I’ve been continuing with the boot area over the last couple of days, it’s good to see something coming on well. 🙂
As mentioned before, I’ve had an attack of perfection about this, so I’ve been really going to town getting all the old paint and sealer off in order to get an even surface. It’s been a pig of a job, but it’s there now.
Primer has gone on:
There’s obviously the wheel well and the arches still to do, they’ll be done next week.
While I was in this area, I decided to get rid of the old deadening pads on the inside rear wings, after 33 years they were well past their best, and starting to crack and chip. I’d made an attempt before at tidying them up with a bit of filler:
But I wasn’t too happy with the result, or the bodge factor! So I took them off – I’d tried in the past, but they were stuck firm and I only managed to chip off a few tiny flakes before I gave up (hence the filler effort). This time I went armed with a blowtorch – much easier! A bit of careful application with the torch and my old faithful scraper, and I had both panels off in less than half an hour. Wish I’d thought of that before!
You may have noticed the rust hole at the top of the bracket for the rear deck – however, as doing anything like a decent repair will mean taking out the rear deck (which has been rather helpfully welded in at some point), that’s going to have to stay as it is. I’m pretty sure it’s old rust anyway, and isn’t really spreading, so a rub down and coating with POR should stop it getting any worse.
Turns out the blowtorch is pretty handy for getting rid of seam sealer as well – again, shame I hadn’t discovered this before I’d already scraped half of it off…
All that’s left to do in the boot now:
- finish keying the paint on the wheelarches and inner wings (I’ve ordered a can of compressed air to try and blow out the dust and crap from the gap between the wheelarch and inside of the wing – I can’t get anything in there to get it out any other way!)
- Grind down spot welds on the N/S wing where I welded the new sill on
- Primer the wings and arches
- Paint wheel well with POR 15 (Ordered from Frosts, now arrived)
- Stick on new sound deadening pads
- Apply new seam sealer to all the seams – I’ve thrown out the stuff I bought before – it was a caulk gun type, and virtually impossible to use, it was so stiff and unworkable
- Apply second coat of primer all over
- Cover with blankets to stop any scratches and scuffs!