Motor Vehicle students help us move forwards...
The project has greatly benefited in recent weeks from the help of Dudley College, Motor Vehicle students.
The bonnet, in particular, is requiring a lot of work. It is probably the most effected part of the car from the point of view of corrosion , damage and copious amounts to under body seal in an attempt to preserve it, and or, hide the corrosion!
The underseal is tricky to remove too as its 2mm thick and it clog’s everything up, so a heat gun a scraper appear to be the only option. Our sincere thanks to the students!
Another focus of our work has been the bulkhead. Firstly we had to address the build up of oil mixed with road grime that had formed a thick cake like substance in every corner.
Next we had to sand back the small areas of surface corrosion followed by general paint removal all over. The students did a great job of this using grinders with paddle sanding discs and drill mounted wire wheels.
As you can see from the photo opposite, we have made real progress with this complicated and arduous task.
Notice the areas of the bulkhead that have been painted black, this is a paint on rust converter product made by ‘Flag’. This was applied to the small areas where we found corrosion prior to priming.
There were also small welding requirements, these pointed out to us by a bodywork specialist we met at the Himley Car Show. The near side, footwell bulkhead areas, need tacking along a couple of seams where weld had been missed from a former panel replacement. With the paint removed this was an easy fix with the Mig welder.
Once the paint was removed back to bare metal and the rust converter had worked its magic, it was time to reapply some protection to the bulkhead.
For this a ‘Self-Etching’ primer is best, as this primer paint has an acid in its mixture that etches into the surface of the metal and provides a better key for the paint. This will hopefully provide a layer of protection until we can get the car to the paint shop for the work to be completed properly and in the right conditions. Fortunately for us, the IOT workshop is both dry and heated.
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