Triumph Spitfire Paint #6 - Just About Final Interior Prep

For the most part, I am done with prepping the interior for epoxy primer. It still needs some attention under the sail plate and other downward-facing horizontal surfaces, but nothing that  a red ScotchBrite pad won't take care of.

I did attack an area of damage at the rear sail plate. I'm not sure what happened, but it appears that at some point the semi-horizontal seam got bent, which translated into a depression in the sail plate. The video shows it pretty well and I didn't take many (er, any) before pictures, but here's a screen capture.

You can see the gap that I started with right under the center bubble level. This was about a 0.15" gap from level.

How I left it. About a 0.05" gap from level. Lot's of work for a tenth of an inch.

Please refer to the video for more information on this (it's about half the video, at least) and how I approached it. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did know that as long as I was gentle, I probably wouldn't do anything irreversible. In my studying of bodywork, it's more like you having a discussion with the metal and trying to convince it to form the way you want it vice beating it into submission.

Otherwise, it was more cleaning. Yes, not that exciting, but it is looking better and, like I mentioned, I think I'm only a red Scotchbrite pad scrubbing away from epoxy. I'm going to do it dry next time.

Passenger's side getting cleaned up.

Passenger's side footwell with a bit more seam sealer to remove.

About the same place with the seam sealer gone.

Driver's side footwell cleaned up.

Again, the goal here is to rough up the paint for the epoxy primer to adhere. I contacted the guys that make the primer that I bought and, while it is primarily designed as a direct-to-metal paint, as long as it's scuffed up, they said it would be good enough, which works for me!