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A couple weeks after my spring semester had ended Jeremy came down to hang out. He asked why the heck I hadn't started on the car yet, so we started tearing into it and throwing parts in the yard. The deck lid was drilled full of holes for the boeing 747 starter kit that the previous owner had installed so that was the first thing to go. It "accidentally" got stuck in the yard, Jeremy posed for a "senior picture". As you can see I did not get the clean rust free southern car I was hoping for. The passenger floor was swiss cheese, the doors and fenders, trunk lid and hood were junk.
I stripped the car down to a shell and started going to town on the rust with the angle grinder and sand blaster. I ended buying a welded and learning to weld. My first weld job was the passenger side floor pan, it was pretty rough but it worked. Sand blasting a car is incredibly messy, my parent's driveway was covered, it gets in your eyes and you breathe it in even wearing a mask and goggles. I worked late into the night most nights. I quickly learned that when you sand blast outside and wheel the car into a non climate controlled shop you have to prime it right away. It would flash rust due to the humidity within an hour of being blasted. There were many areas that got blasted several times before I figured that out.
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Me after a long day of sandblasting. I don't miss those days, sand gets everywhere including in your eyes, ears, and nose. It takes a lot of time to find all the nooks and cranny's were rust hides!
I bought fenders from 2002 AD since all four of mine were junk and they just happened to be henna red! I swapped the doors and trunk lid from my old henna car onto the donor body. I also discovered that the rear window sill was rusted through so I cut it out. I drilled the spot welds on my '83, removed the good window sill and welded it in place on the '81. Great care was taken afterward to seal the inside of the sill with primer afterward. After all my patches were welded in I blasted 1 area at a time, prepped it for paint and sprayed with epoxy etching primer as soon as possible to prevent flash rust. The the areas that I primed had to be sealed with sealing primer.
Here the car is finally rust free, under primer and ready to go to the body shop.
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