Week #106

After a slow start, the paint and body man got cranked up on the 'Runner. As he started working the quarters, I got set up at home to prep the doors, hood, fenders and trunk lid. I had agreed to sandblast and epoxy primer the undersides of each piece and deliver them to him as he needed them... a weekends work, right?

Mid week I made the quick trip to the blasting media store and picked up 11 bags of sand... you don't want to be short sand in the middle of blasting. I am lucky in that the area that I sandblast is behind my garage, in the far back corner of our 1 acre lot. I am able to sweep the used sand off the edge of the concrete into an area that no one can see or would want to go. For this reason I don't reuse the media like I use to at my previous house. I use to spend more time sweeping up sand and sifting it back into the hopper than I did blasting. Truth be known, the sand doesn't "cut " half as good the second time around anyway. At only $2 a bag, it is so nice to just blast until the hopper is empty, then just pour in a new bag.

Anyhoo, a morning of blasting netted me 2 clean doors, the deck lid, the lower grill "valence" and the upper plate that ties the two fenders together. If anyone has done much blasting they are surely aware what hidden problems rear their ugly heads. This blasting session was no different.

The trunk lid was the biggest disappointment. This is the cars original lid and I was sure I would be able to use it as it looked pretty good. Unfortunately the blasting uncovered quite a bit of rust through in the wrinkled corners of the underside bracing panel. It was obvious that I could not use this lid on this car.

I knew that someone had gone to the trouble of filling the holes for the remote mirror and remote control on the inside of the drivers door. I didn't know just how much of a hack job was done until I blasted away the filler used to hide the work. My plan for the moment was to cut these areas fron a donor door and splice them in. Again, this door is one of a very few original parts of this car and I was bound and determined to keep it.

The passenger door I got from a friend. The cars original passenger door was damaged beyond repair. Blasting again revealed a bit of rust through near some seams and a fairly good sized hole at the lower rear corner. Useing the handy cardboard template method I was able to fix this pretty easily.

After a little clean up I prepped and sealed all the pieces that I had blasted. I will deliver these to the body man when he asks... we don't want to hold him up now do we?