Penny and I have continued work on the guards and we got the paint of the top flat area of the guards completely off. We have started on the sides of the guards and a couple more coats and a third of that will be finished.
As mentioned in the previous post, Penny and I have moved onto the guards. Dad got some of the original stripper that I was using and it is making lighter work of the paint than the new stripper was. It’s still hard work and taking some time to get all the layers off, but it is working.
Today, I enlisted the help of my wife, Penny, to get the stripping on the doors done. I want to get them out of the way this weekend so I can move on to stripping the guards.
With Penny’s help, we achieved our goal and discovered that the new stripper that I am using is not as strong as the old stuff. We hit the guards with the stripper and it just did not want to move the undercoat that is original from the factory. The doors did not have much original paint left on them, but the guards have plenty. I’ve asked Dad to drop into Southern Paints and grab some more of the original stripper that I used.
Dad was a bit eager to get started on repairing the driver side guard today. This guard had a huge amount of body filler showing on the inside of the guard. We were both keen to see how much trouble the guard was actually in.
I started to strip off the paint and we quickly decided that it would be faster to just grind it all off ;). Once the grind had done it’s job, we could see how much bog the previous repairer used. I was amazed, to say the least. Rather than patching the rust hole, they just filled the hole to the second skin with bog. It was at least 1/2 an inch thick! Dad cut out the hole and used the same technique to repair the guard as we had the previous week to mend the passenger door. All in all, it came out pretty nice. Once the shaping is done, it’ll look better than new.
I also spent a fair amount of time continuing the stripping job on the doors (almost there).
Continued working on the doors today. Got them nearly completely stripped and Dad spent some time on the passenger door. He has made some patch repairs to the rust holes using some gal plate he had laying around. Rather than brazing, he decided to use solder. This way, less heat is used and the metal skins would not warp. The end job is looking pretty good so far, he just needs to finish off grinding the excess solder and removing the flux and then the finally shaping can start (Once I finish stripping them that is 😉 )
