Post 3 of 3:
So, I had this week off work to basically smash my way through stripping, rust proofing, then covering the underside of the car.
As many of you will have learned from GCSE English, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
I packed up work on the Friday and bombed back home along the lanes back to our village, sun shining, windows open, excited and motivated to make some decent progress after weeks of prep. I pulled into the driveway and hopped out of the door of the daily Passanda (170,000 mile PD130, natch) only to be met with one of the worst sights imaginable - ‘er indoors holding decorating supplies.
It transpires that during the week I had agreed to ‘strip in the bedroom’ and completely misunderstood the assignment. No bother, I had ten days straight to get stuff done, I can spare a day to help peel and sand.
FIVE DAYS LATER, we had stripped three bedrooms back to plaster, DIY plaster repaired about 3,000 pointless sockets, cracks or blown out holes (lol), remade skirting, coving, door frames for all rooms, and build a tiny wall in wardrobe type thing (it used to be the airing cupboard, it’s genuinely teeny but she wanted it) and wallpapered and painted everywhere.
The days were disappearing fast, so I put my foot down and said no more of this adult curse word, I want to play with my toys.
Knowing I was going to run out of time, I decided to focus on getting the car stripped and etch primed as a bare minimum - as you’ll have seen the car was on the rollover jig, so I best roll it over?
Err no. With anything more than 45 degrees the lard-arsed shell would be brushing the floor, and I could do with not mangling the rear quarters on the concrete after the time and effort that went into getting them on the car. I’d have to do it on my back. What a nice waste of money that jig was.
With the above as a starting point, I put some axle stands under the car in case the DoesntRollOver Jig failed and dropped the shell on my nose, and got to work. I didn’t grab many photos as it is exceptionally messy work, but about 20 hours or so later, the passenger front corner, sill, floor, chassis rail and transmission tunnel had been stripped.
I then had a mishap with the rust treatment solution I was using - for some reason it created surface rust….
Another full day of speed stripping the rust treatment stuff off, with the raging ‘ump might I add, I got the etch primer on those areas and I have my fingers crossed that I haven’t trapped any rust underneath. I’m going to leave the car in this state for a couple of days whilst I strip the rest of it and see what happens.
As you can imagine, it’s pretty disheartening. I expect I’ll end up starting all over again and stripping this back too, and this entire week off will have been a waste of time.
So, I had this week off work to basically smash my way through stripping, rust proofing, then covering the underside of the car.
As many of you will have learned from GCSE English, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
I packed up work on the Friday and bombed back home along the lanes back to our village, sun shining, windows open, excited and motivated to make some decent progress after weeks of prep. I pulled into the driveway and hopped out of the door of the daily Passanda (170,000 mile PD130, natch) only to be met with one of the worst sights imaginable - ‘er indoors holding decorating supplies.
It transpires that during the week I had agreed to ‘strip in the bedroom’ and completely misunderstood the assignment. No bother, I had ten days straight to get stuff done, I can spare a day to help peel and sand.
FIVE DAYS LATER, we had stripped three bedrooms back to plaster, DIY plaster repaired about 3,000 pointless sockets, cracks or blown out holes (lol), remade skirting, coving, door frames for all rooms, and build a tiny wall in wardrobe type thing (it used to be the airing cupboard, it’s genuinely teeny but she wanted it) and wallpapered and painted everywhere.
The days were disappearing fast, so I put my foot down and said no more of this adult curse word, I want to play with my toys.
Knowing I was going to run out of time, I decided to focus on getting the car stripped and etch primed as a bare minimum - as you’ll have seen the car was on the rollover jig, so I best roll it over?
Err no. With anything more than 45 degrees the lard-arsed shell would be brushing the floor, and I could do with not mangling the rear quarters on the concrete after the time and effort that went into getting them on the car. I’d have to do it on my back. What a nice waste of money that jig was.
With the above as a starting point, I put some axle stands under the car in case the DoesntRollOver Jig failed and dropped the shell on my nose, and got to work. I didn’t grab many photos as it is exceptionally messy work, but about 20 hours or so later, the passenger front corner, sill, floor, chassis rail and transmission tunnel had been stripped.
I then had a mishap with the rust treatment solution I was using - for some reason it created surface rust….
Another full day of speed stripping the rust treatment stuff off, with the raging ‘ump might I add, I got the etch primer on those areas and I have my fingers crossed that I haven’t trapped any rust underneath. I’m going to leave the car in this state for a couple of days whilst I strip the rest of it and see what happens.
As you can imagine, it’s pretty disheartening. I expect I’ll end up starting all over again and stripping this back too, and this entire week off will have been a waste of time.
Bravo & keep at it!