More stripping

I did a whole load more stripping this weekend:





It's surprising how much surface rust there was hiding underneath the paintwork - or maybe not, it is a Speke car after all!
Either way, it looks like I caught it just in time. It's all surface rust, with none of it looking in any danger of rotting through. Given another year or so, it could have been a different story though.

Strangely, there seems to be three different types of paint under my car - there's the normal stuff in body colour (pimento, if you were wondering), which comes off nice and easily. Then there's some other red paint - this stuff is a darker shade, almost a vermillion colour. This is strange stuff - it doesn't blister when you put stripper on it like you'd expect, and doesn't scrape off easily. I found a wire brush was best for getting that off. The third type is a rubbery black stuff. I don't know what it is (some sort of chassis paint?), but it's a right pain to get off! It doesn't react to the stripper much beyond softening up slightly - this stuff took me ages to get rid of. Fortunately, it seems to be mostly around the back end of the car, and I've got it all off now.

So far, I've done most of the rear end up to the rear bulkhead. This is really the worst part of it out of the way - as I found with the underseal, the wheelarches and chassis legs create all sorts of nooks and crannies that are almost impossible to get to with anything much larger than a screwdriver. Compared to this, the flat areas under the cabin are blissfully easy to do.

I do need to go over a few bits again though - like I said last week, I need to go over some tight corners with some wire wool. In the end, today I ran out of paintstripper, I left it too late to go to the shop to get more (Stupid Sunday trading hours!), and my wire brushes are now all knackered - this job is pretty hard on wire brushes, I've gone through four so far!

So time to call it a day, but all in all, I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere now.

Stripping

Got the paint stripping started today. :-)

I'm using nitromors at the moment, for no better reason than I had some sitting on a shelf.

Start:


During:


Finish:




Check out the rust on top of the wheelarch!
It's just surface rust though, nothing serious - apart from the seatbelt mount. I'll weld a new plate for the mounting and get some anti-rust treatment on the rest.

It's slow work again, that wheelarch took me two hours! I still have to go over it again around the seams with some wire wool to get the rest of it off.
Unfortunately I had to cut it short and go into work - long story, but our server crashed, and now I have to redo all the work I did last Friday. Not happy!

More rust

Now I'm mobile again, I got back to the '7 today. I've now got all the underseal off completely, and the underside is now ready for stripping and painting. Finally!
The only bits I haven't done yet are the gearbox tunnel (gearbox is still in the way; I'll sort that out once I've pulled the engine out) and the bits where the axle stands are. Still, seeing as how none of those areas have any underseal, it shouldn't take long to do them when the time comes.

Once I'd finished all that, I was a bit stuck for something to do - I can't do much more on the underside until I can get hold of some paintstripper and a tarp, that'll be a job to get started on next weekend. A few weeks (months? Time passes quickly!) ago, I mentioned that I was worried about the windscreen surround. So I pulled off the screen base finisher to see what was underneath - it turns out I was right to be worried:



Seriously rusty! :(

The pictures don't show it too well, but the top inch or so below the screen has rotted right through along about half the length of the panel. This is going to hurt! And as far as I can see, the panel is now unavailable, and I can't see any repair panels for it either.
This is going to seriously test my (as yet nonexistant) welding skills I think, but at least I don't have to worry about it just yet - I've got to finish off the rear before I even look at that again.

Slight hitch

I was just on my way to work on the TR last sunday in my Astra, I pulled up to a junction, and the engine died. Uh oh.
When I tried to restart it, I got a strange whirring noise from the starter - I've heard that before. A quick check and sure enough, the cambelt had snapped. Bugger. I called the RAC out for a tow home, and swapped the belt, hoping for the best.
But it was not to be - the engine sounds like a bag of nails, and doesn't even have enough power to get up the driveway. Oh well!
So now in the driveway I have a replacement - a 1994 Saab 9000. It has it's own problems (head gasket gone?), but it's a runner, and in great condition otherwise, considering the £300 I paid for it.

The upshot of all this is, I haven't been able to so much as look at the '7 for well over a week now. So no progress just yet!

I have to say though, I was seriously impressed with the RAC service - I called them up, explained the problem, the guy was there within 10 minutes. A quick look under the bonnet was all he needed to see, so I got towed straight home, no faffing about. I was back on the driveway 35 minutes after calling them!