Thursday, March 29, 2012

Floor

I have the floor welded in, and the gap filled.  There are some small pinholes and things to correct--mostly places where my spot welds didn't join up too well.  Nothing that a few zaps with the Hobart won't fix.

The tough part is going to be finishing work.  I've started grinding everything down, making the seam as invisible as I possibly can without wrecking the repair.

I picked up a small DeWalt air compressor, a D55168.  It had an overwhelming number of positive reviews, and seems like it should be enough to do what I need.  It is a little bit lightweight for constant use of a die grinder--I've found that it has to work a little to keep up.  It's rated at 5 cfm at 90 psi, which is more than enough for the die grinder I picked up.  I haven't picked up an impact wrench yet, but that will be my next tool purchase, I believe.  A half-inch impact wrench would do me wonders.

It's very nice to have some compressed air for cleaning things up, too.  I will have to see if a small sand/soda blaster will work with this compressor.  I may want to get one of those in the near future.

The next major hurdle is going to be the quarter panel replacement.  I still haven't ordered the replacement panels, but that's just a matter of jumping online and placing the order.  I think I'll get the quarters from Classic Industries.  I don't have any real complaints of Rick's Camaro, I just want to see if Classic's are any better.  Supposedly the ones from them are "factory approved", which could end up meaning diddly squat.  There's no significant price difference.

Before moving to the quarters, I am going to try and do a major cleanup of all the old asphalt-based undercoating.  It's a real bear.  Oven cleaner doesn't touch it--and I've tried both hot and cold formulas.  Aircraft stripper has a visible effect, but it's very minor.  I think what I'll have to do is wire-wheel as much of the heavy stuff off as I can, and then go over it with aircraft stripper to finish up with.  That undercoating is nasty.

At very least, I have to clean out the wheel wells.  Part of the quarter panel replacement will be replacing the outer wheel houses.  The inner ones look OK, but I'll have to have it all cleaned up and apart to know if they're truly good-to-go.

No comments:

Post a Comment