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Penny Gets A Nose Job
May 4-20, 2007
Penny on a shake-down ride after completing the nose job.
This is always one of the
great pleasures of a completed restoration effort for Lynn,
the chance to drive it around town with the new improvement.
Lynn has an inner glow of satisfaction with his accomplishment that
must be invisible to the rest of the world,
but it still feels great to him.
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"Before" photos of the grill.
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"After" photos of the grill and hood ornament.
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Lynn is mildly embarassed by the appearence of Penny's grill.
Remnant's of old black paint are scattered across her nose and Lynn is anxious to improve this item.
He feels that the condition of the grill greatly effects Penny's overall appearance
and thinks it's the largest impact improvement he can make before the June 1-2 OCA (Oldsmobile
Club of America) show at which he plans to show Penny.
Lynn examines all the photos and literature on the 1938 L-38 that he could find to
try to understand the way that the grill had been originally painted.
He is unsure of how far the paint extends on the louvers that form the grill.
Using a black marking pen, Lynn temporarily treats the top three grill louvers in the
manner he thinks might be correct.
This temporary treatment is visible in the "before" photo above.
The louvers of the grill shows evidence of being originally painted black (left).
Paint stripper doesn't do a good job of removing the old paint (center) and Lynn has the
grill media blasted to get it clean (right).
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Lynn gets confirmation of his treatment plan from Dave and Pat Kennedy, the owners of a 1938 L-38 4-door
touring sedan and members of the Northern California Chapter of the OCA.
Their car was featured in an article entitled "1938 Oldsmobile: The Might-Have-Been LaSalle"
that appeared in Special Interest Autos, No. 117 (June, 1990).
Lynn recently met the Kennedy's at the end of April in Vallejo at an annual swap meet that the club sponsors
and discussed the grill treatment with Dave.
It takes some care to mask the grill for painting (left). Lynn uses a razor knife to cut the tape
to expose the thin decorative grooves of the grill (right).
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Lynn is concerned about getting the new black paint to stick to the chrome.
He uses etching primer hoping that it will help the paint stay put.
Unfortunately, the resulting finish is very fragile.
Lynn can easily pick the paint off with a fingernail.
He coats the grill with a clear lacquer, but expects that he'll need to redo this
job sooner rather than later.
Next time he'll spend more time roughing the chrome to be painted with emory cloth
and using a tougher epoxy paint.
Lynn will be packing black touch-up paint with his other supplies for the upcoming OCA show.
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Lynn also makes other improvements, painting the radiator and grill support with black firewall paint,
replacing the cotton hood lace next to the cowl, and
replacing the deteriorated rubber bumpers (left two photos) under the nose of the hood with
new material (right two photos).
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Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Lynn Kissel
Last updated: May 24, 2009
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