Bondo Zed

Today, we return to Zed, the 1979 Datsun 280ZX. Earlier, I completed the paint removal that C started. With the smoke finally gone, and the rain storm that followed passed as well, I could start with the body filler so we can get this car painted. I admit that the 2 weeks of smoke gave me time to consider whether I wanted to have a body shop do this or not. I decided that I wanted to learn, and even if I did it poorly, I would learn. I could always farm it out later.

Seek and Mark

The process of finding imperfections to resolve with body filler (Bondo, bog, putty) reminded me of my old house painting days. With a light in-hand, shining on the subject, look for dings. When painting a house, you do this with some spackle in-hand, and just fix the issue right there. Or, if this is after priming, you do it with putty and, again, fix it right there. In both cases, you fix as you go. With a material like body filler, though, that doesn't work. Bondo is pre-mixed with a hardener so while you are out looking for the next ding, it is drying out. So, instead, you walk the car with a pen or piece of chalk. As you find spots, you mark them, either drawing a circle around it or otherwise drawing on it to attract your attention as you circle with the steadily-drying putty.

Hammer Thoughts

Zed mid-filler

By now, most of the worst spots have been hammered out, leaving some hammer marks or imperfections that you just couldn't get to, or couldn't get perfect. Between this crappy economy and buying T's A4, my resources are gone, so I did not buy a set of body hammers. At some point, if I find that I am enjoying body work, I will get a set of these Covell hammers, but $300US is a bit much for a one-time set of hammers. Big thanks to the HotRod Hippie (check his youtube channel here) for the hammer reviews to help me find a set that is good enough for quality work (not HF hammers) but won't break the bank like SnapOn. 

So, after many weeks of using standard tools, like a framing hammer, a rubber mallet and assorted screwdrivers, a pry bar, etc, I have the fenders and doors as close to straight as I can get them. Most important, the remaining dings are slight, like less than 1/8" off-straight/flat. These areas were easy to find. Even while I was marking spots, I decided to try some more tuning on the passenger door handle area that still looked a little too deep for filler.

Mix a Batch

No, not in the Letterkenny way. I mean make some body-filler. The instructions are on the can, but after messing with the stuff for a few days, I concluded that less hardener is better. This gave me more time to work with the material before it started to set up. For a work area, I grabbed a small steel table that we inherited from the Eugene house. Atop that table, I set a 12" x 20" piece of glass that we also found there. I used the glass sheet as my body filler mix-and-apply-from surface. This saved me the $8 for a steel sheet at Harbor Freight, but it also comes clean easier: Just scrape the surface with a razor blade after the material turns to rubber, and it's ready for another go. Last bit of advice: no matter how you may feel about wearing the blue gloves when you work on your car, I strongly suggest wearing them for mixing and applying body filler. Getting it off your hands afterwards took me 4 rounds with the GoJo. The next round with the filler, I wore gloves. No muss, no fuss.

Apply

more Zed mid-filler

Before I chose tools, I hit the interweb for opinions on the various applicators. There are basically 2 kinds: plastic and metal, and there is, of course, a religion about these. I got the plastic ones because they were cheaper. These don't have a handle, which means your fingers are in the stew, but that also means you are that much closer to the work, allowing you to bend the applicator to contour. I'm sure the steel applicator folks have a solution for this as well. Your car, your choice.

Once I started applying, I went the route of too-little-is-better-than-too-much. I did not want to spend all day sanding a bunch of extra filler. I got my wish, but I failed to recognize just how much the filler shrinks when it dries. This oversight drove me to apply-sand-reapply 4 rounds before I had all of the spots filled well. Of course, many of the small spots were completed in one shot; I had to return to areas which had multiple dings or an inward sag that needed to get built up. Again, none of the areas needed more than 1/8" of material thick, but some areas, like on the fenders, had a lot of little dings that took some effort. Mostly, this was a learn-as-I-go thing. I think I tried to spread the material too thin, or far beyond the edge of where the damage was. As a result, I needed to re-apply because I simply went too thin.. on the same area... multiple times. Learning is fun, but my arms we so sore from sanding all day.

Sand

Yeah, the sanding is the effort part. Most folks recommend using 80-grit sandpaper. I had a limited amount of that, so I used 60-grit. This accelerated the initial cut-down, and by the time the filler area was approaching flat, it had worn down to less than 80-grit. It was probably more like 100 by then. I used a full-size (8") sanding block the entire time. Keep the block even with the contour of the body panel you are working on. So, for example, the fender on Zed is flat running front to back, so I held the sanding block parallel to the ground. Then, sand in a diagonal pattern, mixing it up so you're sanding in an "X" shape. I did a little sanding in a circular motion, as well as top-to-bottom, but the best, flattest, smoothest results came when I did it diagonally. Also, try to keep up to half the sander on the body panel if you are not sure how it contours. This held my sander from over-sanding, once I figured this out. My over-sanding caused some extra batch-work too. More cost of learning.

Wash Rinse Repeat

As you sand, you will eventually arrive at a flat, smooth area adjacent to the undamaged body panel. Congrats. You may find, however, some spots that the sander missed, but was sanded all around it. That's a low-spot that needs more filler, and it probably happened because the filler shrank on you. Or you simply under-applied. No worries; just mix another small batch and fill it in. I suggest you learn from my mistake, and fill it with a little extra on top of it. This is how you properly use spackle too, but it took me many times around to figure out what was going wrong,  and I still did it.

Anyway, put a little convex material where the un-sanded spot was, and have a thin layer on top of what was sanded. If you don't, you run the risk of over-sanding those spots and you won't be flat and level with the surrounding body. Yep, I did that too. There is also the risk of putting too much product on, creating a false body contour, leaving you a bunch of extra sanding to get the panel back to the correct line. What I mean by this is you can over-apply, sand it smooth and leave you thinking that you got it right. Then, you get right on top of it to confirm the panel and realize that the body panel isn't following the original line anymore. You gotta sand all that off and do it again. Yes, I did this as well.

Well, that's it for today. Once I am 100% satisfied that the body is as correct as I can get it, I will be vacuuming and blowing it out, removing all the dust I can. Then, I will start masking for primer. I ordered some high-fill primer from Eastwood so that should fill in the tiny imperfections. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. First, I need to close-inspect Zed, possibly body-fill some more, probably sand the untouched metal with some 400, then clean, then mask.... yep, lots left to do and we are already in the first full week of Fall. Still hoping to have him painted before the rains have fully arrived. Based on the weather this past week, that window may have already closed.

Thanks, as always, for following along. Please accept that CoViD-19 is still a genuine threat (back to 40k+ new cases per week in the US) and that wearing a mask is one small way you can help contain it's spread. It is not a commentary on freedom, it is a commentary on being a responsible citizen.

Where There's Smoke...

With a title like that, this post could go almost anywhere. I could ramble about the elections, or about newspaper articles, lying public officials, whistle-blowers, conspiracy theories, you name it. Instead, today I will focus on literally smoke. As in the smoke that has sat outside my house, and up and down the west coast for almost 2 weeks. Fortunately, we were hit with a big storm at the end of last week that washed the smoke away. Still, 10+ days of hazardous air was absolutely post-worthy. Before I begin, Hapy first day of Fall.

AQI
The various Star Trek series like to have moments sprinkled through episodes where they get to say how "adaptive" humans are. While this is awfully self-congratulatory, we see it every day, if we look for it. Case-in-point, we have the "AQI" (Air Quality Index) that tells us how badly polluted the air is. I'm sure this measure has been around for decades, and folks who are much closer to air quality or environmental spaces have known about it and its importance for years. For the rest of us, this is a new number, like when we learned about Kelvin or Hg (vacuum measurement, not Mercury) in science class. 2 weeks ago, someone would say "it's, like, 90 in here" and we, Americans, would all know that they were saying it is hot. For my worldly readers, 90*F is about 32*C.

Fast forward 2 weeks where we have had dangerous air in the Willamette Valley. When it started, we just heard "it's bad. don't go outside" and that it will be gone in a couple of days. Knowing that the weather folks are about as good at predicting weather as coin-flips, the industrious, curious Oregonians searched for something that would give us a little more to go on than "its bad. stay inside watching our program, after this commercial". I first spotted the PM on the AccuWeather app on my phone, but it would only show current state. I want to see if it is getting better or worse. So, I downloaded the Plume Labs app. This thing shows a pollution forecast. While it isn't very good at projecting, or showing historical data, at least it tries. I can see that it will be getting worse, so if I have to go outside for something, I understand that waiting would be a worse idea than just going now... with a mask on. By the way, the picture on the side here is a T-selfie fighting the Obenchain fire in Southern Oregon.

Going back to talking to our friends and relatives, 2 weeks ago, we would talk about temperature and compare how much cooler it was on the west side versus downtown Portland. "It's 85 here". "Oh, it's over 90 there?". That was pre-LaborDay2020 thinking. Now, our conversation is like "it was 350 earlier today, but now it's 460". Or "overnight it looks like it dropped down below 100, but now it's over 250 again." The number itself is super important, but without context a 3-digit number could be super-bad (like over 130*F mid-day outside temp would be) or a 3-digit number could be virtually meaningless (like how many meters from my house my mailbox is). So, what do these numbers mean?

range	rating	description
0-20	Excellent	typical air in Oregon, perfect for any outside activity for everyone
20-50	Fair	generally good for most. Sensitive people might feel some minor to moderate symptoms from long term exposure. So... sensitive folks can take short walks, but no soccer
50-100	Poor	unhealthy for sensitive folks. non-sensitive people may feel some minor to moderate symptoms. Sensitive people should reduce time outside
100 - 150	Unhealthy	Health effects felt immediately by sensitive. Healthy folks may have difficulty breathing or feel a sore throat
150 - 150	Very Unhealthy	Health effects felt immediately by sensitive. Healthy folks will probably have difficulty breathing or feel a sore throat
250+	Dangerous	Health effects felt immediately by everyone. Any exposure, even for a few minutes, can have serious health effects

So, when I tell you that it's 368 here, you understand just how bad that is.

Car Content
I bring all this up because the smoke has been keeping me from my cars. Mostly. After a week of dangerous smoke, I heard that we were going to be getting rain. Before the rain was supposed to arrive, we were supposed to get fog blended in with the smoke. So, smog. Literally. The ash from the forest fires is not a big deal to your car while it is dry. Once it gets wet, however, it can start to damage your paint. So, before the rain was due, and shortly after the fog rolled in, I pulled on my old house-painting respirator and hosed down the herd. I was not looking for clean, I was looking for dust-free. The fog passed, and the rain did not arrive for another week. Instead, we got morning dew, in the smoke. Still, my preventative placement of a tarp on the stripped-to-metal Zed and a tarp on the convertible top of Oliver should help them from getting damaged even worse.

... there's FIRE (Political Rant warning)

One upside to all the mask-wearing we need to endure to protect our fellow citizens from CoViD-19 is we have grown accustomed to wearing one. So, when pollution is so bad that we need to wear a mask outside to simply get the mail, we already have the masks on hand (I hope, for your sake). Thanks for screwing up the CoViD response, Mr. Trump, or many of us wouldn't have had a mask available when the forest fires grew so large that most of the population on the West Coast now needed to wear a mask all the time just to avoid pulmonary issues. But, will this finally get the anti-maskers to put on a mask? Unlikely, based on the pictures of the Estacada gun-toters who are stopping cars they don't recognize and asking the persons inside about their political views. When better to debate politics than maskless, in "Dangerous" air, in the middle of a pandemic, while a forest fire is forcing an evacuation around you, at gunpoint? Really... just... wow.

/Political Rant
Looking back, my first post of this year, or last post of last year, was on December 31, 2019 (See GenXplained). Looking at that post about a dystopian present seems almost prophetic. When I consider how much has gone down the tubes in this country since I wrote that post, it is staggering. If you told me then that I would have spent 6 months working from home followed by 2 weeks locked inside because of a pandemic and historically unprecedented fire season respectively, I would have thought you were a total doomsdayer. Let's not forget the police violence, protests, unmarked vans nabbing people off the Portland streets and protester-versus-protester violence. And yet, here we are.

I have spent my woulda-been-wrenching time watching how-to-paint-your-car videos. I hope I will learn enough to paint the Zed well enough that Boo will want to drive it, and proudly so. Time will tell.

Thanks, as always, for following along. This has been a hard few weeks/months for all of us. I sincerely hope this rough road is coming to an end. Better days lie ahead, I'm sure of it. I wish they would just arrive already. In the meantime, please wear a mask when in public and remember that a mask covers your mouth and nose. It is not a fabric chinstrap.

More A4

Today's post gets us that much closer to being done with T's old A4, Nemo. I still have to replace a button and mess with the hood, but after today's post, I am very close.

Before I begin, a couple quick personal notes. First, T is fighting forest fires around Oregon this Summer. If you are not tracking the fires in the news, this is one of the worst fire seasons on record. So, having a son out in it, makes this all the more scary. It makes working on his old car quite surreal, of course, with the air quality this past week, I haven't been working on anything. Second, yesterday was the 1-year anniversary of our dear brother Travis' motorcycle accident. In an odd twist, we just long-term loaned Flash to his niece. We really miss you, Travis. One year later, we think of you every day.

We are living through some strange days, between police behavior, the protests, the violence, the CoViD, the anti-maskers, the widespread fires, recurring power outages and brown-outs, and the lead up to the election, I greatly look forward to some semblance of stability sometime soon. 2020 has been emotionally exhausting; 2021 can't arrive soon enough.

A/C
If you live somewhere hot, having Air Conditioning (A/C) is pretty important. Here in the western side of Oregon, A/C is nice to have, but not as critical for the hot weather. The system's ability to remove moisture from the cabin is much more important. I have lamented this before, but our temperature likes to float around the dew point. This leaves moisture hanging in the air and residing on surfaces. This includes the inside of your car's windows. This moisture is quickly removed by flipping on your air conditioning as your car warms up in the morning. For this reason, I felt it was very important to get the A/C working. All I needed to do was charge it.

The instructions on the A/C charge bottle are fairly accurate. First, get your engine running with the A/C system on full. This is to get the system pressurized. In my case, the air blowing out the vents was quite warm. Under the hood, locate the 2 A/C lines. The thicker one is the lower pressure line, and that's the one you want to work with. Thread off the protective cap, and connect hose from the recharge bottle to the nipple. The gauge should show you current pressure in the system. On the A4, it was negligible. Disconnect the hose from the nipple and shake the bottle. Adjust the target pressure based on ambient temperature by rotating the cover on the gauge. The ambient temperature is on the bottom and the target window is between 2 lines on the pressure-read side of the gauge. Then, re-connect the hose to the nipple, and while shifting the bottle from an upside-down orientation to horizontal, pull the trigger to dispense A/C charge into the system. I counted slowly to ten while holding the trigger and then releasing so I could see how the pressure responded. It took 3 pulls like that to get the pressure into the target pressure zone.

With the engine still running and the A/C still on full blast, check whether the temperature coming out of the vents is any better. In our case, the air was nice and cool. Solved!

Trunk

lid where latch goes

The trunk lid on the A4 used to work. The button on the trunk lid used to open it, and the button on the dash used to work as well. At some point, they stopped. Then, the trunk wouldn't stay closed for a while. T would hit a bump and the trunk would flap open and shut. Most recently, the trunk wouldn't open at all. It was effectively locked shut. Loading your trunk through the rear seats is not really viable. T had purchased a replacement lid from a junk yard, but it was gold, rather than high-gloss black.

We start our efforts by removing the carpeted inner skin of the trunk by crawling into the trunk from the passenger compartment and removing the 10 +/- Phillips head screws holding the skin to the lid. There are 2 hiding in the pull handle. Once all are removed, the panel will flop down, exposing the latch. Using a screwdriver to save my fingers, I pushed against the latch workings to get the lid to pop.

old on top

Once open, we can see what's what. It appears that there are 2 styles of latch mechanism on these trunks. The one on Nemo lacks a key-lock. The latch on the donor has one. The part that actually latches, however, is pretty much the same. And, that is the part that was not operating correctly on Nemo. The button under the dash didn't work regardless, and the button on the trunk still doesn't work, but it was the latch that was the real problem. The latch is held to the lid with 2 13mm nuts, and is activated by a lever which moves the mechanism from right to left to unlatch. In the upper picture on the right, here, you can see it's rusty end protruding from the left in the little hole. I discovered that the actual mechanisms are slightly different beyond the key / no-key difference. The point at which the lever attaches to the mechanism is not in the exact same place, so I had to re-locate the activation motor about 15mm to the left in order for the latch, when at rest, to remain closed, and open when activated.

Since the activation motor had been mounted with bolts threaded through mounting holes in the trunk, I felt uncomfortable just boring holes. Instead, I set the bolts aside and used cable-ties to set the activator in the right spot. I threaded on the replacement latch mechanism, connected the lever and set the motor. Once the cable-ties were taut, I confirmed the activation of the latch by jumping across the wires that connect to the broken-and-removed trunk switch on the dash. Several tests were followed by multiple trunk closing/opening trials before I was convinced that I had it right. I decided to leave the cable ties in-place because the right-hand bolt hole for the activation motor was over a natural hole/gap in the trunk so I couldn't effectively mount it with the old fasteners. The right edge of the hole is visible on the left edge of  that upper picture. The cable-ties should hold for a good long time as-is, even if it does feel a little janky. With the inner skin back in place, you can't see the new latch or the janky-installed activation motor, so it's all good. And, it works. I just need to replace the button on the dash. I'd like to get the button on the trunk lid to work, but there is some mystery wiring in there, and getting to that button is fairly difficult. It is possible that it is shut-out because of some lock somewhere that I haven't been able to find. German engineering strikes again.

Hood

trunk card

The hood on Nemo is the last big visual issue I wanted to improve. This is T's second A4, so I can't remember if we replaced this hood or if it was on his old one. Regardless, this hood was painted with what looks like black primer. There was no sheen. None. The rest of the car is a high-gloss black color, so the hood didn't look that great. Additionally, the front grill was also painted flat black, but over the course of many miles of driving, some of the paint had chipped, both on the grill and on the nose of he hood. It looked bad. So, off to the parts store I go to get some paint. The card in the trunk says the paint code is LY9B. The duplicolor paint-match sheet didn't have a reference to that paint code, so I got the one they DID have for black.

The hood removed very easily. The hood stand is held on with a little C-clip, and then the little post slides out. I set my tool box on the engine intake to hold the hood up, and then removed the front 2 bolts from the hinge (13mm). I loosened the rear ones before carefully removing them all the way with my fingers so I could keep control of the hood when the last bolt gave. It surprisingly didn't shift around. I moved it to a pair of sawhorses on the lawn, and proceeded to sand it with 250-grit sandpaper. I got all of the weird anomalies off, and then washed it to get all of the dust off. I felt ready to paint.

I blew 2 cans onto that hood, but the color just didn't get as dark, nor as shiny as I expected. Audi offered 2 colors of black, and the one I needed was a super-deep super-shiny black. The one I got, however, was more of a dark charcoal and sort of satin finished. I will need to paint it again, with a different, blacker, paint. Before I repaint it, I will play around with 1000 grit sandpaper and maybe a buffer to see if I can get this paint to look decent. I figure this is an opportunity to practice buffing new paint, so I will take the opportunity before painting over it. Who knows? Maybe I can get the it looking good enough that I don't re-paint it... but I doubt it. Currently, it looks like a carbon-fiber hood, which might work for some, but not most, drivers.

I think that's it for today. If the sanding buffing experiment becomes a thing, I'll post on it. Otherwise, I will probably be reverting to the Zed (1979 280ZX) after I have Nemo's hood installed. As we move deeper into September, I am feeling the pressure to get the body-filler spread and sanded. Wet season is coming! Thanks, as always, for following along.

A4-ward Progress

Apologies for the late publish. Not sure what happened; I'll chalk it up to user error. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I mentioned that in a charitable move, I bought Nemo (the 1997 A4 1.8Turbo) from T (See If You Love...). Today, I go through the fixes I have done to get Nemo ready for someone to proudly drive, while avoiding work on Zed, the 280ZX. In an earlier post (See Dust Dodging), I mentioned the replacement of the window and the front side marker. I did a few less obvious things that I'll cover today. Before I begin, Hapy belated Labor Day to my US readers. Traditionally, this is the start of the most productive period in our calendar year: from Labor Day to Thanksgiving. So, if you feel like you're working a ton over the next couple of months, it's probably because you are.

Oil Leaks
Old Volksies like to mark their spot with a little oil. Old buses and bugs do it. Now that Jettas and Passats have been around long enough, they do it too. It seems that VW's German brethren, Audi's, mark their spot as well. For Nemo, there are a few sources. I focused first on the leaking motor oil. I slid under the front end, and after having sat for a few days, the oil that had been flung up from below during a drive had dripped away, leaving fresh oil only where it was actually leaking out. There was a nice big droplet at the oil drain, so I checked the torque on that bolt. It was a little loose. Next, I could see fresh drops on the cross member under the oil filter. It was hand-loose. As in, I was able to twist it tighter with 2 fingers. I think we found our main culprit. With oil filter pliers, I tightened the filter snug.

The power steering rack has a leak, and before I do another steering rack removal and re-install, I am trying the Lucas Power Steering Stop Leak first. This has been leaking since T bought Nemo, and T had been managing the level regularly with just topping it off with regular fluid. I intend to eliminate the leak. The steering is still really good and tight, though I expect the upgraded suspension helps with the road grip and cornering on rails. I looked back through my blog and I can't believe that I never posted on the steering rack remove/replacement I did on Flash, maybe 4 years ago. I think my dislike of the banjo may have started with those banjo bolts. It was a really tough job, so I'm all the more puzzled that I didn't post on it. Weird.

Dented Front Fender
With increased confidence from my efforts on Zed, I wanted to tackle the dent in the passenger fender. I pulled the front side marker, following the process I described in Dust Dodging. Through the hole presented when the light was removed, I fed a pry-bar. I did NOT leverage against anything, I just pushed/pulled outward and the dent popped out. My efforts left a small convex ding, but it is much better than the cereal-bowl sized dent that was there.

Under-Dash Panel

this is from an auto-trans, but similar

With the outside looking fairly good, but needing a wash, I started looking at the interior. There are a few things that need improvement, but I'll really only get after a subset. I started with the under-dash panel. T had removed this panel to replace the clutch master cylinder and had not re-installed it yet. We had the panel, but lost the fasteners. I made-do with things I found in the garage. During the install, I discovered that the remote trunk opener button was faulty, so I will need to replace that. Otherwise, the install was about what you would expect. The panel should be held on with 3 bolts, 2 through the front and one from the side, near the fusebox. Threading the bolts from the front is a great opportunity to practice patience. Gravity is working against you, and you can't see where the bolt needs to go once the panel is in place, so breathe deep and expect it to take many attempts. Once bolted into place, these panels are supposed to have 2 pop-in covers which fit over the bolt holes. I only found one so I'll add one of those covers to the junk-yard list.

Passenger Sunshade
The last thing I got after in this car-fix session was the passenger-side sun-shade. This was sitting on the floor since T bought Nemo. It looks fairly simple to mount. The plastic hook-looking thing goes in with the hook facing towards the rear, and you press up and back until it rotates flat, leaving the mounting hole near the hole in the steel above. At least, that's the theory. The prior owner had replaced the headliner and when he did, he mis-routed the wire for the light on the mirror. Instead of routing the wire through the hole in the steel where the mirror "hook" goes, it was left just dangling below that steel. So, the options were: don't hook up the wires to run the lights, return the route of the wires so it passes it through the steel from above -or- hack something. I didn't want to not hook up the light. I tried to figure out how to re-run the wires, but it appeared to require removing a considerable section of headliner because of the shape of the steel ceiling, so that left me with some kind of hack.

I took my hacksaw (aptly named) to the sunshade housing that, when installed, disappears into the ceiling. I cut a channel for the wire to slide down, reducing the mount of wire that would be pressed between the plastic and the steel ceiling. This actually worked, and I apologize for not taking a picture. Hopefully, you can see the shape of the mount from the picture on the right, here. With the wire pushed into the channel, I plugged the wire into the plug hanging from the hole in the ceiling. I pushed the rest of the wire into the headliner, and then followed the "theory" I described above. It pressed into place with not nearly as much effort as I expected. Once rotated around, I threaded a bolt through, and the sunshade is not in-place and operable.

The other bits of the interior that need to be resolved include fixing the cover on the driver seat cushion, and replacing some of the brittle plastic bits. I may not get to those items, but I think I will try to get the AC working; it probably just needs a charge. The next most important thing to resolve is the trunk is stuck closed. I'll get after that the next time I choose to focus on Nemo.

Thanks, as always, for following along.

Bear Metal

Today we celebrate getting every last bit of paint, Bondo, primer and rust off of the 1979 280ZX (Zed) metalwork. It was a bear, but we are full metal all the way around. I know: we all thought I wasn't going to get this done next. I am as surprised as you are.

The Grind

This paint removal started almost 3 years ago, shortly after C acquired the car. He did not like what the prior owner did with the big purple "V" on the hood, stretching onto the rear edges of the fenders and the tops of the doors, covering the mirrors. Rather than just remove that paint, he wanted to bring the entire car all the way down to metal, discover what rust there was and repair it. Since the car is over 40 years old, and many of these old Z's suffer from rust damage, it was the right call to make. By the way, body-filler mates to bare metal consistently, but does not bond to primed metal nearly as well, so for a much better paint-prep, it is best to get to metal wherever you intend to apply filler. 

C used various techniques including airplane paint remover, a belt sander, an electric grinder and an air-powered grinder. With the grinders he used various attachments. Once he lost interest, I got around to finishing the work, using various tools as well: sandpaper, razor-blade scrapers and, of course, the electric grinder.

For those thinking about doing this, I forewarn you... it is extremely time consuming to do it this way. There clearly is a reason why the folks on those MotorTrend television shows (looking at you, Iron Resurrection) have the cars sandblasted before they do anything else to the body. In a few hours, a skilled sandblasting shop can have the bare metal exposed, leaving you just the clean-up of both little missed spots and a ton of sand. Figure, I spent 2 hours finishing one fender alone and it had already been chem-stripped, ground-on and hand-sanded beforehand. Since there is time cleaning up all media that is left in the body cavities, etc, that time needs to factor in, but I still think it's a better use of resources (time and money) to sand-blast. Otherwise, the TV folks would hand-grind: more sparks = better TV. One point that I would like to make about the pictures: those dark spots are where I ground off the last of the paint, so those are just discolorations. For the most part, they are flat; they just look bad in the pictures.

The Sand

Manual grinding (and some media-blasting) only works on the metal parts. On modern cars, and even on Zed, there are non-metal parts that would get destroyed by a sand-blaster. For example, the mirrors and the headlight buckets are plastic. C didn't know the headlight buckets were plastic and hit one of them briefly with the grinder, putting a deep gauge in it. So, for these, I will sandpaper by hand. These are the last pieces I still need to complete as of this writing. But, for these plastic parts, "completing" is simply sanding down so primer and paint can adhere. I will need to use a different product to fill the gauges in the headlight buckets, and that won't matter for the rest of the car, so I'm setting that work aside temporarily.

Temporary Assembly

The grinding was preceded by removing all of the body parts that could be removed: tailgate, fenders, doors and hood. I felt that I needed to make sure the body lined up properly, and everything was where it was supposed to be before I started laying body-filler into the small divots in the metal. So, piece-by-piece, I set them back in place, held in with the fewest fasteners possible to just hold them where they are supposed to be. The bottom edges of the fenders are not yet tied into the frame, so if they look a little off in the pictures, that's why. For a brief period, Zed looks whole, and pure shiny silver metal. Atop that metal I will apply a very thin coat of body filler to eliminate the small imperfections found all over the place on this car. I intend to leave the panels in-place on the car until the bodyfiller has cured and been sanded.

To be fair, this car is in amazing shape, rust-wise, but it has seen 40 years of use, so there are small dings all over it. They will disappear easily. The big dent in the driver fender may be more difficult to disguise, but time and effort will tell. If you recall the pictures from when we first bought this car, the damage on the driver side looks way better, especially when we consider that a complete body-work noob (me) banged the dents out with a framing hammer. Yeesh.

That's it for today. This was really more of a status report than anything else, but after so many months of this car sitting, having the paint off the metal and getting re-assembled for Bondo seemed post-worthy. Thanks, as always, for following along.