Week #103

Just a few more things to weld and it's primer and "outta here!"

The big "V" shaped brace that it just behind the rear seat back was busted loose when the car arrived way back whenever. I'm guessing from the looks of the car that it was raced and this loose weld along with others stress areas are the result. A quick clean up of the joining surfaces and re-welding this was no problem. I wasn't worried about looks here. Also, this car had drive shaft safety loops at one time. The 4 largeish holes at the drive shaft tunnel would require filling also. The last, and more visually important hole was an extra one punched through at the firewall just next to the throttle cable hole. After checking with some online friends with simular car to insure that I wasn't closing up an important hole, I set out to fix this spot. I would take a bit more time with this repair that the 2 previous.

The hole was about 3/4 of an inch in diameter... a little to big to do a "fill with weld " and get the cosmetic result I would need at the firewall. For this hole I would cut a small circle of metal and patch it in just as any other metal patch. This whole process took only 30 minutes or so and worked out great.

Finally, it was time to prime. That sounds like "no problem, pull out the gun and start shooting" but no. The car has been sitting bare metal with a protective coating of Oxysolve, an Ospho(?) type product. Over the coarse of a week, working each night, and even having a little help from the neighbor Jon, I used half of a box of Scotchbrite pads and sanded down the entire surface of the car that was to be primed. After that came a good cleaning with a quality surface prep/lacquer cleaner. This worked me to Saturday, a great full day to spray and clean up afterward. I sprayed a full 2 gallons of metal etching primer and believe me I used every drop. The only areas that wouldn't be primed with this stuff were the trunk and rear panel. Those areas were covered with just lacquer primer and would need extra work getting that stuff off.

I really enjoyed spraying that day. I really felt like the car was getting somewhere. After all the metal work, sandblasting, long delays and so on, the car was looking like a car that was soon to be painted.