Welcome back to another installment of PARacingOnline.com's Project Street Stock. As you know, it has been several weeks since we last worked on the car. Most of the delay was caused by the Christmas season and the many family activities that come along with it. The last time we worked on the car we spent only a couple of hours and were able to remove the existing front brakes, inspect them, clean them up, and reinstall them looking brand new. We also did an inspection of the various other front suspension parts and found that with the exception of the upper ball joints, everything seems to be in good working order. Now that the holidays are over and the 2010 racing season is creeping up on us, it's time to get back to work.

The plan this week was to clean all of the dirt and surface rust off of the chassis and get it painted using paint supplied by Auto Paints Unlimited in Connellsville, PA. Normally, we would just roll the chassis outside and spray it, however, it is winter time here in South Western Pennsylvania and we recently got over 2 foot of snow. So with rolling it outside out of the question, and getting it to a paint booth a hassle, we decided that we would just use brushes and rollers to get it painted. I let Tim Etling at Auto Paints Unlimited know our plan ahead of time and he mixed the paint specifically for applying it this way.

Since the car was already on the lift, we decided to start on the bottom side. Motordrome Speedway Super Compact driver Mike George joined us and we began scraping the frame and bottom side of the floor pan. Although it looked pretty rough, there was no rot, just a bit of lose paint and surface rust. After a few minutes of scraping and sanding, we were satisfied that there were no large flakes of paint and that the rust had been knocked off, so we began painting. The first thing we did was mix the paint and hardener. Per Tim's instructions, we did this with a 3-to-1 mixture of the paint and hardener. On top of paint, I stopped at "a local retail establishment" and bought some foam paint brushes and foam rollers. After about 3 minutes of painting with the foam brushes, they became limp and started to tear. It was widely speculated throughout the team that this was caused by the fact that some poor kid in a Chinese sweat shop was having a bad day when he made them. As seems to be the trend with these projects, we had to move to Plan B. In this case it meant hunting down a real paint brush. Fortunately, we were able to acquire one and move on. At one point someone also tried using a brush that was used in the parts cleaner, but as it turns out, the chemicals from the parts cleaner do not mix well with the paint and it goes on like crap. After about an hour of ducking under the car and trying to avoid the paint that was dripping off the chassis, we decided that we should have sprayed it. The paint covered very well, however the fact that there are a lot of little areas that were difficult to get into. We decided that rather than cover the entire underside of the car, we would concentrate on those areas that would be visible and then find a way to get it sprayed. After getting to all of the areas we felt needed paint under the car, we decided to wrap it up for the day.

The following day I was joined in the garage by my son Garry Junior and project team member Jeff Padgelek. With the bottom side of the chassis cleaned up and painted, we needed to get the top side cleaned up so that once we find somewhere to spray it, we can get that done. While Jeff and I stood around shooting the breeze, we handed little Garry a wire brush and let him have at it. As with most kids, the proverbial warning not to touch the sharp ends of the wire brush were immediately met with him doing just that. As I mentioned in previous articles, this chassis had been sitting outside for quite some time and had a lot of surface rust and was filled with leaves and dirt. We spent some time cleaning out the driver area and after hitting good with a Shop-Vac, it was already looking better. When we got the chassis, the only body part left on the car was the roof, and it was in pretty bad shape so Jeff and I decided to remove it. Fortunately it was just kind of hanging there so a few quick tugs and it was off. Once we removed it, we sanded the cage a bit more and made sure it was cleaned up. Now that the chassis is cleaned up and the bottom side is painted, we'll need to get some more paint and find somewhere to spray the top half. Once we're done painting, the chassis should look pretty close to new and we can start concentrating on the rest of the build.

In other news relating to this project, we have decided to record some of this project on video and hopefully put it on the site for your entertainment. Keep checking back as we're still learning how to edit so the video will not be released with the article. Additionally, we are always looking for the various parts and supplies required to make this project a success, if you're interested in contributing, please contact gankrom@paracingonline.com. And finally, we would like to thank Tim Etling at Auto Paints Unlimited in Connellsville, PA for supplying the paint. Auto Paints Unlimited is a distributor of Sherwin Williams Automotive Paint and is located at 612 Snyder Street in Connellsville, PA and can be reached at (724)626-3600.

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