Nobody Will Ever Know

The weekend couldn’t come quick enough for me and seemed such a long week until it finally arrived. Saturday I woke with a feeling of knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but I didn’t really want to do it. It was going to be messy, it was going to hurt and it would never be seen. But that is the nature of restoration that I have learned so very quickly. The job in question was removing Waxoyl from inside the car roof. As you may or may not know, I had fun and games removing it from the floor pans before I treated them with POR15 paint. This time it was above me and I wasn’t too sure how I was going to attack it. Red Bull drinks were lined up and snacks were lined up like little toy soldiers on my Blue Point work cart, I knew what was coming. Plan A; was to rub the wax off with a bunch of rags and degreasant, I tried but I only seemed to spread it about and not remove it fully. Plan B; drink Red Bull and find a scraper while eating a snack. This gave the poor ol’ bloke arm muscles time to recover from half an hour of what seemed like somebody setting fire to them, they were burning that much. The man cave has lots of things that I have stored, (not hoarded – Stored) to choose from. I found all sorts of flexible implements that I could try and felt rather pleased with myself walking back to the garage. Trials were undertaken for the best tool. First was a plastic separator for a tool compartment – that was too soft, but would make an excellent filler spreader tool. (Note made to self at this point, for a small spreader use this bit of plastic). Secondly I had a silicon sealer remover, this was OK but too small and hurt the hands due to the funny angles on it. Thirdly I had a pallet knife that was good but again to small and too stiff and dug into the metal on more pronounced curves as it was sharp. The winner was an old filling knife I used for decorating, it was flexible and formed to the very slight curves of the roof, it didn’t dig into the metal and scraped of a good amount each time.

I started from the back to the front and the flex of the blade followed the roof well. The whole process was messy as the skin grafts of wax were raining down on me and went everywhere. At the start of the work you can see the roof under the wax which wasn’t pretty but it worried me a bit as it looked rust coloured, so I wanted to protect it best the best way possible. I took a photo of half the roof done for a comparison with and without the Waxoyl to show what it was hiding.

untouched roof

The mess was unbelievable and the old towels I had put down were not enough to cope with the mess. The side pillars at the rear were also cleaned up but were going to get a slightly different process. Snacks were consumed and a fair amount of water taken into the system. Arms are now aching beyond belief.

half way done

mess

more mess

even more mess

left side pillar

right side pillar

Once the roof was stripped of the wax I had to degrease it with the strongest mixture of POR Marine Clean I could mix up on 1:1 basis. This cut through the grease and left a very clean surface after a couple of treatments. this was left to dry thoroughly.

I used a full tin of Rust Prevention paint (picture on the process page, or click here) as this time as there was no real rust to be fair. The paint required two thin coats within ten minutes of each other. They looked a little patchy when drying but the end results was amazingly smooth and consistent to a whitish grey in colour.

single coat

second coat

almost dried

The side pillars were a different story as the bottoms by the shelf was rusted a little more and need some treatment of the Granville Rust Cure. Once that had dried off too I used some Eastwoods Rust Encapsulator to spray behind the pillars into all the little gaps then sprayed the outside all the way down to the window winder area. The satin black cuts the light down in the car again. Around the roof where the inner rail is there was not enough prevention spray for all of it. So I decided to Eastwood those areas too, while trying to prevent a little over spray not that it would ever matter of course. Another note to self; start on the rear shelf soon.

left side

back

The end result looks quite good due to a contrast of the black and white, the down side is once the head liner goes in – Nobody will ever see it and nobody will ever know!

Quick Links:

For the full process so far of the work; Photo Menu – Inside The Car – Roof & Sides Rust Treatment, or click here.

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Raise a Glass Or Two

The good lady wife cleaned out the kitchen cupboards and moved a load of things around and found some bottles of drink we were given when we got engaged. We decided at the time to keep them for a special occasion as you do, and we put them right out-of-the-way for safe keeping and we promptly forgot about them, out of sight out of mind as it were. That special occasion day was today – they went down the drain as they had corked and smelt like vinegar when they were poured away. There is a message here, if you are given a nice drop of plonk – drink it while it’s still good. The others are OK but that’s not he point. I do however plan on opening a nice big bottle of champagne once I am holding that elusive MOT certificate for my car, then I can drive it legally, not after the drink of course, but you know what I mean. Oh, in case you are wondering – now things have been moved around, I can’t find anything!

The title suggests that I have been on the ol’ vino apart from what went down the drain, sadly that is not the case, but more about getting the rear quarter windows out of the car. For the past two weeks I have taken a complete side of glass out, which includes the frame, brackets and bolts all of which were cleaned up, then the whole thing repeated for the other side. The task itself sounds pretty easy, but the main issue is getting the glass out through the top of the quarter panel opening. Once the glass has been separated it’s not to bad a job at all, the technique seems to be unbolt the frame, undo the glass and separate it apart inside the frame. The dexterity of hand and eye coordination is put to the test where you have to hold the glass, lift it out of the frame rack itself and then guide it out the top. The glass is not heavy but I am aware of the age of the glass and I didn’t want to knock it and crack it or worse still drop it. The fact that the winding gears had dried solid grease, Waxoyl all over them and general lack of maintenance sort of explains why nothing wanted to move very much. The cleaning was a nightmare getting the guide rails clear and removing the caked on Waxoyl. All this hard work nobody will ever see once it’s fitted back into the car. As a result, my shoulders and neck ache for constantly looking down at it all, poor ol’ soul! But here is what I have been up too:

frame in place

one of the guide bolts for the glass

right inside before clean

track guide

track for the window

right inside close up

untreated

finished

I have added a couple of before and after pictures as well. and I have added the full process under the Photos section or click here for the hyper link.

Right side glass

right inside before clean

right outside cleaned

right inside cleaned

Left side glass

left side

left inside cleaned

left outside cleaned

Left side glass track and frame

Left side bottom uncleaned

left side top uncleaned

frame Insides cleaned

Both side winder mechanisms

both sides uncleaned

other side uncleaned

both sides cleaned

mechanisms cleaned

The other thing I have tidied up today was a couple of boxes I had in from the USA a while ago which were some replacement dash gauges. These were in small boxes all over the place so I decided to make a little storage area for them. I had a sturdy box and created a cut out for each and placed them inside for safe keeping. A nice little idea, which I may turn into plastic instead of cardboard.

wropped up

protected

Quick links:

Photo Menu – Glass Work – Rear Quarter Window(s) Refurbishment or click here

Special Mention:

A special thanks goes out to Dana http://atlastracer.wordpress.com/ who has kept me laughing and motivated over the weekend. Pop over to check out her amazing blog.

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Like buses…

They say that buses don’t turn up and when they do there are two of them! I never really understood that as they should be on a time-table, but it does happen. Anyway the point is similar with me on the blog this weekend. I only posted a little quote in the last couple of weeks and this weekend I am posting twice with a full set of photos for work I have been doing on the car. OK so this post will not be as long as the last one but it here never the less.

Today was a day in the garage, I was going to finish up the hand brake cable on one side, so far the other brake has been restored yet. Then I was going to get in the engine bay and treat some light surface rust I had in there. I was on a roll and got to work the hand brake was dismantled again and some grease was applied to the parts that were metal touching metal. Although this sounds simple, it wasn’t as it required a certain technique, the car is on axle stands at the rear but not very high up. So as I needed to get to the back of the gear box effectively there is not much room to slide under the car. So the technique is lay sideways onto the car, turn the head sideways and shoulder shuffle untill the shoulders are under. Then bring the arms above the head then in the same manoeuver place the feet against the wall. Timing is now crucial, exhale and push with the feet while doing the shoulder shuffle thing. Once under, the tunnel provides a little welcome space and the rib cage is now able to move a few shallow inches at a time. Everything has to be to hand in order for this to work mind you. At this point I’m trusting those axle stands can really hold two tons as they say they can, if they fail, I am gonna get crushed ribs and all sorts of other unmentionable injuries, if I am not killed anyway that is. Getting out is a reverse shoulder shuffle out and slowly turning the body a few degrees so you exit sort of parallel to the car, those next few deep breaths feel so good. I do have bruises to prove that it was honestly that tight under there. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I got it off to a fine art now. So the hand brake was in place it works (sort off) as the new parts are linked up to where they should be but not yet adjust correctly. Next job was the engine bay, I got my new stuff Rustbuster FE-123 that I am using to see what that is like. I am planning on doing a comparison test with the Granville Rust Cure and it’s all underway now being left to the elements as I type. Hopefully that will be a video review and then blogged later with my comments. The de-rusting painting was going well, the sun was out, the birds were singing and I was enjoying myself. A couple of kids went past on the their bikes and I watched them go past thinking nothing of it. A few minutes later they were back this time there were four of them, varying from eight to twelve I would say. They stopped in the road (it is a tiny little dead-end where our house is so they were safe enough) and looked at the car in the garage. The first one and the eldest said “Woaaah, Is that a Mustang? Yep it is”, the second said “Go and ask that bloke how much he wants to sell it for, and then tell your dad and he can buy it”. I was taken slightly aback as I didn’t reckon they would be able to pick out a classic Mustang from a done up Jap Ricer with a fake exhaust and a fluffy dice in the window! I was well chuffed.

The view they saw?

Photos:

I have added a photo set of my Drive shaft removal and refitting with oil seal change or click here for the quick link. I am in the process of writing up the Rear Brake Drum refit Parts 1 & 2 as well. There are links to those pages from this photo set, but they are being updated over the next few days or so. I have been able to get a fair bit done on the car and taken plenty of pictures to so I can add them to the blog.