I know I haven't written in ages, but since I figure that no-one is actually reading this, I can do what I want.
I'm breaking chronological form here to tidy up a few things I had done earlier in the project. As with any zealous blogger (not me) or totally professional auto restorer (not me again), you will religiously take pictures and sort them so you have an action by action account of your project. While I very much wanted to do this at the beginning, it's been a bit harder to remember recently as i just dive into the issue and take pictures once im done.
anyways, im noting here one of my bodywork pilot projects, which I only took finished pictures of, and some other painting stuff for my transmission.
You may recognize this as my rear right door, the one that had been plagued by such vicious rust that anyone else would have deemed it unsalvageable. seeing as how wagoneer doors are hard to come by, I decided to take a crack at fixing it full on. I popped open the tin of paint stripper at 2:00am in the schools shop, and tried it in an inconspicuous area first. One thing I learned is that this stuff; although gell, dries really fast, before really having a chance to work on the paint. I made a deep-night dash down to the cafeteria with a classmate (nameless) who helped me snag a bunch of aluminum foil from the dispenser. industrial sized, and thicker than regular stuff, it covered the paint stripper well when I smeared it all over the door, and kept it from evapourating. The nice thing was i could use it again for the second application. once the paint was all removed I ground into the rust with no remorse, and treated it with a rust converting liquid. Note: the pictures above are a preliminary primer, thus still a bit rough.
once it was clean and roughed up, I applied some lovely glass-filled body filler (napa-brand), which has short strands of fibreglass in it to give it strength over holes. I have so far been using it on any areas that are perforated. it sands really well, and I built myself a number of sanding blocks from MDF scraps and old sanding belts. I then honed my model making skills with subsequent bondo-ing, sanding, spot puttying, etc - all the way down to primer. I was pretty pleased with the results after painting but you can see it in a certain light.
Also, I stripped the paint from my tranny pan and let a classmate use up some expensive acrylic paint he had leftover from his motorcycle he was painting (you know who you are). I prepped it with a new gasket and filter from Carquest for $20 since my old seal leaked and the filter was black.
Lastly, today (Nov 23/2010) marks the 3rd anniversary of my owning the wagoneer. Man time flies. anyways, I had thought long ago that it would be a shorter project, but such is life.
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