Week #20

I may have looked silly sitting in Santa's lap at the mall but the effort paid off. He rewarded me for being good by leaving me a new sandblasting hood under the tree on Christmas morning. I've been using the one that is supplied with the blaster from TIP for years and have always felt a little "unprotected" with it. The new one is VERY nice. I didn't realize the difference a good hood could make. It's the real good one that Eastwood carries and it really seems to be made well... comes way down over your shoulders and has a far superior 'lens' system... I guess I'm way behind in this area.

With the new hood on my head, got out on Sunday and blasted up a storm. Cleaned up all around the trunk area including the inner wheel well housings, the trunk torsion bar brackets, the inside and outside of the rear panel(being careful, of coarse), and all surfaces that will be receiving the new trunk panels. I hit down inside the rear frame rails quickly just to knock off the loose rust or crud that might be there. These frame rails are in excellent shape with over 50% of the natural gray color still showing. I also went up and around the remaining three sides of the rear glass channel just for cleanup and hopefully reveal any EXTRA rust through that might not normally be seen. Luckily, no surprises... just two spots I've known about all along. Afterwards I treated all bare surfaces with Oxi-Solve, including heavier than usual applications down in the frame rails.

Went through 4, 50 lb bags of sand fairly quickly, about an hour and a half of blasting, but the real time consuming part was cleaning up. Blew and vacuumed on the car for over an hour and swept and shoveled the stuff off the concrete for another hour and a half. I have a spot out back of a shed in the yard that I have been putting the used sand... I just noticed that the bottom 10" of the back wall of the shed is "under ground" now.

Last week I mentioned that I had warped the rear panel with a little too much heat from the welder. Well I'm happy to report that the "irregularities" were 90% removed with a little hammer and dolly work, however, I'll still be punished for my poor practices with extra body work to get things just right.

Listen... I am this close (speaking while holding thumb and forefinger within an sixteenth of each other and squinting eyes to view the gap between them) to welding in all rear replacement sheet metal... excluding quarters.. outer wheel well housings..... well... I feel real good about things!!!