Tag: craftsman
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6-Day Wonder: Sterling’s Stealth ’64 Corvair Full Respray
By Gabe Lopez, Owner of Sterling Restorations It’s not often in the restoration business that you encounter a 60-year-old classic car that’s, well, almost perfect. For those of us who make a living sanding, welding, and fixing decades of rust and poor repairs, finding a truly solid foundation is the equivalent of striking gold. That’s…
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Bringing a ’65 Corvair Corsa Back to Life: A Body and Paint Restoration Journey. Part 4 of 4
After a second priming stage, we painted the smaller areas. The trunk was refinished in the original grey with white specks, and the underside and engine bay received a coat of satin black (60% gloss). Then came the payoff for countless hours of block sanding and prep: the final application of the Madeira Maroon. The…
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Bringing a ’65 Corvair Corsa Back to Life: A Body and Paint Restoration Journey. Part 3 of 4
Perfecting the Metal and Bodywork Getting the now-bare metal shell back from the blasters revealed a few more spots that needed attention. We finished any remaining welding and fabrication on the clean metal before finally diving into the bodywork. Our goal was to align all the panels to tolerances even better than the factory ever…
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Bringing a ’65 Corvair Corsa Back to Life: A Body and Paint Restoration Journey. Part 2 of 4
Uncovering Hidden Damage and Fabrication The first stage was what I call “pre-paint stripping.” Using extremely coarse grit sandpaper, we manually removed the old paint and, more importantly, the heavy layers of old body filler that were hiding shoddy repairs. It’s always a relief when an owner is prepared, and luckily, Bruce had sourced new…
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Bringing a ’65 Corvair Corsa Back to Life: A Body and Paint Restoration Journey. Part 1 of 4
Gabe Lopez of Sterling Restorations was kind enough to share the story of restoring Bruce’s 65 Corsa convertible. Many longtime SFBA members may remember this car belonging to Marc Bruchy. Mark’s parents bought the Corvair brand new in San Francisco. Marc grew up with the car in his family and, eventually, inherited it. After some…
SFBA CORSA 