Driver's Side Body in Epoxy - Roundtail Restoration

Believe it or not, I'm still caught up with my posts. I'm even putting this one up before I go back over to the garage. Amazing! And, I remembered to take lots of pictures and even tried to use some lighting to show the dents better. Turning into a real professional operation around here. To the video:

So like the title says, I got the driver's side of the body in epoxy primer. I definitely didn't plan on going that way when I showed up, but the body work just wasn't calling to me too much. That and the fact that I would like to get the majority of the dust creating stuff done (like throwing paint of the body with the stripping wheel), I decided to start stripping the body down in sections. I'm doing it in sections so that I don't leave too much stripped to bare metal at once and it also allows me to better manage my 7-day epoxy window.

I did get a good look at the bonnet now that it was in epoxy and dry. Definitely some work to do, but nothing too major outside of the nose. My concern is not the work, but the size of the workspace. I'm afraid I'll run into the problems that I did with the boot lid being such a large sheet of metal. Hopefully the center accent (the raised part running down the center) will provide some strength.

One of the dings. I can get to the back of that.

Another spot of concern. Need to look at this closer; oddly shaped dent (?)

The dreaded nose.

The worst single area to work on (besides the nose, of course).

After the bonnet once over, I looked over the body to see what awaited me and to re-familiarize myself with the things that I never fixed the first time around. I also wanted to make sure the rust that was showing up was just surface stuff. It was.

My yucky lower wing replacement on the driver's side.

The passenger's side rear wing that got smacked at some point.

There wasn't a horrible amount of things to worry about, but I'm sure it'll take time as I work my way through everything. After that, I essentially flipped a coin and decided to strip the driver's side. No real surprises, which was good, and only minor dents that were obvious. There are probably lots of low and high spots that I haven't seen yet, but I'll get there I'm sure.

Starting the stripping process.

Rear wing area done. Making my way forward.

As you can imagine, this was tedious, but pretty brainless, work, much like the bonnet. Since I was in my "paint booth", the dust didn't get too out of control. I should have done all of my stripping in there the first time around.

Work down the sill.

There are a whole bunch of plug welds that I did (most, I must admit) along the sill that have little pits in them. I'll go through on the next visit and get all of these areas filled with fiberglass filler to seal them up. There some argument out there on whether the fiberglass filler is waterproof. I was under the assumption it was, but I'm not too sure now. In any case, I have the epoxy down first, which will hopefully protect from water intrusion / rust, at least for a while.

The area around the A-post was the hardest to clean up because of all of the interference and depressions and such.

The hardest area on the side.

I got most of it by the end, but for a little bit behind the bonnet slide and up above the bonnet locating bracket. I was able to at least get a wire brush in those spots to rough up the area for epoxy adhesion.

Area behind the bonnet slide (the vertical piece of metal that bows out).

Area above the bonnet locating bracket (horizontal piece with hole in it that takes the bonnet cone).

With the cleaning done as good as I could get it, I hit everything with the DA sander to get a 60-grit swirl in there and hand sanded all the areas the DA was too big for. After that, I cleaned the heck out of everything using Wax and Grease Remover and several shop towels. I didn't use compressed air to blow anything because I didn't want to put too much dust in the air. I mixed up the paint and gave that 30 minutes to induce as well as the W&G remover time to fully dry.

Masked off. I hit it with W&G after masking it to get any last fingerprints off of it.

While waiting, I put some fiberglass filler on the bonnet in my repair patch areas. Again, I intend to cover all of my weld seams with the fiberglass filler to provide some added strength as well as waterproofing (if it really does that). I didn't spend a whole lot of time here, but did get it applied and very roughly sanded down.

Passenger's side front wing, after application and rough sanding.

Same side but the rear of the wing. Again, roughly sanded.

With the 30 minute induction time up, it was time to paint. You know the drill - two wet coats, waiting 30 minutes in between each.

Rear wing.

A-post.

Side view.

I didn't look at the overall results very closely as spraying this much paint, it gets pretty bad in the garage, fumes-wise, and I like to leave shortly after that. So, I'll take a hard look next visit and see how it came out, but I think it should be good.

I mixed too much paint and left several ounces in the mixing cup. The stuff is expensive, so if it's still sprayable on my next visit, I think I'll continue my way around the car and try to get the boot area done. There should be enough paint for two wet coats on that. If not, then we'll see what I feel like tackling. Until next time...Cheers!