First Coats of Primer

Here is the car on its way to my friends to get a coating of Epoxy Primer. Funny thing to notice here is the tiny trailer I can fit this thing on...lol.

Here is the Master Joe Campbell laying on a fresh coating of Epoxy Primer... without a mask... in a garage... with poor ventilation... grass roots resto at its best! lol Joe ended up paying for that one later in the day. Folks, you always have to take necessary precautions when dealing with these chemicals. This primer causes nerve damage if left to prolonged exposure, dont take chances... do like your daddy told you and "wear your safety gear"!

Here is the car drying after Joe was finished. It was pretty nice to see the car with a nice even coat on it... like a light towards the end of a tunnel.

Now the car is back in my garage, and ready for the next stages to begin... more updates to come as I begin the cutting and patching!!!

Take care for now...

Blast-off!

Well, another week or so gone by... and I'm finally getting my car back from the media blaster. Due to the recent Hurricanes coming through, we've been getting a lot of rain causing me to keep the body locked up from the elements in order to not allow rust to begin again.

You can see here in this image the light vs. dark grey areas of the body. What your seeing in the dark areas is the effect of soda blasting. Baking Soda allows you to strip the metal of all paint/coatings while still maintaining good protection from rust. The light areas you see are from Sand. Sand is much more harsh to the metal as you can see... the abrasiveness of the sand removed much more, but the metal must immediately be coated once this is done.

Here is another image showing the underside of the front end. This is an extremely critical area due to this being a main mount point for the new VTech Subframe. The previous owner put in new floor pans, however, when doing so did not completely remove the bad metal. Instead, they double-paned the area by overlapping the new panel to the old. This could have all worked out, except that they didnt remove the front subframe when doing so, so in turn they encapsulated the bolts in place. I found all of this out of course when I was trying to locate the bolts in order to remove the frame weeks ago. Once I cut the bolts free I was fine... now will be the time to go back and fix this while all is visible to me.

The last two photos show more of the bottom of the car. This area of course has the most issues due to moisture, etc. What I'm deciding to do in this case is glass the whole bottom of the car vs. going in and re-welding all new panels in place. I've removed all signs of rust at this point, and by glassing the bottom I can ensure moisture will no longer be a problem, and the fiber-glass will actually end up being more stable than the sheet metal when all is said and done. Some of the other panels that look like swiss cheese I will replace accordingly.


Next thing to do is to have the body coated in Epoxy Primer. Regular Primer allows moisture to pass through the coating, Epoxy Primer will properly seal the surface giving me the time needed to complete all the body modifications and repair.