White Cap

It started out simply enough, and then it snowballed.

It's been almost two years since Scruffy took a stick. Back when I made the post, I'd stated that there was no damage to the roof, but I was mistaken. It put a dent around two inches in the roof, which you can see in the first shot. I had a little time, I thought I'd get around to removing it.

A little liquid dent remover and a lot of sanding and primer and it's fairly well gone, and you almost can't see it without knowing where it was.

Since I was sanding on the roof, I continued sanding the un-ridged front portion, getting rid of most of the badly flaking clear coat. I got that area fairly well taken care of. More primer in the areas I'd sanded through to metal.

While I had my sander out, I did a bit of the sanding along the sides and within the area between the first couple of ridges, and did some hand sanding of the ridges.

I'd primered the front and either side, and it ended up looking pretty bad with the center area still raw and flaking, so I took some time and sanded that area, too, as well as the top portion of the rear hatch. I didn't really do a thorough job of sanding along the center ridges, so it's a bit rough along those areas, but if I was going to get any actual paint on it, I had to draw the line somewhere. As it was, I spent a lot longer than I'd planned on it. All I'd set out to do was to fill the dent!!!

Way back in the Tribute post, I'd made mention of 3-toning her, with white on the roof, black on the window over-trims and the metallic green on the lower body. I'd gone so far as to have picked up a half dozen cans of white enamel paint. I had no other plans for it, and decided if I don't like the look, I can always satin black over it. Not to mention, with a white top, it has better properties of heat rejection!!!

In most of the above pictures, you can see I've got the side window trim pulled off. In the top picture, you can see they also had pretty bad clear coat separation, too. Back to the Scruffy gets Stuck post, you can see the broken trim on the driver's side. I'd bought a replacement piece way back, just after that incident, but hadn't installed it yet, because it would have been the odd one out if I didn't go through and paint all four, which leads to another thing I'll get back to later on in this post...

Anyway, while I had those pieces removed to paint the roof, I of course painted them, too. Below that were several pieces of black plastic trim, which were all fairly weathered looking. Before I re-installed them, I took some rubbing compound to them and livened them up some. Took a before and after shot to show myself it actually did some good!!!

That one piece of window trim I'd broken back when I was painting the nose actually came out pretty good!!! I'd been planning on just getting a replacement from the junkyard, but this is good enough. Turned out the front driver's side window trim was from the 2nd generation, and in typical fashion, it has to be just a little changed... has to do with the tabs between the front and the back pieces. Ah well, it added a little more time in the re-assembly, but came out fine.

It has been a very wet beginning to the year. It's something of a challenge threading the needle and getting the paint on while it's dry out. It was drizzling when I was putting the trim back together, and of course I wanted to get some pictures right off!!! It's far from perfect, but from five feet away, it looks good enough, and way better than it did before!!! Then I get a picture with the side that's still metallic green, and I kind of think I'd like to go that route still!!!

As mentioned above, there was one other complication with the window trim. The style line continues onto the rear hatch sheetmetal, With everything the same shade, you don't even notice it, but multi toning it like this, it would look bad if I didn't continue it. This is how it came out. The passenger side is better, but still a little notchy. Fortunately, I have a guy who pinstripes to smooth it out!!!