May 31, 2006
Today Don rebuilt the power steering pump, bead blasted all the brackets and the reservoir. It is all painted and ready for reassembly. The body is ready to pick up from the sand blaster in the morning. He charged $650.00 including the primer. Don told me he was really hoping the sand blast contractor would stick to the $500.00 estimate, but that epoxy primer was $120.00 a gallon. We also asked him do the doors, trunk lid, grill under the wipers, dash, all the bumper braces, and some more parts that were too big to go in Don's blast cabinet. The primer is a two part epoxy material that is so hard it is almost impossible to sand. The goal is to prevent the car from EVER rusting again. That is not likely since I live in a desert and will only drive it when the sun is out but... but you might as well do it right when you are doing it. NOTE: We originally had another guy doing the sand blasting. He was local to Don but he got seriously ill and was unable to do the job. The guy we used is over in Charleston, SC so Don had to trailer the body and parts over there for the work. To get the price we did we had to let him do the work on a standby basis so it took longer than we would have liked. When Don got the car back he was VERY discouraged. The sand blasting had uncovered much more rust, bondo and poorly patched places that he expected. Don said he actually felt sick when he saw it. Don decided that the only way to approach it was one small section at a time so the task would not be overwhelming.
June 1st, 2006
Don picked the car up this morning and it is now back at his shop. He is very happy that the project can get moving again. Don sent me a number of photos of the sand blasted and primed car. As I mentioned on the previous page the sand blasting revealed even more rust damage that will need to be repaired.
Here you can see that while the fire wall is mostly solid. The lower sections near the transmission tunnel have rust. The replacement floor pans will completely replace this metal when they are welded in place. Almost all of the small holes are being welded shut and then ground down to reseal the firewall. Don in fact got a little carried away with this and told me he had to find some of them later and drill them back out :-).
This is some really poor work done by the previous owner. He did a crappy job of welding in a patch. He then put bondo on it that was as much as 2 inches thick! Don will tear this out and like everything else do it right.
