Time for a Repaint

[Hank1979]

Acquired my 16 year old son a 1996 Tahoe through some horse trading. It had an engine knock, so being a self-employed mechanic, I snatched the engine out of it and tore the engine down. Sent what needed to go to the machine shop to them, (They are the same guys that I have build my 1969 Nova drag car engine), had them do their thing and once they were done, I rebuilt the engine. I will not get into details on that, since this is the exterior section of this board. But, this thing also needed to be stripped down and painted, as well as some body work.

There must have been a bump up to the rear bumper, because there were two dents. One on each far side where it dented the most rear part of the quarter panel right under the tail lights. The hood and front most part of the roof had paint missing as well as weird scratch like marks in it, so it need to be stripped all the way down to bare metal to repair all of that. It's been one busy week, but here's the pics of the process.

 

[Hank1979]

Moving along, we decided to remove the rubber molding, chrome rocker panels, chrome fender molding, the "Chevrolet Tahoe" and "LS" badges, and the part of the roof rack that bolted down to the roof for good. The bad thing was that the bolts were rusted and we had to cut some of the them off and grind down flush and use some bondo to smooth it all out. I did not remove the strips that run length wise, seemed more of a PITA than it was worth, being you never would really see it. Here is a group of pictures where I removed the bumpers, mirrors, grill, head lights, tail lights, the felt pieces that clip over the door and guard the rain from running into the hollow area of the inside of the door, and the black pieces of plastic that are above the tail lights and on each side of the rear glass area.

 

[adventurenali92]

Sweet ride for a 16 year old kid! He's a lucky guy! Good luck with the project! Love to see new paint! Keep postin!

 

[Hank1979]

Here it is in the body repair process as well as prepping it for paint. I believe there is a picture or two of some of the spots that had to go down to bare metal being primed also.

 

[Hank1979]

Here are some pictures of Paul, my paint and body guy, doing some taping up. In the last picture, I believe, you can see a different color of primer on the hood and a couple of spots on the roof. During priming, those spots bubbled up, we believe it was something that was in between the factory primer and the factory base coat, because when it pulled up, the primer underneath was an army green color. Not sure what the deal was, but Paul did some more sanding and feathered the edges up and applied a different type/brand of primer. It seemed to fix the problem.

 

[Hank1979]

So now we fast forward to today, I'm usually at Church on Sunday morning, but we were not able to get all of the taping done Friday evening, these trucks have a butt load of taping that has to be done if you do it correctly. So these pictures are off the base coat and clear coat being applied. Oh and for what it is worth, this truck is being painted in my mechanic shop, the same place that he painted my race car 3 years ago. It's impossible to get the place dust free, but we did the best we could with what we had to work with. Amazingly, it had a lot less trash in it than I expected.

 

[Hank1979]

And this picture is from later this evening after letting the clear coat "cure". Paul stopped back by the shop to remove some tape, enough that I could at least open the door and drive it out of the shop so I could do some work tomorrow. I'll post some more when he comes in and does some color sanding to really set the paint off.

I'm also going to post a picture of my race car, reason being so you can see the quality of work that he does, and doing it in a mechanic shop makes it that much more impressive to me. FWIW, I picked Honda Fit Vivid Blue Pearl for the Race Car, I just loved this color and had to have it on my Race Car when I seen it. You'll also notice the great Air Brush work on the fiberglass bumpers and grill, this was done by Randy Disher of Dish Did It.

 

[Fosscore]

Nova is sweet! Tahoe is going to look great.

 

[adventurenali92]

Nice! Lookin good man! Wish you were close to me! Id pay you to paint all my stuff I want done! Hahaha

 

[Hank1979]

Thanks for the kind words about the Nova. I've got the front end down a bit more since those last two pictures with some drop spindles. I had raced this car for 10 years or more with factory doors, factory windows, and heavier street fiberglass finders. When I redid the Nova, I pulled off 450 pounds, so the front end sat a bit higher, as you can imagine. I ended up dropping it down enough to have to trim the inside of the fender lips so the front tires would not hit when I turned.

 

[fiatdale]

Why not take the extra 30 minutes and detrim the handles? Makes for less tape lines and makes the paint more durable in the long run.

 

[Hank1979]

Cause removing the door handles are a PITA, IMHO. I have changed out the exterior door handles on customers Tahoes before, and they are tough to do. It was not a huge deal to tape out, so I let him do what he does.

 

[Hank1979]

These pictures are of the hood area after he sanded it down with 1000 Grit Sand Paper as well as buffing it with Rubbing Compound and Machine Polish. It's amazing how far we have come in less than 2 weeks while 80% of it being after hours. I am very happy with the final result after Color Sanding it. FWIW, you can actually see some of the air ducts, which are 15 feet above it, in the shine of the hood.

 

[Hank1979]

One last picture, this one is of Paul, my Paint and Body Guy, polishing the tailgate portion of the Tahoe. Hopefully my next group of pictures are of a 1996 Tahoe that is ready to be delivered to my 16 year old son. I race with a fella that installs windshields for a living, he is coming by Monday to install a new windshield in this Tahoe. It has some very large cracks in it. Hopefully, come Monday, I will post some pictures of a freshly painted 1996 Tahoe with a rebuilt engine in it. This has been one heck of a project, one that I will be happy that it will be done.

 

[Dwtmatt]

Awesome! It's nice to see something this body style in this good of shape.

 

[Hank1979]

Here are my last pictures of it pretty much done. We would like to have some duel exhaust ran on it exiting at an angle behind the rear tires and some 2007 to 2008 Tahoe wheels on it eventually as well. Going to have to build up the squirrel nest a bit before I can afford that though.

 

[GM iraqi]

What a great topic and a lucky son to have this beast to play with