Repainting the Land Cruiser Saga

[cahill]

After a couple of months I finally had the heart to get back at it and see how things would work out when adressing the problem areas with the new owner.
Thankfully the new owner was a stand up guy and was willing to rectify every area of concern that I had stating that when he bought the shop he bought the job and would stand by the previous agreement.


If you look in the photo above you can se that the black areas around the the windows have something going on that is not quite right. It is more apparent in other light but I don't have a better photo of it. Also after putting the bumper on the color just didn't seem right. There were areas of sloppy prep as well on the cowel where they didn't remove old window gasket material and the paint just flaked off, the fender flares all had chips and dents as well as the rear bumper wings.

It turns out they painted the window areas with a flat black and it was quite apparent when opening the doors the difference in sheen and texture. The new body shop owner also took my word for it that the bumpers were painted the wrong color and re-sprayed them with the correct color code since he had to repair the poor paint job the previous painter did. Turns out I was right that the color was wrong and the owner could see why I was unhappy.

 

[cahill]

Here are a few more examples of problems....The first photo is a little better light to show the flat black paint around the windows not being the correct sheen and just looking a bit off.

 

[cahill]

After dropping the vehicle back off to get things re-done, I decided to do a bit of painting myself to clean things up a little to match the refreshed body paint. First job was to clean up the side steps. Some day I may replace them with sliders but as of now they are useful for the kids when climbing in and out of the vehicle.

I did a bit of testing to find a matching paint and Rustoleum semigloss black was a good match. The plastic piece I just scrubbed with stiff brush and soap and it cleaned up pretty well.

 

[cahill]

I also painted the rear bumper brackets and cross member to keep rust at bay. They were in good shape but I had them off the vehicle and figured I might as well since I had the pain out. Polished up the aluminum rear step as well using wet/dry sand paper up to 2000 grit.

 

[cahill]

Since I was refreshing things anyway and some of the rear bolts were starting to look crusty I replaced the hardware with new to last another 20 years.
One problem I ran into was not being able to find a clip nut for the rear bumper bracket. Thankfully @Bludozer came to the rescue and sent me 2 that he salvaged from the dumpster before the disappeared forever after he replaced his rear bumper with something a little more stout The clips are being put to good use. Thanks again.

If anyone has one more of the brackets circled in red and in the last photo that is just laying around I would love to have it. I had to salvage one of the old ones but it had a bolt break off in the middle of it when removing the bumper. When I drilled it out I found that my drill press doesn't drill straight and I messed up the threads on about 1/4 of the threads and was off center. I don't have welder to fill it in and redrill/retap but used solder on the area that was damaged and re-tapped it. It is holding fine and will work but I'm a little OCD.

 

[cahill]

Here's a quick photo of the repair I mentioned above on the clip. After filing things flush and cleaing it up I painted it incase I never get a replacement.

Next I started on re-installing the fender flares. Pretty straight forward but one piece of advice is to make sure the new fender flare gasket sits all the way in on the edge of the flare or there will be a noticeable gap between the gasket and flare. You can kind of see what I am talking about in the 3rd photo below.

It also seems like some of the right or left side gaskets are NLA and they just send the part that corresponds to the opposite side. This is ok but the foam tape that holds the gasket to the body will be positioned either forward or aft depending on which side of the vehicle you are installing it on. I used 3m vhb double sided tape to reinforce areas that needed adhesion to the body. I put this on before installing the fender flare - otherwise you woul be peeling off the new gasket from the body and messing things up. The 3m VHB tape had to be cut lengthwise to ge a thin enough strip to fit the gasket as they didn't have anything listed that was thin enough. It worked but required just a little extra time to do it.

 

[cahill]

After the fender flares I was able to finally get the rear bumper wings and mud flaps back on. Not the best photo as it is raining out but you get the idea. Despite the fact that the bumper was repainted with the correct color code after taking it back to the shop, it still seems just a little bit off in my opinion. The 6M1 is also just a tad bit different too depending on the light. There are times when it seems correct and other times maybe not as dark as it used to be. I point this out so that anyone who is hoping to get a perfect match may be a little disappointed.

 

[cahill]

Unfortunately the sloppy work was not limited to the body shop. I had to have the rear quarter windows pulled when the body shop re-painted the black window areas. I searched long and hard for a good window installer and found one that was reputable. The first time they installed things I was present and they did a good job. The second time the glass owner sent an employee who was a bit sloppy with the install. I ended up taking it back to the glass shop and having the owner re-do the work.

Once that was done, I got to install the new rear quarter vent covers and window moulding assy. The new trim comes with clips so they don't need to be ordered separately.

On a side note - the proper sequence for installing the rear vent cover may be to install it before the rear quarter window gasket gets installed. It took some finagling to slide it under the gasket and clip things in place. It would be costly if the new piece broke in installation.

 

[Bludozer]

Glad they found you! Wish there had been the full set still in the dumpster lol, but I guess some is better than none. Good luck with getting everything put back together, looks fantastic so far.

 

[cahill]

Here are some photos of what the clips look like on the moulding and the louver cover. I had to replace pieces because the plastic bracket that held the louver clips broke when removing it. If I were to do it again, I probably could have removed them without damage but I wasn't familiar with them before install. That's the way it goes sometimes but hopefully this will save somone from the same fate.

Also, the moulding does have some double sided foam tap that helps hold it in place. If re-using the moulding it could easily be replaced prior to re-installing it.

 

[cahill]

To remove them, in the rear D pillar is a nut that can be removed and the clips can be compressed from the inside of the pillar with some pliers to allow removal. I had thought the louver could be removed by sliding the brackets off the clips. I was wrong. The same can be done with the moulding. From the inside of the vehicle the bottom of the clips can be accessed and compressed to pop the moulding out.

I wasn't sure exactly what the rubber washer was when I first removed the old louvers. It had compressed and stuck to the body of the vehicle. On the new louver you can see the new washer in the 3rd photo and the old one in the 4th photo which I removed before final install but should have taken off before the paint job.

 

[cahill]

Reserved

 

[cahill]

Reserved

 

[cahill]

Reserved

 

[cahill]

Reserved

 

[Pippylongsausage]

Wow quite a job. I was just researching this today. Timely post.

 

[OGBeno]

 

[bicycleagent003]

Wow, that's some impressive attention to detail on your part. I appreciate you sharing all that information, as I've considered having my truck painted white - it's still wearing it's original deep blue right now. I don't think I have the time to do what you are doing, or the coin to have a shop do it for me. I'm thinking I'll just have the roof painted white to ease the heat soak in the SoCal sun, and accept my fading ,trail rashed paint as is.
Your posts are inspirational, though. Maybe one day.