Article_Project_Transformation

The stars aligned, ducks were in a row, lady luck shone on me, all of those things.... The result? I now have the Hawkeye Buggies chassis I've wanted since I first saw one at Buggy Blast 1 in 2002.

I talked with Hawkeye about the "custom" features I wanted. Things like upper seat belt mounting bolts integrated into the roll cage, of course the CNC pedals, and a front bumper that would resemble my current bumper but be much better and integrate with the chassis.

The chassis, roll cage and front bumper itself would be painted black with a light metalflake. Johnny & Neil will shoot the paint after I come down and clean up the chassis and get it prepped. The paint is a urethane paint from Kirker and has 2 coats of color, then a coat of clear with flake followed by 4 coats of clear. Ever heard the expression, "you can shave in it?" It's true.

Wednesday morning found us hard at work by 8am. We checked all the joints, finished up sanding welds and scuffing the primer. A few areas needed some touch up so those places got re-primed...sounds like coffee break time to me. Next, Johnny took a hard look at spots and when satisfied when decided it was time to shoot color. The black was mixed and the gun handed to Hawkeye. They tried to hand it to me but I convinced them they didn't want to be sanding paint runs until Christmas! It looked great after the first coat, but we all wanted that wow look. Now spraying on the flake was interesting. Just a little, and I mean a little, flake was mixed into some intermediate clear. Hawkeye started spraying it on, lightly and the sparkles came quickly. Now you would've thought we were in a snow globe. That flake stuff was EVERYWHERE!!! Stop and check after each coat, no sags and everything looks good. It's about dinner time and we finished it up. 2 days on chassis prep and paint. And I must mention the steak and baked potato lunch Johnny's wife Loretta fixed for us was awesome, thanks Loretta!

Next installment, the transformation of the green Manx itself. click here for Part 2

The raw chassis

JD, Johnny & Dennis sanding away

First though, is just a bit of prep. I scheduled vacation time to g down on a Tuesday and stay over through Wednesday. When I got to Hawkeye's, there sat my chassis, engine cage (no you can't have on like it :) ) roll cage and front bumper. Man they looked good. Doug came by and he, Hawkeye and I loaded up to take the parts down to Johnny's.

Neil starts with color

Johnny finishes up priming

Johnny & Neil check for missed spots

When we arrived Johnny and JD were there waiting for us.

We unloaded the parts and put the chassis on saw horses and the grinding began. It took us the better part of Tuesday to grind all of the welds, fill them and then sand them smooth. Sparks flew, man we were working fools! Dennis Pearce was out cruising on his Goldwing and stopped by...he thought to visit. Wasn't long we had him sanding away. We stopped for a late lunch and then went out to Hawkeye's. Seems Neil had a body and chassis that needed to go to the Chicago area. Neil's dad Nick was going to do the driving but suffered a heart attack a couple of weeks earlier. Nick is one of the good guys and we're all very thankful that Nick is recovering nicely and should be back to buggying soon. We got Doug loaded up so he could head out the next morning, early and it was back to prepping the chassis and other components for us. Tuesday evening we had everything in primer. We let that cure overnight.