The last time we saw the Hawkeye Community College C10 the students had just completed assembly of the rolling chassis and most of the bodywork to make the truck’s half-century-old metal look new again. The students at HCC’s Auto Collision Technologies program have been hard at it, learning the finer points of bringing back decades-old tin to perfection. One of the main factors in ensuring a perfect finish is sweating the details before the first coat of paint is applied. That means the body panels need to be arrow straight, including all of the gaps in the body and their alignment with each other. The only way to ensure that, is to reassemble the truck to do the final bodywork.

The C10’s body went back on the completed chassis so the students could compare how everything fit once bolted in place. That meant everything; doors, bed, lights, and even the grille were installed to compare gaps. And, this is the time to make sure every surface is as smooth as can be, even in those areas you may not see once the vehicle is assembled.

 Bridging The Body Panels Gap

In the C10’s body makeover story, we mentioned that the only way to get a great finish is to start with a proper foundation. The students worked their magic under the watchful eye of instructor Terry Van Dyke to get each panel as straight as possible using linear block sanders and a lot of elbow grease.

Now, the students are learning how to bridge those body panel gaps to get each of those panels in arrow-straight alignment with each other. Of course, that meant another re-assembly of the entire truck and some more 3M body filler wherever necessary. Every gap and every line in the truck’s body needs to be under scrutiny during this stage. After this, the truck will come apart one more time so a layer of primer can be applied as the foundation for the paint. At that point, modifying anything to make panel gaps presentable would be a step backward, and the Hawkeye students are learning the right way to do things.

The Many Stages Of Two-Stage Painting

The Hawkeye students will be using AkzoNobel two-stage paint for the final color of their C10 truck, but there are many stages in the process of getting the perfect finish without overspray in areas you don’t want it.

The truck will be painted in a classy blend of Hyper Silver basecoat for the exterior with a Medium Red interior. You obviously don’t want silver overspray inside the cab or red dots on the exterior body panels, so Terry instructed the students how to properly mask off the cab to keep the two colors separated. This meant masking the exterior in preparation for painting the red paint and then reversing the process to protect the red interior from silver overspray. It’s a bit more work to perform this many stages during the painting process, but it prevents having to remove overspray from those previously prepped and painted body panels.

With the cab taped off in preparation for the silver paint, all of the body panels were brought back into the paint booth for a fresh coat of silver basecoat, followed by five coats of clear to give everything a lasting, show-winning shine. After the paint had sufficient time to cure, each body panel was again, under the keen eye of students and instructor, to massage each surface to a mirror finish. Wet sanding removes any imperfections and orange peel that may have occurred in the clearcoat during spraying and once buffed out, will make the C10’s body catch the eye of judges everywhere.

As we conclude this segment of the Hawkeye Community College’s C10 project truck’s transformation, the students have begun assembling the cab, along with the rest of the truck. But, that’s a story for another time, which we’ll show you in our next installment. Stay tuned because you won’t want to miss how awesome this truck is going to look once all the student’s work is completed!