There is a lot of hype about the Black Friday & Cyber Monday with Pre-Christmas sales advertised all over the internet. I must admit I had a look and was a little surprised that the so-called “sales” were not as good as they made them out to be, at least here in the UK anyway or did I miss some bargains? I would love to know if it’s the same situation in the USA too, maybe the hype has worn off a little in the current economic climate? Black Friday now seems to be Black Weekend and a Cyber Monday thrown into the mix as well, almost a long weekend of sales according to most of the larger retailers to kick start the Christmas rush. So with this in mind I decided to have my own little Black Friday, the trouble is I am not selling anything or even buying anything, I am just using POR15 black paint. See what I did there? OK, it was bit (very) tenuous but I kinda liked it, it was also Saturday when I started it, but I did plan it on a Friday night so that still counts right?. Last weekend I started the front of the floor pan and this weekend I done the middle part up to the rear seat. The weather was cold, there was a snow alert from the car, but I still went out in a fleece and t-shirt to finish the rear section, ’cause that’s what real petrol heads do, I think, well that’s just before the stupid ones get a cold! Then they (me) put a jumper on when nobody is looking. I took the front seat out from the passenger side and pulled the carpet up. Yes, I knew there was filler there from when I purchased the car and looked her over, the filler was around the welding work and I thought no more of it at the time, now I decided to probe a bit further just to make sure. My home-made filler removal tool which may look like an old school screw driver that I had broken the blade on it, but don’t let this simple tool fool you. This precision engineered tool took me all of about three minutes to make and that included the thinking time. Firstly I ground the end down to a slight angle across the blade snow plough style. After making sure that the harsh jagged edges were removed, I rounded it of a little, but maintaining a little edge to dig in with. This new tool allowed easy digging out of the flexible filler and also scrape close to the metal without gouging lumps out of it.
Note to Snap – On Tools; please feel free to contact me for the full specifications of this tool, you can make these under licence from me at very reasonable rates, or any of my other home made tools come to that.
The floor pan was replaced before I purchased the car, that part restoration of the floor was a job that I didn’t fancy doing to be fair. But, knowing what I know now and the help I could have had from friends and professionals, maybe I would have had a go at it. The underside of the car has been under-seal sprayed, while the inside has been wax sprayed. The roof headliner area has also been sprayed, but to better standard than the floor pan had been done. In some places the wax spray was thick and in others areas it was almost not there. The welding of the pan is not the best or neatest I have seen, and this raised a little suspicion on my behalf. I removed a fair bit of the filler around the welds and the filler was there to patch up the uneven welding and the grinding, so it was not much of an issue apart from the cosmetics, which will be under a carpet anyway. There was however a patch of larger filler right in the corners that I wanted to investigate. Digging away (with my new tool, from the new line of, “One Man’s Tools Collection”), revealed a little patch of horrors and cover up of some rust sections. I removed all the filler from the area to expose the full extent of welding and find the bare solid rust that I could work with, Lucky enough it was all pretty solid enough but had just been covered over and not treated, done in a hurry I expect. Sloppy work. Now that the bare rust was exposed the POR15 I used on the front section was also going to be continued through to the middle section. Once I was happy with everything in the rust area and the surrounding metal area, I started the long three step process again; clean, prep, paint, sand & paint again. The POR15 was again done over the course of the two days this weekend, and todaythe weather held out enough for me to be able to push the car half out the garage to help me see better where I had been and missed between the coats. I have attached the process in photos under the menu heading Photos – Inside the Car – Floor Pan Rust Treatment, or click here for the quick link.
I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving on the other side of the pond.
