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Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. About a month ago, I had a comment on one of my videos telling me that my truck was screaming for a buff and a polish. Well, who am I to deny the screaming requests of my truck? Today, I will be starting the process of giving this truck a good thorough cleaning and then a good thorough buffing. Now, I don’t plan to do the last stage of polish. This truck has really old paint, and this paint’s going to be replaced and repainted at some point, so I’m not too worried about this. Actually, this is really sort of a test for me, a learning experience. I’ve never buffed a vehicle before. Like a lot of the things on my channel, I’ve never done this, so this should be interesting.

But the first thing I’m going to do is give her a good cleaning. I’ve got a pressure washer here behind me, so we’re going to use some McGuire’s Gold Class soap and my pressure washer to get it all washed down. And then once that’s—the basic heavy-duty grime is washed down, I’m going to give it a hand washing. Once the hand washing is done, I’m going to do a clay bar on it. Um, actually, before all that’s done, before the clay bar, then I got to go through and get rid of some of this peeling clear coat. I got peeling clear coat everywhere, so I need to get underneath that and sort of get that back to a good line between the old paint and the clear coat. I’m not going to worry about sanding off the old clear coat or anything like that. We’re just doing this as is. We’re going to see how it turns out. I mean, no matter what, it’s got to be better than what it is because this paint is really, really bad.

So after the clay bar, then I will get my buffer polisher out, and we will use some McGuire’s Ultimate Compound and some different levels of buffing pads to see what we can do to this old paint. Once that’s all done, I’ve got some ceramic coating that I bought just to see how that works. A lot of this stuff is just me testing things out so that once I do get the real final finish on this truck, I know exactly what sort of products that I want to use. So I’m really interested to see exactly how this turns out. Like I said, it’s got to make the truck look better, no matter what, basically, unless I take all the paint off. But hey, you know, even then, I get it down to metal, clear coat it, and call it patina.

All right, so let’s get to washing. So before I continue, there are a few things that I’d like to talk about or point out. For one, I’m really washing this truck at the wrong time of day. I’m in an actual middle of the day. The sun is at the highest in the sky that it could be, and I did have some problem with the soap drying before I could get the rinse coat on there. But I’m not too worried about that because I’m gonna do a hand wash on this anyway and get some of the stuff the pressure washer didn’t because I didn’t want to get too close to the pressure washer.

The other thing is that this hood has some really thin paint on it. There’s a lot of places, actually, where the metal is coming through. So if I were somewhere else in the country, I would probably clear coat this hood. I would sand the clear coat that’s already on here. There’s a little thin strip of clear coat on the front of this. I would probably sand this clear coat back to make it nice and even with the paint and then sort of, you know, feather it in and then probably get some of that same 2K clear rattle can stuff that I had before and just tape things off and do a real quick clear coat on the top of this just to seal in all that exposed metal. Because I’m in the southwest, rust really isn’t a thing down here. I mean, it is, but it takes a long, long time, and I’m going to repaint this thing well before I have any problems with rust eating through the hood.

And on top of that, I’m not even sure that this is the hood that I’m going to keep going forward. I may want to get a hood with a scoop or some other stuff. Hoods are relatively inexpensive, especially if you can, you know, go into a pick apart or something. So the hood is the least of my worries. It’s the other body panels that I’ll be worried about, and all the other body panels are good. There’s a few chips, but for the most part, the paint is pretty good on those and nice and thick, so I’m not real worried about that. I did get an ultra-fine buffing pad for the hood specifically just to make sure that I don’t take off any more paint than I have to. I do expect—see, I’m getting red on my fingers just doing that. So, um, yeah, this paint is really ultra-thin and is going to come up super easy, so that’s why I got an ultra-thin pad for this.

So anyway, I just wanted to get that stuff out there. I’m going to do a hand wash on this probably later this afternoon once the sun gets a little bit lower and the weather or the temperature starts to drop a little bit. That way, my water doesn’t dry quite as fast. I’ve got a little bit more time to actually do the hand wash. Once the hand wash is done, I’m going to get her into the garage so that the crazy amount of dust in this New Mexico air doesn’t fall on the truck while it’s sitting outside. And then I’ve got time over the course of the next week or so to do my clay bar, to do my buffing, and all that fun stuff. So I know that was a long explanation, but I just want to let you guys know exactly what my plans are, what I’m doing, and you know, that way I don’t have to do a voiceover later, which is kind of a pain in the butt.

Okay guys, before I start doing this, I want to give you a little tour of the paint on this hood. Now you can see here where the clear coat is delaminating, and then along these front quarter panels also, it’s delaminating. And then front up here on the hood. And so this portion is going to be an issue, but I’m not too worried about it. What I’m worried about is things like this. Um, this, of course, is bare metal. And now, like I said before, I’m not too worried about it rusting, but you can see here where I actually painted over it with something just to keep the bare metal from being exposed. Um, I didn’t bother to do that over here because I think that looks ugly. I wasn’t gonna do it again anyway. Um, what I’m really kind of worried about is like this. Okay, now this is not—I haven’t buffed this. Um, I haven’t done anything to it. This is simply what’s come about as a result of me giving it a good wash. I haven’t clay barred yet. I haven’t really done much of anything to it yet. And here you can see some more of the clear coat delamination. There’s also a spot over here where it’s starting to do the same kind of thing. So it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens to this hood when I buff it. I am still planning on using the buffer on this hood because I want to find out what happens to these spots when you buff them. And I’m sure that a good detailer or body man could tell me exactly what’s going to happen, but I learn by doing, and so that’s what I’m going to do.

My next major task is going to be the clay bar of the truck because this paint has a lot of really rough spots. I can feel it. And before I buff it, I want to make sure that it’s as clean as I can possibly get it. But before I can even do that, I need to take care of these little areas here where you can see the clear coat is coming off. Now, I’m not going to worry about sanding or blending or doing anything like that. I just want to get as much of this little flakiness off as possible. So what I’m going to use is actually a paint brush. This is a new paint brush, and if you run it along, you can see it’s kind of bringing this back right to the edge here and removing a lot of the flakiness. And I’ll have to go back over this real quick just to get all these little bits and pieces. Anything that this doesn’t pick up, I will just run over with the clay bar and then eventually hit with the buffer. But there’s a lot of this on the truck, but you can see where that’s actually doing its job. It’s not going to be perfect. This is really old paint, really old clear coat. But if I can get some of these chips off of here, that’s one less thing to snag on the clay bar and one less thing to deal with when I’m actually doing the buffing. And it should make it easier for me to sort of buff blend, if that’s even a term, these little delaminations here so that they’re not quite as obvious. As you can see, there’s a whole line here that needs the same treatment done to it. So we are going to go ahead and do that. Uh, so that works pretty good. Yeah, I’m going to run through this a couple more times, hit it with a microfiber towel to get some of these little flecks and stuff off the panel here, and then I will go do the rest of the truck. Mostly it’s just around the front and on the hood. Um, and then we’ll be back to start the clay bar.

Now I got a Mother’s California Gold clay bar kit. It comes with everything you see here. This is the lubricant, a couple of bars of clay, and a microfiber towel to rinse things off or wipe things off when you’re all done. Now I am not going to use this entire bar of clay. I’m going to open this up and divide it probably into two different pieces. That way, if something happens—I mean, if you drop one of these on the floor, it’s garbage, so you got to throw it away. So, and then, of course, once it gets full of garbage and crap, which these will because my truck probably hasn’t been washed in 20 years, then you got to throw it away then too. So I’m probably going to split both of these bars into two pieces right down the middle, and that should give me plenty of clay to do what I got to do, but also give me a spare piece. I’m hoping I could do the whole truck with just one bar. If not, I have a second one, so we’ll see how it goes.

So quick update, here is the truck after being clayed all the way around. You can clearly see on the hood there I’ve lost a little bit more paint. It was easy to see on the bottom of the clay bar that that paint was coming up. But again, the hood is my biggest concern. You can see here, especially on the ridge, where some more of the red paint has come up. And then over here, so red paint has come up there. So what I’m going to do is when I buff this hood, I’m going to tape off these ridges with masking tape and this one and this one. And then I’m going to hand buff these ridges, and they won’t get nearly as shiny, but hopefully that’ll help protect some of that paint. So that’s my hope.

So here’s the rest of the truck. It looks much better than it did. You can actually see some reflection in these back panels. I have not buffed this yet. This is just cleaning and clay bar, so there is no clear coat on this paint here. I think this is just single-stage paint in the back. I’m not sure what they did to this truck. Clearly, those front quarter panels are two-stage. There’s a base coat and a clear coat, and then these back parts of the truck are single-stage. So I’m not sure who repainted it and when and how and all that stuff, but there’s been some paint work done to it. But it does look way better than it did. So when I buff, I’m going to start with the bed because that’s where the paint is the thickest. The old paint is there, and there’s a few scratches and stuff, but it’s an old truck, so there’s going to be. So the bed is where the paint is the thickest, so I’m gonna go ahead, since I’ve never done any buffing, power buffing before, I’m gonna start back there. That’ll give me the most leeway and get me used to the feel of the buffer before I go up front and do the hood. So that’s what’s next.

A few things here before I get started. I’m going to start with this panel here. It’s relatively simple. It’s relatively flat in comparison to the rest of the stuff on the truck. I’m going to sort of cut my teeth, so to speak, since I’ve never done this before, on a pretty simple panel. Now I’ve got this panel all taped up. You want to tape up anything that you don’t want the buffer to touch, so my chrome—this chrome bar up here—and I’ve also taped off the fuel door because it’s got some sharp edges, and I don’t want to run the buffer over top of these sharp edges and remove more paint than I’d like to.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to come at this at angles like this and not back so I don’t hit this edge here going back this way. It turns out that a lot of the preparation I did here didn’t make any difference. I wasn’t using a strong enough buffing pad or compound to cause the kinds of issues I’m talking about, at least not on the bed of the truck. I even ended up using my old buffing pads on the chrome when I was done since the Ultimate Compound and the buffer made the chrome parts shine up really nice. And I’ll always try to come at it like this, and then when I’m done, I get the whole panel done, then I’ll come back and take the tape off of this door and tape around here, close the door back up, and then I’ll buff the door just that little bit. I may actually just buff this door by hand rather than use the power buffer.

So what I have is this Tacklife rotary buffer. I picked this up from Amazon. It’s got a digital readout on it, and it’s got really good reviews, so we’re gonna see how well it works. And I’ve also got these seven-inch Bauer foam pads I got from Harbor Freight. I’m using yellow for the entire truck except for the hood. For the hood, I’m using white because white is sort of an ultra-fine. It should do a lot less cutting than the yellow does. The yellow is just a little bit harsher than what the white is, so I can be a little bit more aggressive on this paint, but it’s nowhere near as aggressive as I can get. Again, this is my first time. I’m not going for a show-quality finish, far from it. I’m going for better than it was, so hopefully I can get to that by doing this. I’m using McGuire’s Ultimate Compound because supposedly it kind of does everything all in one compound. Again, not going for a show-quality finish. I’m going for an Ed in his garage better than it was before finish, so hopefully this works out fine for me.

Along with the yellow buffing pad, we’re gonna find out because I’m about to kick this thing off, so we shall see. So, so, so, real quick, let’s take a look at this. Obviously, this is where I have buffed, and this is where I have not. And I haven’t spent a whole lot of time on this. I’ve just gone over it once. You can see, um, if I get real close into here—actually, it’s kind of hard to see on the camera. There we go. You can see scratches and stuff that exists in there. Man, this is 30-year-old paint. This is 30-year-old paint, so there’s gonna be scratches and stuff. I’m pretty happy with how this is turning out. I’m trying to be real gentle with it, so I’m not being real aggressive. I’m not putting hardly any pressure on it at all, and this is really buffing out nice, so we’re just going to keep going.

So, so, if my goal for this truck was to make it better than it was, then I think it’s pretty obvious that I have met that goal and actually, at the very least, met and maybe even exceeded my expectations for my first time ever doing this. Now, I could probably get better than this. In fact, I know I could. But for, you know, Ed in his garage doing this for the first time ever, I’m pretty happy now. I don’t know if you can see over here what it used to look like because I haven’t done any of the cab stuff yet, but this is way shinier than that. And as a matter of fact, if I back up, I can see myself in the finish here, whereas over here on this side, if I’m looking straight on, I can’t see anything like that. Now, I don’t know that I could actually—I can actually shave in there. Maybe like if it was the apocalypse and there were no mirrors available anywhere, I could probably get away with it. But, uh, the bottom line is that I’m really happy with it.

Now I’ve got to do the rest of the truck, and I am not going to bore you by having you watch me buff the whole rest of the truck. But I am going to bring you back when I do the front quarter panel, one of the front corner panels and the hood because those are the other areas on this truck that are sort of special consideration. So the front quarter panel has a line where the clear coat meets the base coat, and I want to try to see if I can feather that line out a little bit to make it as nice looking as possible. And then, of course, the hood has really, really thin paint, and so I’m really interested to see just how much of that paint I’m going to take off and what that hood’s going to look like when I’m done. And I’m going to do the hood last. That way I get as much practice on the thicker paint of the rest of the truck as I can before I tackle the hood. So I will bring you back when I am doing the front quarter panel.

Okay, so I looked. I will make you watch me buff this door. I’m just so impressed by the difference it makes. And I think looking straight on as I buff out the door really showcases just how quickly I go from dull paint to shiny paint. Remember, this door is as clean as I could make it with hand washing and clay bar. It’s not like I’m just wiping off dirt here. I’m actually restoring the shine on this 35-year-old paint. I said I was going to bring you back when I’m ready to do the quarter panels and the hood, and here we are. I’ve actually already done the other quarter panel on the other side just to get a pretty good idea of how it’s going to go and how it’s going to look. It turned out pretty good, not perfect, but it’s not going to be, so I’m happy with it.

There’s a couple of things that I want to note before I go forward. So I’ve done the rest of the truck, and I found that on this older single-stage paint, 1800 RPM, which is the third highest setting on my polisher, works much better than 1400. It just sort of does a better job, does it quicker, and this paint is pretty robust, so it’s not really digging in too much. I’m not having a real hard time with my edges or anything like that, especially with the polishing pad that I’ve got, which is not real aggressive. I probably could have got a much more aggressive pad and done this a lot quicker and easier, but I’m trying to be cautious because I’ve never done this before. And to be honest, it’s turned out really, really well. The quarter panel on the other side, the clear coat obviously looks fantastic, and this base coat underneath shines a little bit, but it’s not gonna shine like the clear coat does. So, uh, these base coats aren’t really designed to be polished. They’re designed to be covered with a clear coat. You can polish them, and they do shine up, but one thing that you want to be careful of is that these are way thinner under this clear coat than this old single-stage paint is. You’ve got a lot of paint here. It’s real thick that you can go through before you start hitting any kind of primer or metal or anything else, whereas this base coat here, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time, even with a light grit pad and some fairly mild compound, to get down to where you’re starting to get into the primer underneath. And in fact, I did that on the other side, just a small little piece. You’ll never even know it’s there unless you know what you’re looking for, but that’s something to be careful of when you’re doing blending like I’m gonna be doing between clear coat and base coat.

Other than that, I’m gonna turn the machine back down to 1400 RPM for this, so it’s not quite as aggressive, and let’s just see what I’m doing. I’ve also found that using an applicator pad like this to put down your initial coat of compound works really well to prevent the machine, the polisher, from splattering compound all over the place. So I’ve been using this just to get my base sort of layer of compound on the paint and then coming back behind it with the polisher to polish it up. Now it actually looks much better on camera than it does in person, but really it doesn’t look bad. You can clearly see the old area that I have not yet buffed versus the area that I just got done buffing, and if you look pretty close, you can see the line where the clear coat ends and the base coat begins. But if you stand far enough away, it’s really kind of hard to see. It almost just looks like I’ve got a strip of matte paint going across the top when you step back away from it. Overall, I’m pretty happy with that.

So I’m going to go ahead and finish this panel, and then I’m going to do the cowl and the top part of the roof, and then we will move on to the hood, which is going to be one of the most interesting parts. I’ve got the hood sectioned off like this so that I can do one part at a time, really sort of pay attention to what I’m doing, and also because these ridges are a spot where the polisher will eat into the paint the most because that’s where the most pressure is going to be applied. And a lot of these ridges actually already have some paint missing, so I don’t want to grind into these too hard. Once I’m done with the whole thing, I’ll take this tape off, and I’ll do these by hand. So I’m using about the finest pad that I can. It’s this white pad from Harbor Freight, and I’m going to be on 1400 RPM, which is the second lowest setting, just to try to make sure that I can get some cutting done, but not too much, again, not to take off too much of this paint. So we’re going to go ahead and lay our compound down and get the buffing.

So, so, bye. Mmm, well, it’s far from perfect, but considering how careful I’m trying to be not to eat into this paint, I think it’s as good as I’m gonna get. And I think once I get a coat of the ceramic on here to protect it, no matter what, it will definitely look better than it did. So, well, the hood’s done, and as you can see, it’s better but not great. And I don’t know what I could do to make it look better. The paint here is really thin. I don’t know how much correction I could do to this to sort of shine it up or gloss it up. I could clear coat it, but I don’t know if clear coating it would make it look a lot better because I would just be clear coating over a lot of these paint defects and splotchiness and that kind of stuff. Um, you know, I could have used a more aggressive pad and probably got a more uniform look, and I’m sure that you can tell looking at that there’s splotchiness and sort of weirdness all over it as far as the paint goes. But I’m afraid that if I would have used a more aggressive pad or a more aggressive setting on the polisher that I just would have started really eating into the paint. And you can see, I’m not sure you can see from the angle that you’re at, but I think you can see it from the angle with giraffe before. There are some darker spots on this hood, and that’s actually where I’m getting down into, um, you know, the primer or maybe even the previous paint. I mean, who knows? This could have been painted black at some point, and there’s some other kind of paint coming through here.

So, I mean, interestingly enough, I know that this cowl isn’t original to the truck because this pinhole cowl is on the next generation of truck from ’87 to ’91. So at some point, this cowl was replaced, and I’m guessing that at some point maybe this entire front part of the truck was replaced because this front part, the two quarter panels of the hood and the cowl are the only parts that have clear coat. So the rest of the truck may very well be original, and these parts may be added on from another truck. Now, I mean, obviously, they’re bull-nosed parts because the wheel wells, you know, have the bullnose shape to them, and of course, the hood has to be able in those hoods. So, um, I don’t know what happened in the history of this truck, but something happened to where these parts were coated and the rest of the truck was not.

Anyway, back on topic here. So, um, the hood definitely looks better, but I’m not super happy with it. So I think we’re gonna do something else to it. Um, I’ve already got a paint sprayer on the way, and I think I’m gonna plasti dip the hood just probably satin black, maybe put some glossifier on there. I’m not sure yet. Um, you know, I thought about maybe even now once this truck is sort of done and fully painted that I might use plasti dip for the two-tone or maybe a wrap or something else. I don’t know yet, but I do know that I’ve never plaster dipped anything before. Sounds like fun. Should be interesting. Looking forward to doing that and then, of course, making a video on it.

So the next thing that we’re gonna do is get all this tape off the truck, get it all wiped down, nice clean cloth all the way around every single surface, get nice and wiped down, and then I’m going to put a ceramic coating on all this so that it stays nice and clean and sealed. So that’s next. Oh, by the way, I’m sure that you can see this right here, this swirl mark. Yeah, that wasn’t done by me. Okay, what that is is I had one of these guys, you know, these guys that come door to door, and they try to sell you this cleaner junk, right? And they try to get you to buy all these big bottles of their super magical wonderful cleaner. And this guy had the nerve to walk over to this truck and get a rag out and spray some of his cleaner on the rag and start grinding it into the truck to show me how amazingly it cleans. Yeah, yeah, I was not very happy with that guy. But obviously, the cleaner works fairly well because even after buffing, I still can’t get the crap that he cleaned the marks off the hood. Jerk.

The entire truck paint-wise has been buffed. I’ve gone around and polished the chrome and other little metal bits, and I’ve also cleaned my windows, which is pretty everyday simple stuff. I’m not going to bore you with. The last thing that I’m going to do for this video is I’m going to spray on this ceramic spray coating. So ceramic coatings are relatively new. Typically, in the olden days, you would put on a coat of wax, and a lot of people still do put on wax. And as a matter of fact, um, I’ve never used a ceramic coating like this before. So, um, I say that a lot, right? Like I’ve never done this before. Let’s do it for the first time ever on camera on YouTube. So, but that’s, I guess, what my channel is about. So, um, this is a Turtle Wax Hybrid Solutions ceramic spray coating, and I’m using this because Project Farm actually did a sort of a test of a whole bunch of different ceramic coatings, and this stuff came out pretty close to the top. So, I will link that video in the little card or something somewhere. You should go check that out. It’s a pretty cool video. He does a really great job on this stuff.

But anyway, it’s pretty simple. All you’ve got to do is wipe everything down. So sometimes the polish or the compound leaves a little bit of a residue, and I have gone over the truck already with a cloth after I was done, but I’m gonna go over it one more time real thoroughly with just a real clean microfiber cloth just to make sure I got everything off. And then once that’s done, um, you’re supposed to spray two shots of this on every panel. Um, but I’m—it doesn’t really say what a panel is. I’m guessing a panel is probably like that sort of an area. So we’ll do two good shots of that, and then I got this little applicator that I’ll use to rub it on there and do the whole truck that way. And that should serve as a replacement for a wax coating, and this stuff is supposed to last for like about a year if you do two coats. So that’s what we’re gonna do, and hopefully, um, it’ll last that long. We’ll see how long this paint job is—this polish job, anyway—is it gonna last. So let’s get to it. This is the boring part right here.

Now the bottle says once you’ve got one coat applied, you should dry it with a microfiber towel, so that’s what I’m doing. The bottle also says that for 12-month protection, you should apply a second coat, but it does not say how long you should wait between coats or anything like that. Mm-hmm, yeah, no information about that. So I am just going to go ahead and put my second coat on now so that I can say this panel is done. Uh, it already looks really good. It feels super smooth. So, but while we’re here and I’ve got the stuff, we’re gonna put a second coat on to give me as much protection as possible. So let’s do that.

All right, well, there’s one panel completely done and the entire rest of the truck to go, so I will do that and see you on the other side.

Do do do, here we are with the final product, and I gotta say I think it looks pretty good. That’s not a professional job, but I think it’s probably a pretty solid, pretty solid amateur job, you know, for a couple of weeks’ worth of work—washing, clay, buffing, and then putting some ceramic on top. I think it definitely makes a big difference. Now this paint is never gonna be perfect. I can look at it right now and see lots of little tiny scratches, some haze areas where the paint has just been worn away. And, uh, you know, that’s what you get for a 35-year-old paint job. At least in the back part here where this is the old single-stage stuff. And, uh, you know, you’re never gonna, without some serious correction, make it perfect. And I am in no position in terms of my time or my experience level to do any serious correction on this truck, but I am again real happy with this.

If you’ve got an older vehicle that’s got some oxidation on the paint, um, that just needs a little bit of a refresher, especially if it’s got this old single-stage stuff on it, uh, you know, a buffer and some buffing pads and a little bit of compound will really just bring the shine right back out, and I highly recommend that. You know, I’m really happy that that guy on YouTube was like, ‘Ah, this truck is screaming for a buff and a polish,’ because I, you know, I think it was right.

The other thing to talk about real quick is this hood and the top of these quarter panels. Now I’m not sure if you can see it from where you are, but there’s definitely a demarcation line where the clear coat on this quarter panel ends and the base coat begins. But in terms of color, they’re very similar. It’s just sort of the shine. So the top of this looks kind of matte, and of course, the bottom looks glossy. As you get back far enough, I mean, yeah, you can see it, but it doesn’t jump out at you like it did before, so I’m really happy with that.

This hood is another story because it’s not just about the clear coat of the shine of the hood. The paint on this hood is actually really pretty badly damaged, and there’s a lot of places where the metal is coming through, and it’s just kind of ratty. So no amount of paint correction with a buffer is going to fix that, which is why I’ve decided to plasti dip this hood. I figure the hood will be a really good practice ground for some plastic dip practice. I’m planning on plasti dipping parts of my other truck because it’s having the same problem with the clear coat peeling, and I think plasti dip is an easy and sort of undamaging way to make that look much better without having to go through the whole thing of, you know, sanding and painting and all that stuff. So, I mean, you have to do some feathering and stuff to eat the plasti dip to stick, but that’s a whole other thing. Well, we’ll cover that in that video where I’ll either make it look a whole lot better or we’ll turn it into a gigantic debacle, which could also be fun.

So bottom line, glad I did it. Looks way better. And, uh, until next time, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys. We will see you next time. Oh, that was terrible. Thanks for watching, guys. We will see you next time.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. This obviously is not a Bullnose; this is my 2007 Ford F-150. It served me well for a lot of years. I’ve never had an issue with it, which is why I keep it around, and it’s basically my daily driver. But it is getting a little bit long in the tooth, and, uh, every now and then I like to spruce it up. Makes her feel better, makes me feel better, you know, and it’s good all around.

So today’s little bit of sprucing up is going to be fixing these old faded headlights. And I don’t know if you can see very well in the light of the setting sun, but, uh, this is pretty cloudy over here, and then this one over here is the same exact way. They’re pretty bad. So fixing that actually isn’t that hard. It takes just a little bit of sandpaper, some time, and some clear coat. And the clear coat that I’m going to be using is, uh, the good stuff. It’s SprayMax 2K clear. I actually have it left over from doing the wheels on my wife’s Explorer, so I figure, well, I got the can open and got some left, I may as well go ahead and, uh, use it on my headlights. And this stuff is, uh, the good stuff, so this should last the rest of the life of the truck. I should never have a problem with this yellowing or fading ever again once I get this done. And hey, you know, depending on how much, uh, orange peel there is at the end, I might even get a chance to use my new buffer, so that could be fun. Stick around!

Luckily for me, the headlights on an F-150 of this generation, generation, luckily, luckily for me, the headlights on this generation of F-150 are really easy to remove, and it’s going to be a whole lot easier doing this job with the headlights off the truck. So that’s what I’m going to do. As you can see, I’ve already done some work on both of these headlights. Unfortunately, I had some issues with my phone while I was filming the actual sanding down of these two, but, uh, even after doing a round of sanding, this one here is still a little bit junky down here at the bottom, so I am going to do some aggressive sanding down here to see if I can’t take care of some of this stuff. I’m going to use, uh, 220 grit, uh, to try to take out some of this stuff down here. Now, if I can’t get it, it’s not a big deal; it’s just this bottom part of the headlight, and the other one doesn’t really have as much of that problem. There is a little bit, uh, but the other one looks a little bit better. So like I said, I’m going to go start over basically with this one, and, uh, I’ll walk you through what I’m going to do.

So I’ve got all of my sandpaper already sort of, uh, cut up and ready to go. I’m going to start with 220 grit; that’s pretty aggressive for a headlight just to get, uh, a lot of this nastiness out of here. And then I’m going to move to 400 grit, and then I’m going to move to 600 grit, and then I’m going to move to 2,000 grit. At each level, I’ll be using water to make sure that, uh, I don’t put deep gouges or scratches inside the finish here. And, um, I’m going to start with a swirling motion because that’s the most aggressive to get, uh, all this stuff off of here. And then once the swirling motion has been laid in and I’ve got as much of this off as I think I can get, then I’ll do a horizontal sand like this to get rid of the swirl marks and make everything look nice and uniform. That’ll make the, uh, clear coat sort of get in there easier and make it look a little bit nicer with the clear coats on.

So again, the way we’re going to do this is we’re going to start with 220. I’m going to do swirls, then I’m going to do back and forth, and then we’re going to do 400, same thing, swirls, back and forth, and then 600, swirls, back and forth, and then 2,000, swirls, back and forth. And when we’re done, hopefully this will look about like this, except some of this crap down here will be gone. But we’ll see. I’m not sure I can get all this out of here, but we’re going to try it again. Yeah, it looks to me like I got some of that garbage off of there. Looks much better than it did. So I think we’re ready to mask and, uh, clean them up with some isopropyl alcohol and then clear coat.

While we’re waiting for these to dry, I just want to make a note. If you watched the episode where I painted the rims on my wife’s Explorer, then you’ve already heard me say this, but, uh, I’ll say it again here for those of you that didn’t. You always want to make sure that you’re going to wear a respirator when you’re working with a clear like this 2K clear. This is actually, um, a two-part clear coat. It is just like the stuff that you would use in a spray booth, uh, spraying a car, except that it’s in a rattle can. So, um, the catalyst in there can be pretty rough, so you want to make sure that you’re well ventilated and that you use a respirator. A lot of times I don’t wear respirators when I’m spray painting, but with this stuff, I always do. So, word of the wise.

Here we go, guys, the final product, and I gotta tell you, I am super, super impressed. I, uh, I thought maybe I was going to have to sand and do some buffing or, you know, wet sanding or something to get rid of the orange peel on this, and there is a little bit; you can see it, um, you know, if I move it around. I’m not sure how the lights reflecting back to the camera, but, um, you can see just a little bit of orange peeling there. But man, you know, I don’t think it’s enough for me to have to worry about wet sanding and buffing and going through that whole thing, so I think I am just going to leave these the way that they are. Uh, there’s a couple of little spots in here where I can feel, uh, contaminant got in; that’s probably just dust in the air from my garage. It’s not a super clean garage, so, um, but that’s fine. They certainly look a whole lot better than they did, uh, practically brand new. And you know this stuff is going to last a good long time, so, uh, I’m super happy with that.

The next thing we’re going to do before we put these back on the truck is just give them a real quick wax. Uh, I mean, it’s clear coat, so we’re going to wax it just like you’d wax your vehicle’s paint job. So pretty much any kind of car wax will work for this. I just happen to be using Meguiar’s Deep Crystal Carnauba Wax, but, uh, pretty much anything that you can pick up from, you know, auto parts store or even Walmart would work for this. If you’ve never waxed a vehicle before, it’s h pretty simple. Just make sure that you shake the wax up real good if it’s liquid wax. Oh, love the smell of carnauba wax in the morning. Put your wax on a clean cloth; you’re not going to do very much for this. They just, uh, just headlights, and then, uh, just wipe it on.

All right, and then we’ll set this one off to the side to dry, then do our next one. Once you’ve got your wax on, you just want to let it sit for a little while so it can dry. Uh, how long it takes is going to depend on the temperature, but you’ll know that it’s dry because you’ll see a hazy sort of film on there that, uh, looks a little bit dry, like dry wax. Dumbass. All right, try again. Once you’ve got your wax on there, you just want to give it the time. Give it the time. Once you’ve got your wax on, just give it a little bit of time to dry, and then once it’s dry, just wipe it off, and you’re good to go. All waxed up. The wax just serves as an extra protective coating just like it would on the clear coat on the rest of your vehicle, uh, to try to get this stuff to last as long as possible. And whenever I wash the vehicle and wax the vehicle, I will make sure to wash and wax these headlights now, uh, just like they’re a regular part of the paint because basically with a clear coat on them, they are.

Oh, here we have the final product, and I got to say I’m pretty happy with that. All it took was just a little bit of prep work, some sanding, a little bit of clear coat, and about 24 to 48 hours of cure time, and just a little bit of wax. And here we have basically what looks like brand new headlights. And now when you get real close, you can see the orange peel, but from just a little ways away, you really can’t see it at all. And no matter what, it looks way better than it did, and it’s going to last a good long time. So as always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys. We will see you next time.

Hello, hi folks, and here welcome back to Bullnose Garage for the first time in a couple of years. Um, I just want to go a really quick video to kind of give everybody an update about what’s going on, what’s going on with me, what’s going on with the channel, that kind of stuff. Um, I know I’m not a very big channel, so I don’t imagine I’ve got, you know, thousands of subscribers who are clamoring about what’s my next video going to be. Uh, but I do know I had a few folks who were very interested in the build of my truck that, um, kind of wonder what happened because I fell off the face of the Earth. Um, when COVID hit, um, a whole lot of stuff all happened at one time. Um, health-wise, family-wise, finance-wise, um, job-wise, all kinds of stuff sort of all happened all at once. Um, you know, we’ve got a couple of twin girls that we had, um, and I had those before I started my other video series or started this video series. But, uh, you know, they’re growing up and being a dad is a lot of work if you want to do it right. So, uh, I just didn’t have time to do the video thing. Doing YouTube videos, if you want to do them right and have high production value, it’s hard work. Um, you know, there are a lot of hours you have to sit at computers and do video editing and manipulation and, you know, cut together hours of footage into, you know, a video that’s worth watching for people out there in YouTube land. So, um, with everything going on, I just didn’t have time to keep up with it. But I also didn’t have time to keep up with the truck. Uh, so, uh, it’s still there. It’s right on the other side of this wall, actually. Um, and, uh, it still runs like a top. It runs great. Um, I’ve done a couple of things to it since I stopped making videos. I did record those things, so I have the footage. Um, I will make videos about that stuff, so I don’t want to do any work on that truck, uh, without making a video about it so that you guys know exactly what’s going on and everything that I’ve done to it will be documented. And, um, you know, so don’t worry about that. When I get a chance to get the videos out, I will. Um, I do have still plans. I still want to drop a 351 in the truck. I still want to, you know, upgrade all the suspension components and do a paint job and all this different stuff. It’s still in the cards. Um, it’s just, you know, anybody who’s got a project vehicle knows that, uh, generally a project vehicle is your bottom priority. And when, uh, life happens, a lot of time that’s why you see people with project vehicles sitting in their backyard with weeds growing around because, you know, life happens and projects just don’t get the attention that you want to give them. Um, in some regard, that’s what happened to me. So, um, but I want to let you know that I’m still here. Uh, I’m in good shape. There’s no major health issues, there’s none of that kind of stuff. I’m still around. The family’s good, you know, we’re okay there. The truck still runs, it does good. I still have plans for it. I still want to make, uh, all those things happen to it. I still want to bring you along on the journey if I can. Um, it’s just a matter of time, not having enough time to do, uh, the video editing and the output that I would like to do for YouTube. I really enjoy doing it. Uh, I just haven’t had the time to do that. Um, I also have some ideas for a, um, second channel where I’ll do some around the house type stuff. There’s a couple of videos on this channel, um, about around the house stuff like my garage floor, my workbench, uh, just the garage organization, I guess they kind of belong on Bullnose Garage because it’s about a garage. But there’s a lot of other things that I do, um, that don’t have anything to do with Bullnose. No, they don’t have anything to do with the garage, uh, but they are interesting enough, uh, that I want to put them on YouTube because I don’t see other videos about the kind of stuff that I’m doing. Um, so I think things like, you know, I’m working on, like we just bought an RV and there’s some stuff I’m doing to it, and there’s no videos on that. I had to go out and do my own research, figure out how to do some stuff to it, and I think that’d be helpful for some people. So I’m going to do some videos on that kind of stuff, uh, around the house kind of stuff, you know, little things, but that won’t go on the Bullnose channel because the Bullnose channel is about the Bullnose and you guys probably don’t care about that crap, so I’m not going to put that here. Uh, but I will make another channel about that and I’ll do an introduction and a thing about that channel, everything. But basically this is just to let you know that I’m still kicking. Um, I didn’t jump off the face of the Earth, I’m not six feet under. Uh, you know, things are basically okay. It’s just a matter of not having the kind of time. I’m a regular schmo who works a nine to five, and you know, I got a family to feed. And, uh, there’s, you know, when you only have so many hours in the week, uh, the things that fall off are the stuff that don’t contribute to the household. And even though this channel and doing things on the truck contributes to my own personal joy, um, that’s what has to be sacrificed because I don’t have time for that. And that’s not to say I’m not getting joy from my kids and everything else because I am. They’re adorable. But, yeah, unfortunately, and unfortunately for you guys, I just don’t have time to devote to that like I used to. Um, but again, I do want to keep doing it. So until I get so old and gray that I can’t work on that stuff anymore, um, I do plan to continue the channel, continue working on that. So, uh, yeah, that’s it. That’s basically the update. Um, unfortunately, don’t expect anything soon. I don’t expect any kind of regular updates. I will get things out as soon as I can. Like I said, I’ve already got all the videos already in the can for, uh, doing a fuel pump change on the truck. Um, I’ve also got another video that’s in the can for, uh, doing headlight restoration. So, uh, those will be coming at some point. Um, and then as I continue to do work on it when I have time, I will video that and try to get that out to you guys. So, um, you know, again, I appreciate all the comments about, you know, asking me what’s going on and where I’m at and, and, uh, you know, that kind of stuff. And I’m here and I’m okay. Just, uh, yeah, life gets in the way sometimes. So that’s it. So thanks again for watching. We’ll see you next time.

Hey guys, just thought I’d give you a real quick update on the condition of the truck and, uh, kind of how things are holding up after a few years. Uh, I still try to drive it every, uh, now probably about once or twice a month. Um, sometimes I drive it two or three times or five times a week just because my other truck’s in service or something else. So, uh, but yeah, it gets a fair bit of use and, uh, you know, it does pretty well.

So I just kind of wanted to, you know, it’s been about three years since I’ve done any real video work on it. Um, things like the bus in paint or, yeah, the buff job that I did and the, uh, uh, the white on the tires. Thought I’d just kind of give you an update as to how the stuff looks. So take a look. Hello.

All right, so let’s start with the wheels and the tires, specifically the white on the tires. Now, I don’t know if you guys saw my previous video where I actually did this with a white paint pen. Uh, I actually tried some white actual paint, but it didn’t work out very well. Uh, the paint pens seem to work the best. And so I’ll just go around and give you guys, uh, a quick tour. Now it’s been about, uh, two and a half or three years since I did that work to it and, uh, you should note that I haven’t really washed it in that time. Uh, this is a once or twice a month driver basically and, uh, I haven’t gone through any car washes. I haven’t done any tire cleaning, anything like that. Um, so basically just, uh, having it sit out in the elements. Now it is here in New Mexico, so there’s a lot of UV, um, a lot of really hot days. Uh, and you can see where, you know, like, like right in there in the r, there’s some spots and an O where the paint’s kind of coming out. But, you know, um, I think it actually looks really good for being three years old. I still have the paint pens in the garage. It wouldn’t take me very long to touch this up. Um, I’m actually really happy with how well it’s held up over the course of the last few years. So yeah, I think it looks really, really nice. Again, I’ll go over the other side and kind of show you them. This is the side that kind of gets more sun generally throughout the year. I started out putting, uh, wheel and tire covers on it, but I stopped doing that ’cause it’s just kind of a pain. So, but yeah, I mean, there’s a nice kind of closeup look. I mean, when you get real close, it looks ugly, right? But if you’re far enough away, like, you know, you’re with me driving on the road, it looks pretty good, you know, especially against those black tires with black rims. I mean, it looks nice this far away. So yeah, pretty happy with that, pretty happy with how well it’s worn up, uh, hold up, held up. BL.

Now, like I said, I haven’t done a lot of washing, so I don’t know what this would be like if I, if I’d gone through automatic car washes or, uh, done a lot of, uh, wheel and tire cleaning over the last few years. But, um, again, just sitting there kind of out in the sun every day, I think it’s, uh, pretty good.

All right, and now for the obvious update, which is the paint. Uh, you can see that there’s quite a bit more flaking going on now than there was. Um, I actually had a, I hate myself sometimes, I actually had a toolbox roll down the driveway and scrape against this right there. Um, you know, sometimes that happens, you’re not paying attention. It’s a, not really, but you know, but you can see that, you know, there’s some more flaking going on there and, uh, you know, some thinking going on there, a little bit of, uh, rust type stuff coming through there. Um, yeah, so the, the, uh, the buffing that I did with the, uh, trying to, yeah, you can, oh, here is, here’s a good, you can see where I, I had the, the buff go to before and now where the, the clear coat is continuing to flake away even more than it was before. You know, that’s just time, guys. This clear coat is just, it’s at the end of its life and, uh, there’s not much you can do about that, you know, except for sand it all down and repaint it. So the buffing gave me a few good months of it looking nice, um, and then it kind of went back to, to the way that it was. So, um, and this stuff back here is, is back to being really dull. It would not take much to, to sort of re-bring this out, but again, you can see here where this is actually some paint degradation here. So, uh, yeah, but as I’ve said several times, repainting this truck is in the cards, so I’m, I’m not too worried about it. It’s, it’s interesting to see the result after a few years of, uh, basically neglect. I, I don’t, I take care of the truck mechanically. I don’t really wash it very often. Um, it’s kind of a, uh, you know, backup vehicle for us right now. So once I get a nice new paint job on there, I mean, I’m, I’ll take care of that and keep it in the garage, but I’m, I’m not in that point yet. So yeah, I mean, that’s what it looks like after being out in the elements for, for three years.

All right, well there you go, guys. There’s the, uh, condition update on the Bullnose. Um, it’s again mechanically, it’s in great shape. Uh, visually it’s seen better days, but it’s not too bad, I think, considering its age and, and my lack of care over the course of the last couple years, visually anyway. Uh, you know, but I think the, the, uh, the tire lettering is a real win. Um, the buffing was a win for a while and it didn’t take very long for that to, uh, sort of go back to the way that it was before. But again, um, I learned a lot from that experience. If you guys haven’t seen those videos, go check them out, uh, where I, I, I sort of buff and shine this, this truck up and make it look way, way nicer. It was real nice for a couple of months and, um, again where I, uh, the video where I do the, the tire lettering, uh, it’s super simple to do. It takes a while ’cause it’s, it’s a pain to sit down and, and outline all the letters with pen, but, uh, I think, I think that the result is worth it. Um, so I would definitely do it again. As a matter of fact, I will probably go back and do these again at some point, uh, when I clean the truck up again, you know, at some point in the next five or ten years. Uh, yeah, so all right, uh, thanks again for watching, guys. We will see you next time.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. And this is not a Bullnose, but it is my wife’s car. It’s a 2013 Ford Explorer, and as you can see, there’s something missing. So about a little over a year ago, we went on a little vacation up to the Grand Canyon just for a couple of days. And going through Tucson, we went through some, uh, really rough construction. And then on the other end of town, we stopped to get some gas. And when I got out, I noticed we were missing a hubcap. Now, who knows where we lost this thing? It’s probably on the side of the road somewhere. Even today, my wife looked at this and saw an annoyance. We were gonna have to pay money to get a new hubcap and get it put on. I saw it as an opportunity for customization. I’ll be using this stuff here to achieve the look that I want for these rims, which is basically to look kind of like a police vehicle. Now, I’m not doing it so that I look like a police vehicle. I’m doing it because I like the way that black rims with center caps and trim rings look. And if you’ve watched any of my videos before, you already know that about me.

So what we’re using is this wire wheel on this big old grinder. Hopefully, that’ll make quick work of getting this rim cleaned up. I’ve got some automotive primer here just to get a good base layer. I’ve got high heat paint because that’s what I have. I have a whole bunch of it. But the important thing about this is that it’s matte paint. So I’m also using a 2K Spray Max clear coat. And if you’re going to use a clear coat over top of a base coat, you want to make sure that your base coat is a matte finish and not glossy because if it’s glossy, then your clear coat won’t adhere correctly. So this should be interesting. I’ve never used a 2K clear before. This will be the first time. I’m really interested to see just how that’s going to turn out.

So keep in mind, this is basically just a driveway paint job. I’m not going for super professional results, but, uh, I’m hoping that it turns out nice and, uh, sort of dresses up my wife’s vehicle just a little bit. So first thing to do is to get the vehicle up in the air, get all the wheels and tires off, and then I’m going to go through and remove all of these wheel weights so that we can get a nice, even clean finish all the way around. And then when we’re all done and everything’s put back together, we’ll just take it over to Discount Tire and get it rebalanced because generally, they do that for free, and we always get our tires from there anyway, so it’s a good deal.

Now, so I picked up this trick from some other YouTube videos I watched about painting rims with the tires still on. They used index cards to mask off the tire by placing them in the rim, but I’m using old wedding invitations. We had a bunch of them laying around. I guess we don’t have as many friends as we thought we did. Got the wheels and tires off the Explorer into the garage. The wheels are just about as clean as I’m prepared to get them, so that means we’re ready to start the painting process, which means I’m going to start with my automotive primer. So the plan for this is to put down one good coat on all four wheels, and then about the time that I’m done with all four, the first one should be ready for a second coat. So I’ll just do another round, get them all coated again, and then this primer is gonna need to dry for about 45 minutes or so before I put on my base coat.

So the base coat, again, is this high heat black Rust-Oleum matte spray paint, and that’s going to have two coats. So I’ll go around the exact same way as I did with the primer. And once the, uh, the base coat is on, then I’ve only got about 30 minutes or so before I want to put on my 2K clear. So you don’t want the base coat to dry completely before you put the 2K clear on because you want that good chemical bond. You want them to sort of bond together before the base coat is completely cured. So the base coat needs to be dry but not completely cured. So if you can touch it and you know it’s not tacky, then that’s about the time that you want to put your 2K clear on.

I may have a little bit more time today than normal. It’s a little chilly out. It’s about 60 degrees in the garage. So when I get to the 2K clear, I’ll go over a little bit more exactly how this works. It’s a little bit different than a rattle can because it actually is a two-part clear coat just like you get out of a spray gun, except it’s in a can. So, uh, it goes on a little bit different and works a little bit different. So we’ll talk about that when I get to that point.

So, so, so, so while I’m waiting for the base coat of my rims to dry up a little bit, let’s talk about this Spray Max 2K clear coat that I got. Now, I got this because it’s an, actually, it’s a two-part clear coat just like you’d get out of a regular air spray gun, only it’s conveniently in a rattle can. Um, and it should provide a nice long-lasting clear coat finish to these rims so I don’t have to worry about things coming up on the road and chipping them or giving any other kind of problems, at least not above and beyond what you get on a normal car finish because basically that’s what this is. So I wanted this for the durability and the, uh, you know, lasting longer than just like an off-the-shelf rattle can clear coat.

So the way this works is there’s this little cap on top, and you actually, uh, put this on the bottom there, hit it with the palm of your hand, and that breaks open the seal inside which mixes the two parts. Give it a good shake for a while, and you’re good to go. Now, when you’re spraying this, whenever you’re spraying paint, you always want to, uh, keep your hand in constant motion. You never want to stop, and if you’re gonna stop, you’ll let off so that you don’t create big splotches when you’re, uh, you’re doing your spray. But this is a little bit different than a regular rattle can. A rattle can, you go kind of quick. Uh, this you want long, deliberate strokes, much more like you’re doing, um, a regular spray gun because that’s basically what this stuff is.

If you’ve watched any of my videos in the past, there will have been times that you’ve seen me do some spray painting without a respirator, and that’s either because, quite frankly, I forgot or because I was outside and didn’t feel like I needed one. But in the case of this stuff, no matter where you’re at, no matter how well-ventilated your room is, you want to make sure that you’re wearing a respirator because this stuff is no joke. It’s serious stuff, just like the stuff that you put on a car in a spray booth. And so you’d never see those guys spraying without a respirator. You never want to spray this stuff without a respirator. I will definitely have my respirator on. Word to the wise, just, uh, it’s okay to get away without a respirator if you’re doing regular spray paint for a little while. Not with this stuff, so make sure you got one on.

We’re just about ready for this. Um, I’m letting these dry a little bit more. It’s taking quite a bit longer for these to dry than I expect. I think that’s probably because of the temperature, and I did put quite a heavy top coat on here. So I just want to make sure that there’s no more of these little tacky spots like you can see right here. They’re almost gone. I’m just about ready to put this on. One of the nice things about matte spray paint is that you can very clearly see when it’s dry and when it’s not. So even though this stuff here isn’t tacky anymore, uh, it’s definitely not fully cured. So I should still get a good chemical bond with my 2K clear. I just want to make sure that I don’t clear over this stuff. It’s still a little bit wet and sort of seal in that wetness and, uh, make it so that it never dries. I’m not sure if that’s even a thing, but, uh, I want to make sure that that’s not a thing that I’ve got to worry about. So we’re letting it dry. I think I probably got about five or ten more minutes, and then we’re good to go.

Okay, here we go. Okay, so now we’ll let that tack for about 10 minutes. Do it again. Okay, here we go, round two. So, so, all right, got my wheels and tires all done, back from the tire store, balanced and, uh, ready to put back on the Explorer. I think they look pretty good for, uh, an amateur garage black rim paint job. I’m pretty happy. There’s a few spots where the, uh, clear coat didn’t go on real smooth, and I think that’s just because of the angle that I was spraying at and just unfamiliarity with the process. But overall, I’m real happy. Out here, just about ready to put the wheels on the Explorer. I wanted to go over real quick exactly what I’m doing here.

So I went out and I got some center caps from a 2002 to 2005 Explorer. Now, this is a 2013, so obviously these aren’t meant to go on here, but I think they’re gonna look really good in the center of these black wheels. And to get these to work correctly, I had to go out and get lug nuts that actually allow for these to clip on. So these, um, actually clip onto the lug nuts themselves. They go back here, and there’s a little clip that goes in. So you have to make sure that if you’re going to do this with these particular center caps that you get the right lug nuts. So I had to get a set of new lug nuts for all four wheels, but they aren’t that expensive. I think it’s going to look nice. I will put the part numbers for these lug nuts and these center caps in the description of the video. You’re going to have to go to eBay probably to get the center caps, but the lug nuts that you can get from just about any auto parts store.

And then once that’s all done, of course, if you know me, I love trim rings, so we’re gonna put trim rings on all four wheels. But, uh, we’ll do that when everything’s done. I’ll save the trim rings for last because I am kind of curious how these wheels are gonna look on the vehicle without the trim rings, with just the center caps on them. Okay, I’m really looking forward to seeing how these rims finally look on this vehicle, so let’s get them on.

If your goal for this project is to make your rims most closely replicate what a police Explorer rims look like, then this is where you’re going to want to go and probably where you’re going to want to stop. This is about how they look now. The center caps aren’t exactly accurate, but the actual police Explorer center caps are a little bit more expensive than the ones that I got, so there’s that to consider. As for me, that’s not really the look that I’m going for. I like that look, but as I’ve said before, if you’ve watched any of my videos, you know that I am a sucker for trim rings, so that’s what I’m doing next.

Before you do something like this, keep in mind that the clips of the trim rings, trim rings, hello Bailey, before you do this, keep in mind that the clips on the trim rings are going to mar the paint on your rims. I don’t really care about that. Like I said, it’s a garage paint job, not a big deal, but trim rings will do that. So if you’re concerned about that, you may want to think twice about putting trim rings on your vehicle.

So, so, well, there you have it, a basically brand new set of rims for my wife’s Explorer. Now they’re not new, but they are refurbished, and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. If you’re looking to do something similar, then maybe you, uh, could go the same route that I went. Just an old set of steel wheels with some primer black paint, a real nice 2K clear, and a little bit of bling on top. The nice thing about steel rims is that you can pretty much do whatever you want. They’re pretty cheap. You can find them in any junkyard anywhere on a whole bunch of different vehicles, and if you screw them up, oh well, just clean them up and repaint them or get another one. It’s not a big deal. And me personally, I really like the way the steelies look, especially when they’re nice and cleaned up like this.

As far as my wife is concerned, she doesn’t really care. She told me that I could paint pink polka dots on them as long as the vehicle runs okay and is safe and as long as all four wheels match. Well, at the very least, all four wheels match, and I really like the way it looks. As always, guys, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, and we will see you next time.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. If you like what you see, you should definitely stay tuned. I’m talking about the workbench. Ever since I completed my garage renovation, I’ve had a big empty space right here, and I knew that I was going to fill it someday with a workbench. I looked and looked online to try to find a workbench that would fill this space, be good and strong, and wouldn’t break the budget, and they’re just not out there. If you want something that’s good and strong and big, then you’re looking at probably $500, maybe $1,000, maybe even more for something like that. So I knew I was going to have to build it myself.

The problem is that it was gonna have to be strong enough and big enough that if I wanted to do a transmission rebuild, I could throw a transmission on here, or if I wanted to change gears, I could throw a differential up here, or maybe I could put an entire dash up here and refurbish that. There’s a lot of reasons that I needed something strong, sturdy, and big, and this is what I came up with. All told, this is probably about $250. Now, that’s not exactly cheap, but compared to what you would spend to get something like this off the shelf, it’s a real bargain. I got it on casters, so it’ll roll around the shop nice and easy. Right now, it’s plugged into the wall, so it won’t roll quite that easy. Got some illumination so I can see what I’m doing.

Basically, this is two sheets of three-quarter inch birch plywood cut into pieces and then sandwiched together using glue and screws for the top, and then some poplar going around for the trim pieces. This is actually bed liner, so is this up here. This piece back here is just some leftover plywood I already had. The lights and the electrical strip, so that was a no-brainer. And the only thing that I couldn’t get locally was these legs, which I got from Amazon. Now, I like them because they’re adjustable. You can actually change the position to raise the workbench up and down.

I spent quite a while in quite a bit of mental gymnastics trying to figure out exactly how I was going to get this workbench together, what materials I was going to use. I’ve seen a lot of YouTube videos, guys that build workbenches like this, but a lot of the ones that I watched were guys with woodworking tools, planers, and routers, and all kinds of stuff that I just don’t have. I’ve got some handyman stuff and some mechanic stuff, and that’s about it, and that’s all I used to put this together. So we’re gonna go to past Ed, who’s gonna show you exactly how I did this. Like I said, keep in mind I am not a woodworker or a cabinet maker. I’m just some schmoe who wanted to put a nice workbench together for as little money as possible. So there’s a few mistakes in there, but overall I hope you’ll agree I think it looks pretty damn good. So take it away.

So my plan for this workbench is to be about 72 inches wide by about 34 inches deep and right around 38 inches high, although I’m not entirely sure how high I want it quite yet, but that’s why I’ve got some adjustable feet here. I found them on Amazon. We’ll see how well they work. I’m excited to try those out. This is three-quarter inch cabinet grade birch plywood that I got from a local lumber shop. I had them cut it to the right size, but they cut it to the wrong size. It’s pretty close, but it’s not exactly right. They cut each piece individually and changed the saw measurements every time they cut, so they’re all just a little bit different. So what I’m going to have to do is put everything together and then cut it all myself.

So this is three-quarter inch plywood. I’m gonna do three layers. I bought two pieces. I got sort of a big piece here that’s gonna go on the bottom, that’s my full size, and then I’m gonna have a sort of a middle sandwiched layer that’s got some cut pieces, so two bigger cut pieces, and I’m gonna slide a couple of smaller cut pieces here in the center, cut from this piece. And then once that’s glued and screwed together, I’ll put another big full piece on top of that and glue and screw and clamp all that together, giving me a top that’s about two and a half inches thick. And then on top of that, I’m going to put this quarter inch hardboard, and the hardboard is going to serve as a layer that’s going to be sacrificial. If I ding it up, if I paint it, if I do anything weird to it, get oil on it, water on it, whatever, I can replace that piece. It’s really cheap, and that way I’m not digging into or dinging up my actual plywood.

Once I’ve got this two and a half inch slab built with my screws and my glue, I’m doing both. Just never done this before. I’d probably just be fine doing just screws, but I’m going to go ahead and use the glue as well. I’m never going to want to take this apart. I don’t ever want it to come apart, so I’m doing everything that I can to make sure it stays together. So once that big slab is together, I’m going to kind of cut all four sides to be nice and square so that everything lines up nice, and then I’ve got this poplar here that I’m going to use as edging material to go around all the edges. And I’m actually going to paint this with a bed liner. I’ve actually got bed liner somewhere else here in the garage, and I step into the house. It’s painted over concrete, but it works really well. And I’m also thinking about painting the top of my desk with the same stuff just to sort of give it a little bit more chemical resistance and just overall more durability. So that’s the plan. We’re gonna see how that works out.

Of course, once all that is done, I can put my legs on the bottom of it, and I’m also planning on building sort of a, I don’t think the word is backsplash. We were working with a workbench. I’m not sure what the term would be, but it’s a back that’ll go up against the wall so that I don’t roll screws or nuts or pencils or whatever off the back of it and have it fall onto the floor. That’ll also serve as a place where I can stick a light that’ll shine down and give me plenty of illumination for whatever I’m working on. And I’ve also got a power strip that I’m planning on putting in there. So it’s a big build, but I mean, it’s big for me. I’m not a woodworker, so I’m hoping this will all go swimmingly well. I’m sure it will not, but we shall see exactly how it goes. So I’m looking forward to getting started, so let’s get to cutting.

So the first measurement that I’ve got to make is between here and here. This is going to be my middle sandwich layer, and I’ve got to fill this gap here with wood, and I’m going to do that with this piece of wood that came off my original 4×8 sheet. I’m gonna have to cut it twice, one piece here and one piece here, and so I need to measure how wide they got to be and how long they’ve got to be to go in here. Now, I’m actually going to measure them a little bit more than the size of this gap, and that’s because if I have them sticking out a little bit here or if they push these two boards out that way just a little bit, it’s okay because, like I said, I’m gonna be cutting off all four edges at the very end anyway, so it’ll end up being even. And I’d much rather cut them too large and have to cut pieces off the end than cut them too small and create scrap wood. So that’s what we’re going to do. This is about 24 and 1/8, which I’m going to say is about 25, which means each piece needs to be 12 and a half. And this way we are exactly 34. At least he cut that part right, but I’m gonna go probably 34 and a quarter, 34, and I’ll go 34 and a half, so each piece needs to be 34 and a half.

I picked up this handy cutting guide from Lowe’s. We’re gonna see if it even is worth the money I paid for it. I don’t have a table saw, so I’m just gonna have to do all these cuts with my handy dandy circular saw. So here’s my bottom piece. All the pieces that I got are just a little bit bowed, and I think that’s probably because they sat in my garage for a little while. But it’s not a big deal. You just want to make sure that when you’re gluing this stuff together that you have the bows opposing each other. So if it bows like this, then you want to have the other one that goes like that. So that’s the, when you clamp the edges, they come down. So you want the bowie part facing each other in the middle, if that makes any sense. This piece here is of the two big pieces I’ve got, it’s the least bowed, and it’s bowing a little bit this way. That’s exaggerated, but so there’s a hump in the middle, and that’s what I want so that when I put these pieces on and get it all screwed and glued, if I clamp it and screw it right, these pieces will help form the bottom piece and remove a little bit of the bow. And then the worst bowed piece is the last piece that I have. It’s set up over here, and that’ll go on top with the bow sort of humping down in the middle, and then that when I clamp it around the edges, it’ll bring it down into shape, and the screwing and gluing should take care of all of that.

The next job is to get these pieces laid out exactly how I want them as the middle part of my sandwich, and I didn’t do a great job cutting these middle pieces square, and I think that’s because it looks good there, but when I put this piece in, yeah, you can see a great big warp right there. So I think I’m going to flip this around that way, and I got a gap right here. And the reason I think is because I used that guide, but I had both sides of the guide clamped, but it was such a long run that I think the center of the guide bowed a little bit, and so I kind of curved as I was going through. And that’s one of the reasons why I used the guide early on, so that I can figure out how to solve issues like this later on. So let me bring this in so you can take a look at what I’m talking about. Here’s the guide that I used, and you can see that it’s got this little joiner in the middle that joins the two pieces together. Then you screw it down to get it nice and tight. The problem is that this piece here still flexes even back and forth this way just a little bit, so I think as I was moving along with my saw, this probably flexed a little and caused this little bit of a curvature as I was cutting it. So to solve that next time I use this, I’ll probably screw a block right here to the, you know, on the back of this to keep this from moving at all. I’ll get this exactly where I want it, screw a block down and prevent this from moving, and then of course I’ll clamp the ends, and that way no matter how much pressure I put on this as I’m going along, it won’t move.

I think that’s probably what happened. I used the laser level to give me some nice straight lines I could make my marks from. I wanted plenty of screws to make sure the top was going to stay together forever, especially considering the middle layer was in four pieces. Placing screws in predictable locations is important since I didn’t want to bump into any of these later when I put my final piece of plywood on. So I pre-drilled my holes using a countersink bit. Probably overkill and plywood, but you want to make sure not to skip this step. If you’re using something like MDF, countersinking the holes will prevent the material from bulging when you set the screws, which makes sure you have a nice flat surface to glue.

I got my pilot holes all drilled, my wood’s all cleaned up and ready to go, so now I’m going to do my first set of gluing and screwing. I’m only going to do half at a time of this center layer so that I don’t have to worry about my glue setting up too quickly and giving me problems. Now, I’ve never done this before, but I went and got this little bottle that’s supposed to be for rolling glue on, so we’re gonna see how it works. Okay, maybe we’ll go the wrong way. Oh, there’s that. That’s it, I’m going the wrong direction. The spout should be on top. Now the roar that I’ve read says that you should do this from the center out so that you push the glue from the center toward the outside of the boards. I actually used coarse thread drywall screws for this. They’re perfect because they grip well, don’t move too much material, and I had them lying around. I used one and a quarter inch screws so I would only go into two sheets of plywood.

So this roller is okay, but I think once I run out of the juice inside of here, I’m just going to pour it on with the bottle and then use the roller to roll it. That coming out of this bottle is not super great. As a matter of fact, I’m just gonna do that. Yeah, can’t say that I recommend this roller. It’s what I have, so it’s what I’ll use, but I think if I had to do it over again, I’d use a squeegee or maybe even like a credit card kind of thing. So more round two of gluing and screwing is complete. I’ve got my entire middle part of the sandwich all glued and screwed together, and I got the clamps around the outside just because I can. One thing to note about this whole endeavor is that this is a mechanics workbench. This is not a woodworker’s workbench. If they were a woodworker’s workbench, I would not be doing it this way. In fact, I wouldn’t be doing it at all because woodworkers’ workbenches have much tighter tolerances, and they’ve got to be completely flat, and there’s a lot of things to consider with a mechanics workbench. I just need a surface to be able to pound on, and so that’s really all this is. Like I said, I probably don’t even need the glue, but I’m using it anyway, so you know, if it doesn’t set up right or it doesn’t glue perfectly, then you know, who’s ever gonna know because it’s screwed together.

So the same goes with the sort of fit and finish. I mean, not all of these edges are perfect. Certainly, there’s some gaps and stuff in there, so I’m going to fill some of it in with some wood putty and sand it down before I do my next round, and that’s about all there is to it. So we’re going to let this set up and cure, and then I will be back to do round three. The bottom piece is gonna go on next. I’m gonna do that all as one big piece, so we’re gonna screw that up or screw it up. That’s kind of funny. So what about the pilot holes in there? I’m going to pour a bunch of glue on this, and I’m going to use a squeegee or something next time. This, I, I’m sorry, this little contraption here, this might be good for arts and crafts or something. It is not good for something like this. It just, the volume of glue is not good. The roller doesn’t work very well. I’m just gonna throw it in the garbage. So next time, we’re just gonna pop the cap on the glue bottle, pour it on, and then just squeegee it up and plop the new piece on, and that should be a lot quicker and easier, and I should be able to get that piece on before the glue starts to set because I think I noticed this last time that some of this glue was starting to set even while I was trying to spread it out with this thing. We will see you when I come back to do the next piece.

It’s been a few hours since I glued and screwed the first set of panels. It’s more than enough time for the clamping time to have gone by on the glue that I used. The clamp time for that’s about 60 minutes, so plenty of time. So I went ahead and took the clamps off, inspected everything. Everything looks good, and I got my last piece put here on top. I should note that I also put some wood filler in and sanded things down, made it nice and smooth just to help the glue to adhere to a nice flat surface. Probably unnecessary, but I did it anyway, so there you go.

One thing to note is you want to make sure if you’re doing this that you put these holes that I’m gonna drill, the spots for these holes, make sure that they’re not lining up with any of the screw locations on the first set of panels that I glued and screwed together. You don’t want your screws running into each other. I took care of that by coming in about two inches instead of one inch, but last said I did one inch from the edge. This set I did two inches from the edge, and I made sure that none of my lines going through the middle here are going to match any of the lines on the previous two panels that I did, so should be good to go. Good to go. I’m gonna go ahead and pre-drill all my holes. Once those are all done, I’ll get this cleaned up, take it off, slap down my glue, pop this panel on, get it clamped down, get it screwed, and let it sit overnight, and then tomorrow we can come back and attack it again.

So, so, so do the following day. Here we are one day later. My slab is about as solid as it’s ever going to be, and so now I’m going to take my piece of hardboard and put it on what is going to be the top of my workbench, get it screwed down. I’m only going to use about like eight screws around the perimeter just to keep it from going anywhere, and then I will cut the entire thing all together, all four sides, so that everything is the exact same size. Do now I’m about ready to cut. What I’m going to do to prevent this guide from wiggling is screw down a board right here to prevent it from moving in as I’m pushing the saw up against it. So I’ve got my measurements for both ends and here in the middle. Let me just verify my measurement here because this is the bottom of my table. I don’t really care if I’ve got some extra screw holes in there. It’s way more important to me that I’m straight on this cut, and I don’t have to worry about this thing moving. Moment of truth right here. So it looks really straight. I’m really happy with that. The only issue is that the blade isn’t quite deep enough to go all the way through the hardboard on the bottom of this, so I’m just going to, I’ve got a little multi-tool that’s got a little tiny saw blade knot that I can go through and just sort of clean that up. Oh, all right, there’s one side cut and even up. Well, there it is, a mostly squared off tabletop. Yeah, I’m pretty happy with that.

The only thing left for me to do now is to cut my trim pieces. I’m going to use this chop saw for that since they’re kind of thin. So hopefully you can hear me talk to you. It’s pretty windy outside, but such a great when you live in southern New Mexico. So here we go. Here we are back in the garage. Everything is cut. All of my trim pieces are laid out and ready for paint. While I’m painting them, I’m going to go ahead and also paint the top of this desk. It’s seen better days, and there’s pretty much nothing I could do to it that would make it worse, so we’re going to put some truck bed liner on it and see how that works. This is just Rust-Oleum truck bed coating. Got it from Walmart, and then I’m using a Zinsser Bullseye 123 primer. I’ve had a look with that in the past, so that’s what we’re using for all this stuff, and let’s get to it.

So I love this bed liner from Rust-Oleum, but I had a hell of a time with the cans clogging up. If you look at reviews for this brand, you’ll see I’m not alone. Clogging is the number one complaint. In fact, I had such a problem that I thought I might need to throw several full cans away because I just couldn’t get any paint out. The solution turned out to be a combination of brake cleaner and a small pick set. I used brake cleaner to clean out the caps and the stems on the cans when they would inevitably clog, then used the pick to enlarge the hole in the caps. This allowed me to get enough paint out to finish the job, but next time I’ll just get the roll-on stuff.

I just used regular deck screws to secure the back to the top of the table since nobody will ever see it. The blue line I snapped lines up with a plywood edge on the other side so I can see where the screws need to be. We’re to the point in the build where I’m going to put on the legs, so I want to talk a little bit about what these are. I found these on Amazon. They’re table legs meant for this purpose. They also move up and down, if I can get them to move. There we go. So they’re adjustable height. Now, there’s only like three or four different settings that you can put them on. It’s based on where you put the bolt through. I’m not entirely sure how high I want this yet, so I’m just gonna mount these and get them on and see where the height puts me at.

I also went out and bought a set of heavy-duty casters. These are like 20 bucks at Home Depot. They’re made for a wire rack, but they’ll work fine for this. For the most part, you have to drill out, so there’s holes in the bottom of these that’s actually meant for feet that come with the legs, which is a little screwable leveling feet that come with them. I’m not going to use those. I’m going to drill these holes out a little bit bigger with a stepper bit, and then I’m going to put these casters on so that I can move my table around wherever I want it. It means this kit, this set of four comes with two locking casters and two were just regular swivel casters, so this should work out perfect.

The first thing I need to do is actually drill these holes out. I don’t want to have to be doing something like this, so I’m going to take these off of here, get these holes drilled out, get these casters mounted, and then once they’re on there, I can get the entire leg assembly put on to the table. So like a full 40 percent of any of my videos is like just me looking for that. I can’t find, I mean, around here somewhere, I just used it. As you can see, I’ve got the table flipped over and on its legs, got the casters put on, rolled it around the garage a little bit. It works really well. I’m super happy with it.

So the next thing to do is to finish building out all of the trim pieces in this little backsplash cubby area, and it’s going to be hard for you to see, but right here I’ve got my laser level set up in a straight line directly down the center of this board so I can mark exactly where my screws are going to go. I’m using these humongous lag bolt screws because I think they’re gonna look nice. It’s kind of for decoration. I don’t need anything this humongous just to hold this one piece of trim on, but I think it’s gonna look nice, and it’ll definitely hold it in there, so not to worry about it.

So I want to make sure that when I do this that I drill pilot holes. That’s why I’m marking everything right now because when you’re putting something this big into the side of a piece of plywood, you definitely want to do pilot holes. Even if there’s as much meat as there is right here now, even with a pilot hole, I would never attempt to put something this large into just the side of a single three-quarter inch piece of plywood. But since I’ve got all these stacked together and they’re all one solid piece essentially, I think I can get away with this. So I used my countersink with a small drill bit to set the initial hole locations for the trim and then went back to drill out a much larger pilot hole in the plywood edge for the actual lag screw. I used clamps just to keep the top of the trim even with the top of the workbench.

So for the back cubby, I used construction screws that looked very similar to the lag screws I used for the front and sides, just much smaller. Drilling pilot holes for this was critical since I was joining the trim to the edge of a single piece of three-quarter inch plywood. I was a little afraid that I might create bulges in the plywood this way, but everything went together without a problem.

So do, do, man am I glad this workbench is finally done. It pretty much puts a cap on my entire garage renovation. It was the last thing that I had planned to do and needed to get in here to say that my garage is basically done, and it gives me a really, really great space to do any kind of work on any kind of parts I could imagine for the truck. Now, I know this isn’t really a Bullnose episode, and you know I’m kind of all about that, but it is about the garage, and this is Bullnose Garage, so there’s going to be some videos about the garage interspersed in there, so that’s what this is for.

You know, I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos, and I saw a lot of guys putting together workbenches kind of like this, but I didn’t see anyone who put one together that was relatively inexpensive, had adjustable legs so you can move it up and down, and just with the route that I was going to go, which is laminating some plywood with a hardboard top for durability and then some nice little accent touches. You know, I really like this bed liner that’s really neat. I like it enough that I put it on my desk too, so obviously I’m a fan of that. Yeah, I just, I’m just so happy with how it turned out. I can’t imagine doing it any other way.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys. We will see you next time.