Saturday, January 19, 2008

Trunk Lock

It was a pretty frustrating day on the car. Did some unsatisfying stuff like sanding the underside of the bonnet and the drip edges inside the front wings.

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And I sanded down the inside of the trunk and sprayed some rust conversion product on it. It's called Krud Kutter I think. Like most of those products it's a phosphoric acid based solution that turns the rust into some other inert compound before painting it.

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The worst part of the day however was when I decided to remove the lock from the trunk so I could sand the rust around the outside. After removing the part inside that connects the button to the latch assembly, I shut the trunk. Crap. Even though I knew how the latch worked and could picture it, I tried for an hour with various tools to pop the latch from the inside by reaching in through the tail light holes. No luck. In the end, I drilled a 1/8" hole below the button and popped the latch with the tail of a file. It's bad enough that it's taking so long without creating more work for myself. Now there's an additional hole to fill.

Monday, January 14, 2008

January 12, 2008 Applying Body Filler

Started the Bondo phase of the body work this weekend, applying about 4 or 5 coats to the areas where new panels have been installed. Lots of sanding with the 6" air DA jitterbug. Turned out pretty nice. The surprising part is how long it takes to sand off the old layers of paint. That takes longer than I thought. For the bonnet, I actually resorted to the electric grinder with a flap wheel to get the majority of the paint off, then smooth down after with the sander.
Passenger rear wing:
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Driver front wing:
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Driver dogleg:
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