I've had a few people ask me how long the wire-wheeling took me to do to the trunk.

I'd guess start-to finish (this includes chipping out the fiberglass out of the wheel well) was around 10-12 hours total. I lost a lot of time initially because I was using a standard wire wheel on a drill motor for some of the work. When I got that corded brush for the angle grinder, things started to pick up rapidly.

Its pretty tiring too. Keeping a death grip on the grinder to make sure it doesn't go shooting off in any direction it damn well wanted to go while being folded up inside the trunk took a lot out of me. Slept pretty well those nights.

This is nothing compared to some of the MkI guys over at the Vortex forums and the level of detail they put into their engine bays. I got the corded brush idea from them, and definitely recommend it to anyone that needs to do this level of paint removal.

I'm only going this far on certain spots under the car - in and around the floorpan patches (Which, honestly, make up at least 50% of the floor at this point) A large part of the rear of the car will be getting this treatment, just because of all the water it retains from day-to-day driving. The front end of the car wasn't nearly as bad.

Posted by Harrison Krix at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments

Still getting the trunk wrapped up. I think this is just another file in the "what the hell is wrong with me" pile. One of these days I'm going to have to realize that I am not BLUNT or Bill Williams and I'll stop this level of insanity. That being said, what follows is more or less my train of thought...

Remember that wheel well? If not, its posted above. I started looking at the paint around it and thinking "You know, thats not going to blend very well. I should strip the paint around it up to the seams so it will look better"



Also, I never really did like those big blobs of seam sealer up there in the middle...



I guess, while I'm in here, I should strip all the seams just to make sure...



May as well check the shock towers and wheel wells too, right? I mean, you never know... Oh yeah. The rear bulkhead too. Just... because.


I was going to do the side panels, but thought better of it. If I heat the metal up a bunch, the paint on the outside of the car would bubble up... and then I'd have to shoot myself. So these got a quick scuff, and the rusty bits where the rear reflectors were got a full wire-down.


First coat of POR-15 with patches. This stuff is pretty cool. Works just like fiberglass, but you use POR-15 silver instead. apparently, the silver has metallic bits in it that makes it "fill" better in the cloth. A couple coats of the stuff and I'm convinced it isn't going anywhere.



Some shots of the black POR-15 topcoat. The pics suck, but thats because its really hard to shoot gloss black (especially with my crummy camera.) It looks really nice and clean now. I'm thinking of using some Wurth Body shutz and spraying over top to get the "textured" look again, then going over again with a close match to my silver. We'll see.


As soon as this gets wrapped up, I should be able to get the back end together.

So, in order:
- Finish Trunk
- Finish undercarriage in rear
- Rebuild and put in rear suspension/driveline components
- Drop in engine (yay!)
- 5-speed
- Wire MS
- Interior

Easy, right?




PS: If you're going to do the above with one of these:



WEAR GLOVES and GOGGLES!
I'm pretty sure my index finger would have gone bye-bye had it not been for the gloves I was wearing. Also, I had a bristle shoot off this thing and stick itself so far in my cheek I could feel it with my tongue from the other side.

Posted by Harrison Krix at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments