Off To The Soda Blaster Tomorrow

[M_Pied_Lourd]

So tomorrow I am taking the Boot and Bonnet to the Soda Blasters. Kinda feel a little bit bad about it like I am erasing a bit of the history of the car. Took lots of photos and measurments of the stripe and numbers so I can replicate at least the stripe after I repaint.

Here are the before pics.

Cheers,
M. Pied Lourd

 

[GeeBee1]

Wow, that is gorgeous.

Pat

 

[M_Pied_Lourd]

Thanks Pat,

Unfortunately, not quite so pretty underneath it all

But it will be!

Cheers,
M. Pied Lourd

 

[Silverghost]

I was going to suggest keeping the originals and getting replacements but I suspect the deed is already done....

 

[M_Pied_Lourd]

Hi Peter,

I would have liked to have done that and hung those on the walls. I had been looking for the past couple of months locally for something that might suffice but in the end, I am better off with the panels that I have. They look to be in pretty good shape (with paint on them at least) but we will see how they look when they get back to me. I had the front apron done allready and was pleasantly surprised as it seems to be in pretty good shape considering it was on the front end of a racecar for a few years and its 50 years old and all....

Cheers,
M. Pied Lourd

 

[cheseroo]

Out of curiousity, what does it cost to have a panel like the bonnet soda blasted in the great white north? Locally I've been paying $100 a panel to have them dipped. I realize they are different animals but I'm just curious.

 

[M_Pied_Lourd]

Hey Rich,

Looks like it will be about 200 bucks for the pair including the cross bracing for the inside of the boot. Just approximate for now until I pick them up as sometimes it depends on the amount of paint layers that are on the car. I think that mine might have 3 (white/orange/green and in some places red (stripe over paint). The numbers that are on the car are vinyl stick on types and apparently (so the soda blaster guy was telling me) they can be difficult to get off with soda as the media tends to bounce off of them (whoda thunk it!). If I had known, I would have got the razor blade out and scraped them off.

Will let you know the final tally.

Cheers,
Tush

 

[Gordon_Dedrick]

You will be pleased with soda blasting. They come from the blaster matte grey with all the putty showing! MUCH easier to work with and repair. Just be sure to wash the panels completely so you do not get blast WEEP from any seams in the final finish.
Gordon

 

[UmmYeahOk]

I wished I could of had that done. Ive been sanding for weeks it seems. Ive been using an angle grinder and wire wheel, and we're even using paint remover. I cant tell you how many hours Ive spent trying to get my GT6 down to bare metal. Ive got clear, white, primer, bondo, red, primer, green, primer, and rust sealant to sand down to. Cars going to be 500 lbs lighter when Im done.

 

[tdskip]

Dipping will get rid of things that blasting will not in my experience, especially in a double skinned area.

Tush, eager to see how this comes out.

 

[M_Pied_Lourd]

Umm,

For the body tub I started stripping paint with a brushable aircraft paint stripper that seemed to work very well. A little difficult with some of the nooks and crannies to get it cleaned properly though. I may have the tub done by the soda blaster as well just for that very reason.

There is alot of bondo in certain sections of my car and the chemical stripper has a hard time with this....it will remove a small layer at a time and you need to keep re-applying.

Cheers,
Tush

 

[BRSLimited]

Propane torch works good to get the bondo out, just heat it a little and it will start bubbling and you can scrape it right out in big chunks. Have a bucket of cold water and a rag sitting right there and you can possibly help shrink the dents out that the bondo is filling. Unfortunatly if it's an aluminum panel your stripping you only want to use stripper.

 

[Twosheds]

Tush, you probably have given the answer to this, but I wasn't paying attention:

Are you going to keep it a racecar?

 

[M_Pied_Lourd]

Well, the car will never (shouldn't say never) see the track again, but the mods that are there I am planning to keep whenever possible.

It had a huge square tube roll bar that has to go in favour of a smaller one so that I can fit the top on. It had a straight through exhaust that will be changed to a monza style but still utlilize the ss header. I was debating on taking off the oil cooler but we re-install that for now. I am moving the battery back from the trunk to the engine bay as I figure that I may need to room in the boot for the sidescreens etc. Since I am moving the battery back to the stock location, I will have to loose the oil vapour catch can and coolant catch cans that were in that location. I am going to keep the 5 point harness belts for now and see if I can deal with being belted in that tightly. I am going to simply rubber plug the twin areoscreen holes in the bulkhead as I may decide to run with them at some time in the future.

Suspension mods, oversized sway bars front/rear and adjustable konis and rear axle locating kit will be utilized. I did change the rear brakes from 10 inch back to 9 inch.

The tranny is a TR6 one that is utlizing the factory A Type overdrive so I should be happy with having full syncro. The car will keep the 4.11 diff.

I did convert the steering to rack and pinion as it was still using the stock worm and peg for racing before (rules maybe?)

I plan on putting the racing stripe back on it but am not sure about the numbers yet. I may get magnetic numbers that I can put on/take off depending on my mood.

So in the end, I hope to have a racey looking TR3A that handles fairly well and motors along nicely!

Cheers,
Tush

 

[Britishautobody]

I am all for dipping here! The only drawback is trying to get protection back into hard to get areas otherwise I am a huge fan all the way in the amount of time it saves and how thorough it is!

Cheers

 

[UmmYeahOk]

Umm,

For the body tub I started stripping paint with a brushable aircraft paint stripper that seemed to work very well. A little difficult with some of the nooks and crannies to get it cleaned properly though. I may have the tub done by the soda blaster as well just for that very reason.

There is alot of bondo in certain sections of my car and the chemical stripper has a hard time with this....it will remove a small layer at a time and you need to keep re-applying.

Cheers,
Tush

Thats what we used, but the car has like a centimeter thick bondo all the way around. The car was in pretty rough shape, dent wise, and rather than flat sand the filler down to the metal like you should, they got the curves as best as they could, and left it like like. Like the were shaping a new car out of bondo, rather than using the existing metal as a skeleton.

Fun part was after all the rust was cut away and new metal welded, thats when we started finding several areas "pulled" out with studs. Not the sexy kind, you wanna date, but the ones they drilled holes for.

Anyway, for the nooks and crannies, we went ahead and bought some blasting sand and are blasting in our driveway, rather messy job.

 

[hondo402000]

be careful blasting with sand, you can warp the pannels, I ended up warping my trunk deck by blasting the underside, curved pannels seemed to blast ok with out warping.

Hondo

 

[M_Pied_Lourd]

Picked up my panels yesterday and they look pretty good for 50.

Looks like I have an issue with the Bonnet Hinge mounting point on the passenger side where it looks like it was elongated to alow for some adjustment to fit. Also, the mounts for the hinges on the boot lid, one side has bigger mounting holes for the hinge and I assume that is not correct.

Cheers,
David

 

[Brosky]

It may have cost $50 bucks, but it looks like it was worth it to me.

 

[cheseroo]

Tush -
Looks very solid. That alone has to be very encouraging.