The Convoy

Day 2: We left out of Deming, New Mexico around 7:00 with the temperature being “really damn cold”. Shortly thereafter, we stopped at an awesome little restaurant in Lordsburg, New Mexico, Kranberry’s, for some much needed breakfast. Thanks to my buddy Mac Bernd for the recommendation.

Breakfast at Kranberry's

I drank alot of this:

My Friend

Despite my best intentions, the burning orb in the sky beat me to the left coast. We were a close second.

Winner of the "Great Race to the Pacific"...again.

Day three brings us to our show prep. We unloaded the Stang at Ron Mangus’ shop in Rialto, California and began final preparations for the show. Day 4 will bring more fine-tuning and then on Wednesday we get in and begin set up of the three cars and our PAINTHOUSE  booth. This stuff is alot of work!

Show prep at Ron Mangus' shop...

Until next time…

Randy

842 miles later, we made it to Deming, NM. Noel Irvin, the owner of the ’67 GTO, towing Night Mare, his wife Dana’s ’65 fastback Mustang; Richard Weiss pulling his wife Penny’s ’55 Thunderbird and myself pulling Noel’s ’67 GTO.

We are headed West to the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, CA. This will be the first time PAINTHOUSE will have brought 3 cars at once to this show. Getting them ready has been a monumental task, one that I never could have pulled of without the help of our crew at PAINTHOUSE: Bruce, Tim, Mike, Steve and Craig. Oh yeah, let’s not forget the one that keeps this ship afloat and sailing in the correct direction, my beautiful wife Jennifer.

I think we quite possibly created a need for this proposed US-Canada oil pipeline as we have bought, and burned, ALOT of diesel!

So far no incidences, just lots of junk food, coffee and sunshine. Thank God for Sirius XM radio.

Day two coming up. Until next time…

Randy

First off, Happy New Year! Better late than never! We’ve just finished up in Shreveport at their 2012 World of Wheels Autorama. We brought along an old friend and a new one: Blue Belle (Penny Weiss’ 1955 Thunderbird) and Blew Bayou (Noel Irvin’s 1967 GTO). Both of them were extremely successful and really well received by the show goers. I never get tired of watching people enjoy what my crew and myself are blessed to be able to create.

I’ll be brief, mainly because its late here and the drive home starts very early tomorrow (actually today at this point). Noel and his GTO won Best in Class, Outstanding Interior, Outstanding Engine and the Outstanding Custom of the Show. Not too shabby for a rookie. I especially like the Engine award because we beat out a lot of very expensive, ‘blinged’ out engines with our subtle paint and minor chrome details. We don’t get that award often, so when we do, its really appreciated.

The Outstanding Custom Engine, Shreveport 2012

Blue Belle won Best in Class and People’s Choice. Out of all the awards we are honored to receive, I think People’s Choice is my favorite. For whatever reason, not many shows offer it. I am always humbled by the fact that we build vehicles that people would actually want for themselves. To me, People’s Choice means if they could take one car home, it would be ours. That is nothing but cool to me. A big high-five to my guys (Bruce, Mike, Tim, Steve, Craig and Ramon) and what they do to make us look good. I COULD NOT do it without you.

So, that’s all for now. We are off to Pomona and the Grand National Roadster Show next Saturday. We love this show and it has done us well throughout the years we’ve been going. I hope we don’t disappoint with our projects this year. It will also be the debut show of Night Mare, formerly called Stampede,  Dana Irvin’s ’65 Mustang that we are finalizing this coming week. So, we will have three projects going out this year, the most we’ve ever taken at one time. All we need now is CB radios and our convoy can roll.

Until next time,

Randy

Best of Show third consecutive year: Blue Belle

Amid vintage brick streets and in between intense, but welcomed, thunderstorms, Penny Weiss and her ’55 Thunderbird, Blue Belle, have won the Best of Show award at this year’s Cowtown Cruisin’ for Cure car show in Ft. Worth, Texas this weekend. More importantly, the show proceeds benefit research of and screening for prostate cancer, the second most deadly disease for men.

Along with the honor of Best in Show came a check for $500.00, which was quickly donated back to the show to be given to the cancer research foundation. They can do much more good with the funds than we can.

The interesting back story to this is the fact that PAINTHOUSE has now brought home the Best of Show honor for three years running. $umday, the ’62 Vette of Jennifer and Steve Keffeler won the silver cup in 2009 and Candy Apply Blonde, the ’57 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible of Jeff and Ann Smith were the top dog last year. Winning 3 years in a row is incredibly humbling considering the level of cars that come to this great little 5 hour show in downtown Fort Worth.

We will most certainly be back next year in a quest to bring home a fourth Best of Show. More importantly, we will be back to enjoy the vintage downtown Ft. Worth atmosphere, the fantastic array of automobilia, the friends we’ve made and certainly to help raise money to further the research, and hopeful cure, of prostate cancer. Whether we win or not, this is a fantastic way to spend a Saturday in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Until next time,

Randy

PAINTHOUSE's first custom painted casket, thanks to Darren Wenzel of Gasoline Art.

Darren Wenzel's custom pinstriping on top of the casket.

It’s been awhile. I’m back! No excuses, we’ll just act like we’re long lost friends and it seems like we talked yesterday. Things have been busy (and HOT) around PAINTHOUSE. I will attempt to bring it all into perspective over the next few days. Did I mention it has been hot?

Pictured is the casket we were commissioned to paint for a local Jewish funeral home. They gave us free rain, so, with our newfound ‘carte blanche’, we called in our trusty Australian transplant from Virginia who now resides in Austin, Darren Wenzel of Gasoline Art. He created what you see above. I think additional words are not necessary.

By the way, I’ve heard through the Interweb that there are people around the country experiencing a strange phenomenon called Rain(?). I am not quite sure what that is, but, based on viewing the videos of it, I think Houston could use some of that. Any ideas of how we can import some to our area? Just a reminder, its still hot.

Until next time (presuming we don’t spontaneously combust from the heat),

Randy

Blue Belle's cup runneth over...

We took two rookies, and one veteran to this year’s Classy Chassis Concours D’Elegance show and what a show it was. This show is full of the best cars to be found from around the country. There were cars here that I have never seen before and probably never will see again. It is such an honor to be invited to show off our projects amid these pieces of rolling art. Duesenbergs, Ferraris, Pierce Arrows, Mercedes, classic hot rods, vintage race cars, modern super cars… I could go on and on. The fact that Penny Weiss’ 1955 Thunderbird “Blue Belle” took a first, and Mark Freund’s 1951 Chevrolet truck “‘Ol Joe” garnered a third place in a very tough class of restored classics is extremely humbling to me amid such a prestigious field of participants.

Three happy hot rods...

First Place pose

Blue Belle, on the floor of the Reliant Stadium. Luv ya, Blue!

the encore...

Jeff and Ann Smith’s 1957 Chevrolet “Candy Apple Blond” was invited back into the winners circle as a returning First Place winner from last year’s event.

This was also a big year for us in that we had our first ever PAINTHOUSE booth at the show. We met a lot of people and planted many seeds. Time will tell if they take root and grow.

Great job, Jenn and Cassie. What will it be for next year?

The following pics are few of the cars that “spoke” to my soul…

Ford 'push truck' and Bonneville "belly tank" racer.

The Doane Spencer roadster, first hot rod at Pebble Beach

1967 Ferrari racer: vintage shape, new power

The "business" end...

early '30's "Minerva"...Belgium created luxury, a phenomenal restoration

and last but not least… the “Best of Show” DeLage.

DeLage: Best of Show, 2011 Classy Chassis Concours d'Elegance

That’s all for now, folks. Stay tuned as we prepare for a trip to Powerblock, then the Columbus, OH Goodguys show, at the end of this month. Its about time to get back on the road. This time, I think ice shouldn’t be a problem!

until next time,

Randy

Make sure you get out to the Keels & Wheels Concours D’ Elegance show this weekend, April 30th and May 1st. $umday and Blue Belle will be out for the sun and fun on the coast at the Lakewood Yacht Club in Seabrook, Texas. There will surely be vehicles you won’t see anywhere else, as well as some unbelievable vintage wooden boats. If you want to see a wonderful blend of vintage, classic and exotic automobiles, head on down to the Clear Lake area. No excuses, be there.

Randy

Here is a quick look at our 1969 GTO Judge project’s body after its first refinish process. This consisted of (after countless hours of block-sanding and wet sanding) applying a light grey epoxy sealer, then 3 coats of PPG Carousel Red, followed with two coats of PPG Global D8152 ‘Performance+Glamour’ Clear. Once painted, it was baked for an hour at 140 degrees.

Note: The base color was wetsanded with 800 grit paper between the first and second coats to remove any errant dust particles that inevitably seem to find there way into the first coat or two. After that sanding, the remaining coats remain very “clean”.

The next step, tomorrow, is to block-sand the entire body with 600/800 grit wetsanding paper, then apply 4 additional coats of the same Global clear  (called Flow-coats). Then, again, another bake cycle, and it is done…for now. We do the clear in two steps because we want a higher millage than the products will allow for in one application; therefore, we cannot apply it all at once. The urethane products won’t dry properly if too many coats are applied at once. Also, the second clearing produces a much “slicker” finish with less texture (orange peel), which leads to easier wetsanding and polishing.

We will come back at some point the near future and take the entire car through our wetsanding and polishing process, which will produce the mile-deep finish we strive for in all of our projects. This is where the real magic happens, and is why so much effort is put into the bodywork and block-sanding phases.

Useless paint trivia: the baking cycle, despite what many people think, doesn’t make the paint any better, harder or more durable. It simply accelerates the drying process by forcing solvents out of the film build and accelerating the catalyzation (aka: hardening) of the applied product. Some clears are engineered to “need” to be baked for production reasons, but in the end, the reslulting final product is the same whether baked or dried by normal evaporation at ambient temperature. At PAINTHOUSE, we use baking for a different reason in most cases. We purposely put the part(s), and all the materials used on it, through a bake cycle several times during the bodywork and blocksanding/priming phases, then, once it has cooled down, we have gotten the materials (filler, primers, etc) to expand then contract. This removes solvents and causes the “shrinkage” factor to be much lower down the road versus rushing through all the steps, with each component never fully drying (it can take weeks or more for body filler, primers, sealers, paints and clears to completely dry). This is one of the reasons these restorations/custom builds can take so long. The heated booth is also good for pre-heating the surface temp of the item. If it is below 50º F, these urethane materials just don’t want to harden properly. Believe it or not, there are many days here in Houston where the ambient temperature is at, or below, that level. A heated booth is a versatile, multi-faceted tool that I could not do without in my business.

Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about the refinish and baking processes. Feel free to use it to impress your family and friends at the next big get-together.

Until next time,

Randy

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