I decided after doing some work with my new stud welder that I wanted to get the bonnet, or at least the "outside" of it, in epoxy primer just to minimize any rusting that may occur. I also wanted to see what it would be like to spray such a large panel. It was different, I can tell you that. Much more challenging.
I flipped the bonnet over to get a look at the inside to see how much attention it needed. While it was inverted, I also got a hole filled in with weld metal that resulted when I had replaced the bonnet cone support stuff a while ago.
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| The hole. It filled just fine. |
With that welding done, I looked over the inside. Originally I thought I would take it all down to bare metal, but thought better of it. Instead, I focused on finding delaminating paint and other rust spots and got them cleaned up. I had done this already a few times while doing the bonnet repairs, but I did a concentrated hand-over-hand this time. I was happy to find little bubbling paint and no rust that didn't come off easily with the paint stripping disk.
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| Showing spots that I cleaned up. Some cleanup remains up in the nose. |
With that, I flipped the bonnet over to get going on the outside of it. First thing I did was fill, with weld metal, the slide hammer holes left by the PO that were previously covered with filler.
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| The holes, previously covered with filler. |
With those done, it was time to remove all of the paint in keeping with my desire to take everywhere I was going to spray color down to bare metal prior to epoxy. What a dirty, loud and lengthy process!
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| Passenger's wing done. |
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| The residue of just that bit. I frequently swept and vacuumed. |
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| And driver's wing. |
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| And everything else - from the back. |
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| And from the front. |
I ran out of time for that visit, but the bonnet was stripped. It was a Sunday, so believe it or not that work took me about 8 hours to accomplish.
For the next visit, my goal was to get some metal work done as I could while still leaving enough time to get two coats of epoxy on there and pick a kid up from basketball practice.
I didn't take any pictures of the metal work because, like I said before, I suck at taking dent pictures, so you'll have to trust me. I gave it an attempt in the video, but the results were "meh". I got some stuff out, but none of it would I consider ready for filler.
But, as time drew down, I moved the bonnet into the "paint booth", got it cleaned up, and shot the first coat of epoxy, waited 30 minutes, then got the second coat.
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| From the back. |
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| Front nose. |
Like I mentioned, it's a much more challenging time with the larger panel. Looks like I fixed by cratering problem this time and I got the epoxy where it needed to go, but there was some spots of dry spray (probably why I didn't have any cratering). Since I'll be putting at least one more full round of epoxy on it I'm not too worried, but we'll see. Unlike the doors and other stuff so far, I only intend to shoot the areas that really need the epoxy following metal work instead of the entire thing. It'll save some paint, time and just a wasted effort on something that doesn't really need it, I think.
Oh, and while I was waiting between epoxy coats, I blocked out and signed off on the driver's door. Some re-work there due to my own fault, but it came out fine in end. Next visit will be more body work on the bonnet. We'll see just how far I can get and whether or not I can get the metal work done and start in a filler. I doubt it, but here's to hoping!
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