I’ve now got the underside finished – the last bit of welding (seatbelt mount) was done the other day, and I just had to fill in a couple of spots where my welds were a bit messy.
With all that done, I set about giving the garage a good tidy up:
Two full bags of rubbish, plus one box and a dead trolley jack to take to the skip!
Today was phase one of the painting: Marine Clean. It’s a cleaner and degreaser, and a good one at that. There was no way of avoiding the mess: the only way to get the underside clean was to get underneath and start working, and accept that I’d end up wet and filthy. So I laid down a tarp to try and catch as much of the water as I could:
And got to work. As predicted, I ended up grotty and wet, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was chemical burns!
There are vague warnings about wearing gloves and so on, which I did (latex), but they all disintegrated and I ended up getting covered anyway. This was the end result!
(Those brown marks are the burns)
Tip number one: Wear decent gloves. 🙂
Anyway, I got it all done, and blasted off the residue with a pressure washer. The tarpaulin trick worked, and the water left in the garage was minimal once I’d pulled it out:
Tomorrow I’ll be doing the Metal Ready, which promises to be just as mucky, although with less chemical burns this time!
