Friday, August 27, 2010

There's always one more bit.

Today I put some more stripper on a few last stubborn spots. The indents on the doors where the handles are were pretty stubborn, and also the Tail. I applied stripper just to where there was paint, and then scraped it off after 45 minutes or so. I exclusively used the Triangle Scraper today.

I also applied some stripper to the front and rear bumpers and scraped them clean as well. I also applied stripper to the rain gutters that I had pulled from the car, which are a PAIN to deal with. They are too thin and light to stay put on the floor or on the saw-horses we've got set up. And they are deeply grooved (in the channel the rain runs in) to be able to brush stripper into. I think I'll end up sanding them most of the way.

I also tried stripping through the primer on the sunroof, only to find some thick layer of white paint or plaster, or bondo underneath. There definitely isn't metal on the sunroof where there ought to be (Ie, within a 10 mils of the surface. So after scraping some nice deep holes looking for the sheet metal, I think I am going to bondo my holes up and just sand it smooth.

Then I spent four hours fighting with Bondo. I had a few spots where there was previous body work and the bondo wasn't all off. The stripper really helped to dissolve the bondo, but frankly, it was just as easy to just really muscle the Triangle Scraper into it and scrape it out quickly.

The entire rocker panel below the passenger door had some bondo on it, which I ignored until today. Once everything else was stripped, I decided to attack it. It turns out that some heavy handed body-man laid on about a half inch of Bondo trying to get the panel right and built it up way too far. Below the bondo was a ton of rusted out holes that may or may have not been from a body panel puller. I scraped for a few hours. It would have really helped to have had an angle grinder, or power tool, but I honestly didn't expect the bondo to be so thick or deep. I also realized that the body folks didn't protect the backside of this panel, and it had some minor rust starting to form. I'm going to have to spray the back of the panel now that I've removed the rust so the problem doesn't continue.

Total time spent: 6 hours

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