Month: June 2012

I took off the driver’s door and put it on sawhorses, which made it easier to sand it. I didn’t try to remove all the old paint, but I made sure to sand completely through the old repaint job, and well into the original paint. Fortunately the original paint is still quite good beneath the surface- there isn’t really any peeling, cracking, rust bubbles, etc. The only exception was the trunk lid, which I took completely down to the metal, and of course the places where I needed bare metal do do dent-pulling or welding. I have to spend maybe 10 or 15 solid hours with the sander do do the entire car. It’s just noisy, dusty, uncomfortable work…

The paint on the trunk lid was in really bad shape, so I took the lid off the car and used paint stripper to completely remove all the old paint. It also needed some sanding to deal with the spots the stripper didn’t completely take care of.
I also started sanding the hood. I noticed that the paint thickness is very uneven- some parts needed tons of sanding to get through the topcoat to the primer, but other parts were down to the metal after a few seconds. I still need to decide if I want to remove all the paint, or just sand it enough to get rid of the deteriorated top layer.

To fix the dent on the bottom of the rocker panel, I made a special puller attachment from some bits of scrap metal. It got clamped to the seam at the bottom of the rocker panel, and it was able to pull it down to the correct position. Then I used the stud welder to pull out the dented portion of the rocker panel.
I also welded a couple of small cracks in the hood, and filled in the holes in the driver’s door where the rear-view mirror had been attached.
The car is just about ready for pant removal, which is a messy job. I already have the new primer and filler, so there is nothing to wait for, except finding the time.