The Doors and Spray Priming

(12/29/02)

When we got to the doors, we thought we could save them like the rest of the car. Unfortunatly, we realized the bottoms were completely rusted out. (These pics were taken after we took the doors off the car)

We decided to go to a junkyard and take doors off another 90 Cavalier. On mine and Dane's first trip there, we got a drivers seat and an engine coolant resivour. The old resivour cracked after running the car too long.

Tip
Don't run a car when the radiator fan doesn't turn on. The coolant boiled and made the resivour crack lol.

The junkyard crushed every 4 door 90 Cavalier they had. Of course it was the day before we got there. That day (8/31/02), some weird surfer guy at the junkyard gave us some advice. He said that 90 - 94 doors were exactly the same. We took the backdoors off a 94 Cavalier. Our plan was to take the inside paneling off the original doors, and put them on the new 94 doors.

At first, that wasn't working out too well. It seems that between 1990 and 1994, the interior stuff was changed. An inch here, two inches here. So they turned out to be more of a project than we expected.

We drilled out the rivets to take the arm rest holder out, drilled out on rivet to take out the door opening mechinism, and had to take the original locking mechinism off from the 90 doors, and taped (yes tape) it to the 94 one. We did this because the 94 locking mechinism was about 3 inches too short.( I know it sounds as confusing as hell, just email me and I can describe it better Jerryg@dontmesswithtexas.com)

Priming the Door and the Back Fender

The car covered up, ready for painting.

This is the back passenger side door and the rear fender being primed by Dane. First we had to cover up all the glass and door trim...wasn't easy!

Here's the car in the "Paint Shop"...painted by Dane of course. Those white dots are paint particles in the air.

Tips
1) Wear Googles!
2) Don't use your shirt as a facemask...
3) Have good ventilation

The Cavalier's back door and fender dried. Doesn't look bad for primer! We took the original handle from the '90 door and put it on the '94 door just for the hell of it. Theres only a slight difference between the model year handles. Just to let you know, it's a pain in the ass to change the handle, we had to bend part of the metal inside the door to get to it.

Both back doors are now converted from '94 setup to '90.

Right: Back passenger side door.
Left: Back driver's side door (Dane didn't like his picture....so we edited it....dont ask)

The back passenger door completed!


The back driver's door being painted on the inside before the paneling goes on.

The back driver's door complete! Still gotta get sum nail polish remover for sum of that paint on the black trim.....

(1/13/02)

Remember that nice clean (kinda) looking Cavalier? Well....I realized there was still some metal pitting wasn't taken care of yet, so I broke out the bondo again. I don't know what inspired me since it was like 30 degrees but here's what I did!

The car just bondod up.

Here's how far I've sanded, even though they look really pitted, when it's painted over, it will look smooth.

**1/29/03**

More work being done on this side of the car. ITS STILL COLD!!!!!You can tell by the anger in my face lol. :-)

More sanding and bondo work.

Table of Contents
Page 1: Intro
Page 2: Getting rid of rust
Page 3: Changing the lightbulbs in the instrument panel
Page 4: The Carpet
Page 5: The Doors and Spray Priming
Page 6: Signs of improvement
Page 7: Cavalier parts car
Page 8: The System!!
Page 9: The Cavalier with the Buick
Page 10: Cavalier Originality!!
Page 11: Removing the Air Conditioner Fan and Other Stuff...
Page 12: Cavalier Problem of Until Another One Shows Up
Page 13: Cavalier News!!

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