Productive day today... got the underside of the hood
and deck lid coated...
with Ospho as well as both headlight buckets,
the grill header and front bumper steel sight shield.
Also painted a couple brackets and pulled out the NOS C6 cooling pan I got this week...
NICE!
Next, I'll flip the hood and deck lid and coat the top sides with Ospho and start gathering up the hardware to start rehanging the sheet metal for the trip to the body shop.
which means now all the sheet metal has been blasted and ready to be treated with Ospho. Looks like the underside of the hood is going to need some attention along the passenger side outer rib...
and up along the latch area on the nose.
Gotta give Gorilla credit for the adhesive properties of their tape... MAN that stuff was stuck and a real PITA to remove! Ended up using lacquer thinner and a wire brush chucked into a drill to get it off, but I was ultimately successful.
Now to get the panels treated, all the metal hung and then send her off to the body shop.....
Well success today in finishing up the driver side fender...
as well as blasting a section of fender material to be used for patching purposes.
Discovered a bit of cancer starting in the lower rear corner of the fender
so it will need to be cut out and patched like the passenger side fender.
Got the hood back up on the panel stand and removed the Gorilla tape I used to try and keep the sand out of the hood structure....
The tape survived the blasting with flying colors and was still sticking VERY well, so I must endorse the Gorilla tape for all your heavy duty taping projects! LOL
The air was extremely damp today, so I was unable to use the angle head grinder for very long before it would stop working, so I finished cleaning up the sand from the blast room so I would have a clean environment to work in next weekend. I'll put a desiccant filter on the angle head and see if that helps with it's operation so I can finish removing the paint from the underside of the hood and then begin the task of cleaning and treating the raw sheet metal with Ospho to protect it until it's time for paint.... NOT MUCH LONGER NOW (fingers crossed!!)
I also stopped at AutoZone on my way in to the dealership this morning and picked up a couple heater hoses so I could make a bypass hose for the heater circuit until it's time to reinstall the HVAC system back into the Tomato...
Need to trim and splice them together and she'll be good to go......
In spite of the bitterly cold temperature upstairs at the dealership (I could see my breath), I almost finished the driver side fender... As usual with my luck, got to the 5 yard line and then had to punt! LOL got all but the lower corner of the fender stripped before running out of sand...
so next weekend will begin with sucking and sifting the sand one more time!
Once the driver side fender and the material for the patch panel for the passenger side fender is finished , I'll begin the process of addressing any rusted areas using Eastwood's Rust Converter, followed by a coat of POR-15, then a coat of Eastwood Chassis Black. Any areas prone to collecting debris will receive a coat of Eastwood Rubberized Undercoating.
Once the fender backsides are done, I'll move on to applying a coating of Ospho to the bare sheet metal areas as protection from surface rust as well as a metal prep for first coat of primer. Then I can begin to reassemble the body in preparation for turning the Tomato over to the bodyshop.
Since Far From Factory has closed, I'll see what kind of home facilities Adam has to confim they are adequate for the final bodywork and paint. If they are found lacking, then the arduous task of finding a suitable facility to wrap up the next phase of the project will commence....
