88 YJ-CJ Firewall Paint!

Firewall Paint:

To take advantage of the good weather and a long string of days off, I pivoted over to the firewall

First, I welded a little adapter plate for my new throttle cable.  The factory cutout is square and I needed a smaller round hole:


Inside view:




All the extra holes were welded shut - there were a lot of them.  Seam sealer was also used where appropriate.

I kept some factory holes. Chase made bolt-in plates for these two cutouts - one is for the manual clutch master cylinder the the other is for the electrical harness.

It felt weird to drill new holes right after welding shut so many other holes, but it had to be done!  Four new holes and the new heater/defroster was temporarily mounted:

After some sanding and cleaning, it was time for some masking and some epoxy primer out of a spray can:



The next day, it got painted Summit Candy Apple Red.  This is a single stage, solid color paint.  No clear coat and no metallics to complicate the paint process.  It's not my ideal paint, but it's the best choice for painting on my driveway 😃. 


The quality of the paint came out pretty good, but there's room for improvement.  It's a firewall, so the paint quality isn't really critical.  I will strive to do better on the other parts.    

I wrapped the red around the corner, and will repaint most of this area later.  

I was trying to get close to the original paint color, and failed miserably.  I matched the original paint up with the Summit Color Chip book, and chose the best match.  But the color match book must have been off.  I'm still happy with the color.  

Inside Firewall and Front Floor:

We quickly pivoted over to the inside firewall, as it's the next critical part.  After the inner firewall is cleaned, primed and painted, then I can install the brake booster, electrical harness, heater, steering column, dash, gauges, etc.  

This should be painted Candy Apple Red before the end of the year.  

There's paint stripper and Saran wrap on the passenger side:

Chase has been pretty helpful during this phase!