Month: June 2009

Last weekend the weather was finally good, so I took the front doors outside, washed them off, and let them soak on metal treatment solution to get rid of the last bits of rust. Then I hung them up in the garage to dry, and it immediately started raining again. But they were all dried out after a couple of days, and the weather got better again, so I was able to spray a couple of coats of epoxy primer on them. Once that dried, I started putting some body filler on the dents I hadn’t been able to remove earlier. And of course when you put a nice smooth coat of paint on something, you are able to see a bunch of small dings that were invisible when the door was dull bare metal…

I did some more dent-fixing on the front doors, and welded back in place a small bracket inside the driver’s door that the outside handle screws into.  I also continued touching up some of the filler in various places of the body.  It has been threatening rain almost every day, and it simply hasn’t been hot and dry enough for me to wash off the front doors and have them dry reasonably quickly.  My ambition is still to get the entire body and doors in a coat of PPG K36 primer by the end of the month.

I also fixed up the gasoline shutoff valve by lapping the moving part into the body with very fine abrasive powder and toothpaste.  Now it opens and closes very smoothly and shows no signs of leakage.

This week I used my stud welder again to fix a couple of dents in the fron passenger door. Then the weather was nice this evening, so I soda-blasted the remaining paint on both front doors. I had a whole new bag of soda, but I needed only about a third of it. I’ll have to figure out something else to blast…
I also started to do some final touch-up work on the various body filler patches around the car, and I bead-blasted one section of the hood.
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be sunny, so I should be able to wash off both front doors, and in a couple of days give them a coat of epoxy primer.

Again, there were zillions of other things occupying most of my spare time.

In the last couple of weeks I sanded down the filler I sprayed on the roof, and the body work on roof panels and gutters is essentially done.
I also stripped most of the paint from the other front door. When the weather is dry I can soda-blast both front doors.
I also mounted the door hinges to the body. I reused some of the original screws and washers (which had to be bead-blasted and Parkerized) and ordered some replacements for the ones that got mangled when I removed the hinges a couple of years ago. With the hinges in place, I was able to temporarily hang the doors and check that they opened and closed properly and nothing was bent too far out of shape. A couple of hinges needed a bit of bending to get the doors to line up nicely.