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I began by removing everything from the car! EVERYTHING! Then, I spent many of the initial months with gallons of paint remover and a putty knife. I was on a tight budget! The car was red originally, then metallic gold, then metallic forrest green and finally red again. I took most of the car down to primer. Both front pillars were completely rusted out, so I replaced them with some solid used pillars I bought. Next, I built a flimsy rack support for the body and raised it off the frame. It sat this way, untouched, for several years and finally made its way back onto the frame after the frame was re-painted. A house move and all that it entails meant the car sat in a side yard for several more years untouched! I started back on this thing in earnest around the spring of '03. I built a frame in the garage that allowed me to raise and lower the body off the frame. This has allowed me to make test fits and measurements on the body, frame and engine combo. I located a blast shop near my house and started taking pieces over several at a time. The guy uses different media for different results and I was real happy with his work. Over time, the entire car made its way through the shop and I had a clean slate to work with. In these pics, it's early in '05, and I've just picked up the body tub, which was the last piece to get done. There were several areas where some filler wasn't totally removed and I finished that up on my own. This body is in fair shape.

Now that the body has been cleaned, it's time for a quick coat of self-etching primer to protect that bare metal and give me a base for more primer and a little filler where needed. I used a gallon and a half of ready to spray SEM brand etching primer. Just one coat over everything and then I came back with several coats of laquer primer. After the body work is done, everything will be hit with a 2k primer-surfacer and then sealed before it goes to the paint shop. All of the other body parts were done the same way.

Now, it was time to tackle some rust problems. I had replaced both door posts early on in the process. Unfortunately, no pics were taken. The front end caps were in terrible shape too and after looking over several of the fixes posted on various web pages, I decided on the cure. The following pics describe the process.

Since all of the old asphalt undercoating junk had been removed from the wheel wells and floorboards, I researched several options for a replacement. I decided to use a product from Quiet Solutions called Quiet Cote. It is a thick water-based visteo elastic polymer, whatever that means. Basically, it is a coating that can be sprayed, rolled or brushed on in several coats and it provides a very tough flexible coating that has sound deadening, rustproofing and some heat insulation properties. The stuff weighs about 15lbs a gallon and I used 3 gallons. I sprayed 2 coats on the entire interior cockpit and trunk, inside the doors and the backside of the hood, trunk and fenders using a special spray gun I purchased from the company. The rear wheel wells will be coated too. Over several days of curing, you could hear and feel a noticeable difference in the sheetmetal. I'm very pleased with the initial results.