Yesterday, I had this sudden urge to work on the Catalina. I know, it's strange, but I did feel like doing something to it. It was all some rather minor stuff but parts were labor intensive. I think the end result was well worth the effort my girlfriend and I put into it. Enjoy!
This is pretty much the day I got the car a few months ago. 4 flat tires and a smell that could only be compared to hot garbage.
It's been a slow process to get stuff done to this thing, so it's just little things every weekend. This weekend's project was to make the rear bumper look better. You can see the stains and rust all over it in this picture. The bumper is really straight so we thought it should look good.
We used the Eagle 1 chrome polish wadding. It's basically cotton wadding saturated with some mystery polishing juice. It makes your hands stink and gives you really sore arms but the results were spectacular. While I was at it, I hit the tailpipes with some black paint.
The stupid trailer hitch also got the heave-ho. It was a horrid addition and now the back of the car looks 10x better with it gone.
Now at this point, the motor was feeling neglected. To be honest, it looked like dookie. So out came the cleaning supplies, spray paint and elbow grease. This is what I started with:
Note how crappy the non-Pontiac teal looks on the motor. I had to get rid of that and bust out some period correct Pontiac blue. The POS air-cleaner also got tossed in the circular file since not only is it bad for flow but it just looks like crap.
I used aircraft aluminum stripper to take the valve covers down to bare metal then I applied a high temp primer. After this had set, I sanded the primer and shot the blue. A bit of clear and some metal flake and it looks great. The replacement air cleaner/lid from K&N speaks for itself.
I also fabbed up a battery tray from scratch 2 weekends ago. It's made from galvanized sheetmetal with some gray wheel paint over it. Nothing too spectacular but I replaced the rust-laden stock piece. I managed to use all stock bolts and hardware, I just added 2 nylock nuts/stock bolts to hold it to the fender. While I was at it, I made a few more templates for the battery tray just in case I wanted to get a bit more elaborate.
Well, that's all for now. It's getting closer to being a runner every weekend. :)
Special thanks to my girlfriend for the pictures.