Friday, August 29, 2014

1967 - 1969 Camaro Parts - Third time’s the charm: How many repaints does a 1967 Camaro SS need? - Steve's Camaro Parts - 650-873-1890


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Finished photos by Matthew Litwin. Restoration photos provided by Christopher Tucker.

It takes a lot of drive and determination to see a collector car restoration project through from start to finish. Aside from the obvious obstacles, i.e., money and time, there’s the frustration of having to repeat a task over and over until it’s exactly right, or having to spend days repairing, rebuilding or refinishing something that should by all accounts only take a few hours.

Sometimes life just gets in the way, too.

The August issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines features a Restoration Profile about Christopher Tucker’s Mountain Green 1967 Camaro SS 396 four-speed convertible. It’s a story that illustrates just how elusive the ultimate restoration can sometimes be.

Tucker, a Tonawanda, New York-based homebuilder, did a lot of the final finish work on the car, but it was his friend Rick Kramer who handled the metal work, body work and paint. It was Kramer, too, who first discovered the Camaro for sale in the pages of Hemmings Motor News back in the 1990s, but when Kramer called about the car, it had already been sold.

A few years later, the very same car appeared in HMN for sale again. When Kramer called, this seller, too, told him the car had already been sold. Kramer decided to get pushy and offered to pay more than the other guy for the Camaro. The seller told him he’d already taken a $1,000 deposit and couldn’t back out of the deal. After a week, Kramer called again. The seller said he hadn’t heard from the buyer but he wanted to wait another week. So Kramer waited and when the week was up, he was the Camaro’s new owner.

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Kramer spent the next few years gathering parts, like an NOS SS hood and a pair of NOS front fenders to replace the originals, which had been damaged in an accident. But before Kramer could begin work on the car, he and his wife split up. As part of the divorce, the Camaro had to be sold, and Tucker, the car’s current owner, offered to buy it. When Tucker decided it was time to restore the Camaro, he tapped Kramer – a machinist by trade who moonlights as a restorer – for the job. The build was fairly straightforward until it came time to paint the car.

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Matching older colors up in new basecoat/clearcoat urethane paints can be difficult, because the paint manufacturers simply don’t have many of the older formulas in their catalogs. If you have a perfect section of old paint to use as a reference, many shops can scan it and come up with a match. But if you don’t, you have to experiment.

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The first time Kramer painted the Camaro (basecoat and clearcoat), the color wasn’t right. No good. So he scuffed the paint off and shot it again, altering the paint color slightly. This time, it looked great inside, but when they rolled it out into the sun, it looked altogether different.

“Inside the shop, the car looked on the money, but when we pushed the car outside, the color was off,” Kramer said. “Too much gold, then too much silver… each time I swore I had it, but we were getting a slightly different appearance.”

Kramer sanded the car down again with 800-grade paper, tweaked the paint formula and sprayed the car a third time. Luckily, that proved to be the charm.
The entire restoration took about two years, and the car was finished in 2005. It has since won awards from the American Camaro Club as well as AACA Junior, Senior and Grand National honors.

source: http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2013/07/02/third-times-the-charm-how-many-repaints-does-a-1967-camaro-ss-need/
by Mike McNessor



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