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Getting Started: Disassembly and Stripping

Since my original plan was to put the car on a new chassis, the first step was to disassemble the car and strip the body to bare metal.


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As I mentioned in the Original Car section, from 30 feet, this car looked pretty decent. But from 30 feet away, it's easy to mistake a pig wearing lipstick for a decent car. Once I started the disassembly and stripping process, it was clear that this car was not only a pig wearing lipstick, it was a textbook example of a cosmetic “restoration” undertaken with the express intent of unloading it on some fool. Unfortunately, that fool found a bigger fool, me.

It was clear that I made a very costly, stupid mistake. I bought a car from the Midwest sight unseen. To save the time and expense of flying to Indiana, I relied on an evaluation of the car by a business client and the representations of the owner, whose son worked for the client.

If you learn anything from this site, I hope it is this:

Never buy a car without thoroughly inspecting it!

Some other “buyer beware” tips include:

  • Don’t trust anybody, seller, dealer, or “appraiser”.

  • Demand to see some documentation. Preferably photos, but at least receipts for work done. If a seller tells you it is a “barn fresh, rust-free car from Arizona”, re-read the first bullet point.

  • Restoring a car and/or building a street rod is an enormous undertaking in terms of time, money and space. Begin with the very best, most complete car you can afford.

  • Thoroughly evaluating a car requires that door panels, kick panels, trunk and floor mats be removed. Get the car up on a lift to check out the underside. Run a magnet around the exterior to see how much plastic is on the car.

  • Reworking someone else’s sloppy body or mechanical work can substantially add to the cost of a project.

Stripping

With the interior and bolt-on sheet metal removed, I proceeded to strip the front half of the car to bare metal using aircraft paint stripper, a putty knife and a dual action sander. When each panel was stripped, it was cleaned with PPG metal prep, (DX 579) water rinsed, blow dried, and then primed with PPG DP 40 (later DP 40 LF) epoxy primer.

Manually stripping paint, body filler and undercoating is a time-consuming, very dirty job. Stripping paint and filler is not easy, but I found removing undercoating to be far more difficult. The previous owners of this car used gallons of undercoating to hide their “repairs” and removing it was a particularly nasty job. I tried just about everything: Heat gun, propane torch, oven cleaner, Eastwood’s product, lacquer thinner, and brake cleaner (acetone). They all work to some degree, but none of them proved to be a magic bullet.

If I ever do another project, I would try to find a place that could chemically strip an entire car in a tank. If the entire car couldn’t be dipped, then at least I would have dipped the bolt-on sheet metal.

I had some parts media blasted, but regardless of the blasting media used (sand, walnut shells, baking soda, plastic etc…) it doesn’t go around corners, remove undercoating, or get to rust between panels.

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