Sanding the Car

The car was painted with a primer approximately 25 years ago and left outside. It was not done well. My first priority was to strip everything down to bare metal.

 

The car was painted with a primer approximately 25 years ago and left outside. It was not done well. My first priority was to strip everything down to bare metal. This picture shows the car body without the fenders. I purchased 4 four-wheel dollies from Princess Auto and used them (with some 4 X 4 fence posts) to move the body around. They worked great!

 

 

I started sanding the roof using an orbital air sander that I purchased from Rondex.
This turned out to be a very dusty and time consuming process. All the items in the garage quickly became covered with a fine red dust. I usually washed the floor at least once a week.

 

 

Before I continued with the sanding, I decided to remove the doors.

When I moved on from the roof to the rest of the car, I decided to try some paint removers. The first one that I tried was the Aircraft Paint Stripper that I purchased from Rondex. It smelled God awful and didn't work that well even though it was expensive.

 

The next one that I tried was the aerosol dispenser on the right that I purchased at Parts Source for $10.00 a can. This stripper worked much better and I ended up going back and getting several more cans.

After I sprayed the stripper on the car, I waited about 15 minutes and then attacked it with a stripping wheel in the end of my drill. It was very important here to wear proper attire. The paint stripper burns when it touches the skin which I found out belatedly. T shows a brand new stripping wheel on the left and 2 slightly used ones on the right that started off the same size.

 

The various stripping wheels that I used. I really wore them down!

 

 

 


The driver's and passenger's side of the car.

        

 

The sanded firewall. As shown in the firewall picture, there is an abundance of holes that were used for the wiring, throttle cable, heater hoses etc. I initially filled all of them in except for the wiring harness hole but later had to re-drill holes for the dash braces. New holes were drilled for the A/C heater bulkhead and throttle cable.

 

I copied a page from the Chevs-of-the-forties catalogue which gave a general idea of all the original holes and their respective grommets.