1931 Ford Restoration Diary

Yesterday I stripped the other rear door with chemical stripper.

Today I re-welded a broken spot weld on the window track inside one of the front doors.

Then I took out my soda blaster and blasted the rest of the paint off the two rear doors. I had done the flat outside portions with chemical stripper, and with the blaster I took care of the edges and around the window frames, places where there are too many nooks and crannies to do effectively use chemical stripper. The blasting took maybe 20 minutes per door. Soda blasting is SO much nicer than sand blasting! You don’t need a full head covering- you just take a shower afterward, and you are clean and fresh-smelling! And tomorrow it is supposed to rain, so all the leftover soda on the driveway will disappear!

Yeah, I did some more filling and sanding.

But then I decided to do something different. I stripped the paint from one of the rear doors, with chemical stripper. Compared to stripping the body, this was a joy. The body surfaces were vertical, which meant that the gooey nasty stripper kept dripping on the ground (and my feet). But I could simply put the door flat on a couple of sawhorses, pour some stripper on it, and spread it around with a brush. I stripped the entire outer surface, and once all four doors are done, I’ll use my soda blaster to strip the edges and anyplace I didn’t get with the chemical stripper.

After I cleaned the door up, I took my stud welder and used it to pull out a dent in the window frame area.

Dealing with the door was so easy, I will hopefully find the time to do all four in the next week or so.

BTW, last spring I removed the glass, regulator mechanisms, and lock mechanisms from all the doors. Fortunately it all came out clean and easy. Some of the mechanisms will need worn spots repaired, but that will give me something to do over the winter, when it’s too cold to paint.

Still working on applying and sanding body filler, for maybe 15-30 minutes a day.

A distraction: I changed the oil in my Triumph Spitfire- I realized that it not been changed in over two years (and about 5000 miles). I need to do the antifreeze, too- it’s almost 4 years old.

Skipped Hershey this year. Just no way I could disappear for a whole day in the middle of the week.

I was away all last week, so not much progress. I put more filler on some spots that needed more and kept sanding.

Sand, sand, sand.

Just enough time for a bit more sanding. There is a lot of sanding to do; I’ll probably be at it for a couple of weeks.

Not much free time today; I spent maybe five minutes sanding body filler on the roof panels.

I applied some filler to the joints at each end of the header. These were originally leaded.

I also finished bead-blasting that trim strip that goes under the header, and started removing some spot-welded caged nuts from another trim piece that runs between the windshield and the rear of the gas tank. The nuts got destroyed back when I tried to remove the rusted-out bolts from them. Actually, I was able to remove the bolts from 8 of the 12 caged nuts, despite them having 75 years to get frozen in place…

I applied a bit of body filler to some small dents in the header. I also primed the ends of the header, where it was soldered in place. I had to mix up about one ounce of epoxy primer and go through the hassle of cleaning the spray gun, just to paint about 1/4 square foot of the car body…

I also spent a few minutes partially bead-blasting the metal trim strip that runs across the top of the windshield opening, right under the header.

I finished soldering the ends of the header to the windshield pillars and the roof panels.