Anyway, on to what you came here for. What a wonder a single color makes!
From my last post, the only thing left was to get epoxy on the front bulkhead. I had some significant cleaning to do, however, which was especially painful because of all of the tight spots in between the brackets, under the heater box, etc. I used my normal methods of stripping discs and wire wheels, however, and got the lionshare of it cleaned up.
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| Almost there. |
For the hard to reach spots, once I exhausted all of my mechanical means, I switched to chemical means. Now, I never really wanted to use chemical strippers because I was a bit concerned with how to neutralize it prior to painting and just the general hazmat concerns. Southern Polyurethanes makes a big deal out of surface preparation, and rightly so, and I didn't want to use the wrong thing.
Unfortunately, though I knew this, I didn't give it much thought before putting down a citrus-based stripper.
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| Self-explanatory. |
The stripper worked really well and I was happy with the results. I doubt I could have gotten the area as clean as I did without it. The stripper did leave a light cloudy sheen to where I applied it, so at least I knew what I had to remove. So, pending recommendations from the SPI forum, I used a mixture of baking soda and warm water in an attempt to neutralize the citric acid (the stripping ingredient) and a red scuff pad to clean the area. I did this twice, then rinsed it down with warm clean water twice. I used compressed air to blow-dry the area after each wash down to prevent any surface rusting.
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| Close-up of one of the tough spots. Lots of pitting in here, too, but no holes. |
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| This wire clip gave up the ghost and I welded in a new one. |
For the more heavily pitted areas, I used the POR-15 metal prep stuff that I've used in the past to treat those areas. I rinsed and blew down the entire area one last time and called it a day.
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| About as good as I could get it. |
I didn't want to leave it that way over the holiday, so I was able to sneak over there for a few hours the day after Christmas just to get the paint on. I did several shots of W&G remover, wiped and blew it down, then got on two wet coats of epoxy. Not much else to that.
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| And done. |
With that, all of the readily accessible areas, with the exception of underneath the bonnet, have been hit with epoxy primer. Now, the fun of body work will continue!
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| All one color! |
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