clearcoat over the entire crossmember plate. Machine polished the whole thing to take away any clearcoat overspary on the edges.

[pezzonovante88]

Great job! How long did it take you?

[SIMid]

Great job! How long did it take you?

As for the first post.


It has taken over a month of working on it just about every night after work and days off. Just about all front end parts were removed, cleaned, sandblasted or scrubbed, repainted, or re-plated and reassembled.

[SProfita]

Looks perfect! Well done!

[jmast]

I would eat off that...