Sunday, December 11, 2011

Yesterday, made good progress on a number of things:

- painted POR-15 in the inner bottom of the doors.  Driver's door, which is original, had quite a bit of rust, so this will stop it.

- continued sanding/filling/sanding door panels, and am pretty much done on that front.  Will go back and re-check today.

- started filling/sanding dents in front valance.  I put on a new valance, but when clamping it for the panel adhesive to bond, dented the front.  So am filling that and am probably 75% done.

- to cover (even temporarily) all of the bodywork, I activated a can of 2K epoxy primer (spray-on).  'Pot life' is 4 days, so I'm going to try and make the most of that $19 can of primer.

- dinged some dents out of the passenger front fender (from dropping it on the concrete).  They came out pretty easily, and now just need a skim coat of filler.

Monday, December 5, 2011

A good weekend of welding and body filler.  Welded up the multiple holes in the doors from various mirror mountings.  I plan to go back with stock chrome mirrors (which I already have), after the car is painted.  Reckon I'll drill them then.  Though, I suppose, I should drill them while still in primer, so as to not leave a bare metal edge to rust.

A quick stop by Harbor Freight on Friday night, and I had new welding gloves and a solar-powered, auto-dimming welding helmet. (see pic)  I also bought some ear protection, as my air compressor is really LOUD.

Locating my cut-off tool (for grinding the welds) was problematic, but after some accusatory emails to some friends, to whom I thought I had loaned it, I remembered where it probably was, and, indeed, it was there!





Welding with non-shielded, flux-core wire is a little messier than MIG, but I got the hang of it, and the spatter comes off pretty easily with some 60 grit paper.



Doors are now skim-coated, sanded and primed.  I most likely will go back over them again.  I also am going to apply POR-15 to the inside bottom of the doors, as they tend to rust, and the driver's door is already showing some corrosion. 



 

I also did a little work on the driver's rocker....

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Yesterday, my brother and I started the final bodywork, pre-paint.  Mostly, he showed me 'bondo' technique,  proper sanding methods, and how to prime the car body.  Here are some pics...

driver's door pillar devoid of primer

first coat

with filler, after sanding

small dent near back-up light

welded-up pinhole where dealer plate was

dent at trunk

repair of trunk dent

trunk after filler, before full prime

more trunk.  green is from glazing putty

passenger door and pillar

close-up

pass door after sanding

here i pinged a 'proud' dent and filled

Work has slowed - but still making progress

The last couple of work sessions have been dedicated to scraping the old undercoating off of the bottom of the car.  With the help of some friends, this was accomplished with putty knives, scrapers, naptha, a cordless multi-tool, and hours of elbow grease.  The bottom of the car is in fine shape, with only some dents to contend with.  The bottom is relatively clean now.

Next step is to re-coat the bottom with new undercoating, then prep for painting....