Polly Luna wakes up! A classic RV build story

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

I'm impressed you are tackling the paint. My husband's uncle restores old cars and Jason grew up in that shop. He says once the prep work is done (which would be the hardest part of the job), that's an 8-10 hour paint job. When I told him what they quoted you, he said the same thing... they don't want to do it. 

 

It's unfortunate, too, because we were all prepared to give them our money! Oh well. I guess I'll chalk this up to a good character building experience. :)

 

 

Wow... I am really impressed by the amount of work that you've done!  You should be very, very proud  :thumbsup2:

 

Thank you! It certainly has been a ton of work but the phrase, "labor of love" definitely applies here. 

 

 

I can't believe you are painting it yourself.  That is so much work.

 

You're telling me. I was thinking that after the first hour and I'd only sanded a two foot by two foot section. We made decent progress over the course of the weekend, but we have so much ahead of us still.

 

 

Wowsa!!!  You may just be the most ambitious people I know of.

 

Or the craziest.  

 

Should we start up a sand paper collection?

 

Craziest. I vote for craziest!  Although actually, I prefer the word, "zany."  Has a bit more of a whimsical flair. :)

[Santa ... Shannon 160]

Really enjoying your progress reports. And you have a very cute voice. BTW, the "burly" grain is called rays. Anxious to see more.

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

Really enjoying your progress reports. And you have a very cute voice. BTW, the "burly" grain is called rays. Anxious to see more.

Thank you! Rays sound much more accurate, it's almost iridescent. So pretty.

[Lou... 3,118]

And you have a very cute voice.

 

Are you flirting with CitaPita?

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

Are you flirting with CitaPita?

 

Lou, Shannon just wants me for my cool motorhome.  

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

A full update in a day or so, but let's just say that this weekend was a bit of a bust. Some random stuff got done, mainly a bunch of shopping. 

 

However...

 

We did do something incredibly stupid. Cool, but stupid. And the Fiends made me do it. I warned you in another thread that it might happen, and it did. More on this later.  :) 

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

We did do something incredibly stupid. Cool, but stupid. And the Fiends made me do it. I warned you in another thread that it might happen, and it did. More on this later.   :)

 

Oooh... now that's a whiz-bang teaser!!

 

[Lou... 3,118]

We did do something incredibly stupid. Cool, but stupid. And the Fiends made me do it.

 

You got a golf cart to fix up, didn't you?

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

You got a golf cart to fix up, didn't you?

 

Maaaaaaybe. 

 

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

:yaysmilesa-smiley:

[Mtnmanky...aka Leon 72]

:rofl2:

[Lou... 3,118]

Looks like an 80s, give or take, 3 wheel Harley Davidson golf cart.

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

Looks like an 80s, give or take, 3 wheel Harley Davidson golf cart.

 

Good guess!  It's a 1971 Harley Davidson golf cart. It's one of the more rare electric versions. Most of the carts Harley made were gas. 

[Katman1356...Jason 1,140]

And it's already been over run by princesses. I love it. 

[Lou... 3,118]

Wow, 71, older than I thought.

So tell us the whole story, and you are crazy?

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

Wow, 71, older than I thought.

So tell us the whole story, and are you crazy?

 

She's not crazy, she's ZANY!  :)

[fladogfan aka Gretchen 259]

This thread is so fun to read. 

It's going to be beautiful, love the bluie/green color and the birch is outstanding, good finish work on it too..

Your children are clever and cute.

Your voice is fine, most people I have heard comment on their own voice, myself included, think the same as you, "I don't like the sound of my voice."  You sound fine.

 

BTW  Up date please

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

Thanks, Gretchen! Sorry for being kind of absent. It's been busy at work and then I went on a "girls" trip with the little ones. I hope to post some updates later tonight. :)

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

Looking forward to them!

[fladogfan aka Gretchen 259]

Looking forward to them!

Me 2!

[GaDawgFan.....Kelly 799]

I love that you guys are crazy! I can't wait to see how it turns out. 

[HappyRedhead......Betsy 16]

Just caught up. I can't wait to see more!

[woody1 2]

Still waiting for a update.

[Deb 3]

All caught up, looking forward to hearing more. Funny, we too recently found a harley 3 wheel, ours is a 1969 and about the same color you painted your cabinets. Looks great on your cabinets, not so much on our cart. I am hoping the florida rains will hold off enough soon so that I can repaint it before we take it on its first trip to the fort next month.

Hope your renovations are moving along smoothly and you will have lots to report real soon.

[CitaPita...Carmen 59]

Okay folks, sorry about the wait! I could make a bunch of excuses about how busy I’ve been (and I have been), but to be honest with you, this update is so late because for the past few weeks Polly Luna has gotten progressively uglier.

And do you know how boring body work is? You might have already guessed that fact, but until you spend 30 minutes sanding the same 1x1 foot area on a vehicle you really can’t imagine.

Fun fact: Excluding the roof, Polly has a surface area of around 912 sq ft. I figured it up to torture myself as I was sanding one day. Sanding for hours.

But you don’t tune in to read a litany of complaints. Here’s what’s been going on with the old girl over the past few weeks.

First of all, we got rid of most of the red. At this stage, I actually think she looks better. I was never a fan of the maroon red stripe. Even if the paint had been in good shape, I would have wanted to repaint her eventually.
 


As we were removing the old paint we discovered the original gel coat color. I wish it was in good shape, because it would have been cool to take her back to her original condition. This is the color combo she had when she was new (This isn't Polly Luna, but I wish!).

 

 

This is a very classic design for the Travcos. Solid color with a stripe. We’ll recreate this with the new paint, although with different colors. Which I’m not telling you about yet. :)

 

Another thing we discovered once the paint was sanded down was that there was a ton of damage on the back end, and some pretty terrible repair work that had been done. I'm no body work expert, but I'm pretty sure that bondo meant for metal cars doesn't work as well for filling giant holes in fiberglass. You could literally push the chunk of bondo out of the damaged areas with your hands. DH dug it all out. It was a scary moment.



Then he used some fiberglass mat and resin to fill the spots in again. A little filler (Bondo meant for fiberglass this time) and it still needs to be smoothed a bit, but it looks whole again. Whole instead of hole.

 

LOL, I crack myself up.



Speaking of cracks...

 

Remember the crazy "crazing"? Well, unfortunately the only way to make sure those don't crack through the new paint is to fill them with a fiberglass bondo that will expand/contract at the same rate as the fiberglass body around them. And hopefully not crack our new paint. Hopefully.

So we made Polly look absolutely stunning.



And then we undressed her again. I won't describe how tedious this was. You can probably imagine. Here is a picture of an hours worth of work.



It looks like we took off all of the bondo, but the cracks are now green so I'm going to assume they are filled. Because any other result might make me ugly cry.

This weekend we'll be doing our final sanding over the whole coach and also removing the red stripe at the top. Can you tell we've been dreading that part?

I think we're finally going to get to the point of spray filler next weekend. And then we have to sand the whole body. Again.

I have a few other random updates (interior and golf cart) coming soon! For real this time.