Weeks 7-9

Last post 2 week and now this one, 3 weeks.  You're probably thinking, "I knew he couldn't keep up that pace."  Maybe but the car was off at the sand blaster the last 2 weeks so it was an opportune time to work on some other projects.  Well, the car is back so I decided to combine the posts.

Week 7
With the garage empty, I had enough space to spread out all the parts.  I had expectations of separating all the parts and bagging/ tagging each one.  My enthusiasm died quickly as i started to spread them out.  There are a lot of little parts and many I didn't even know what they were. 

Instead of bagging and tagging each part, I separated electrical, mechanical and body parts.  I will go through them in the order I need them. 

I thought the easiest thing to do was lay the car out on the floor, bonnet, cabin and boot.  I didn't label each part but did organize by type and location.  Since I intend to build the car prior to paint, I'll have time to go through them.  I think I have most of the major pieces but we'll see.

Week 8

I don't have any pictures for this week.  Since the car was still being blasted, I worked on tiding up a few things.  I finished making the inner fenders and sand blasted a lot of the smaller body parts like the bonnet latch and fender tie plate and inner fenders.  Spent most of my weekend finishing up the A/C installation on my E-Type.  Custom radio/ speaker panel and brackets.  

Week 9

Yeah, the car is back.  It looks SO different blasted down to bare metal.  Not too many surprises and now I can move from rust repair to holey metal repair.

Front of boot section.  Lower sections, I cut out the rust and thought sand blasting would be easier with them removed.  Battery boxes look pretty good.

Side view boot section

Rear view boot section.  I cut out the worst of the rust on the lower edge and sent the car to blasting prior to repair.

Front section side view.  Car had a slight finder scrap some time in its past.  It was so minor, couldn't tell from underneath until everything was removed.

Front right side.
A little misshaped around the bumper mount but no rust.  Odd since there's rust on the driver's side.

Front Left Side
Blaster didn't quite get all the body filler out of the lower edge.  Not a bid deal since I will have to patch it.  A few dents around the outer bumper mount, like the other side.

Odd that the filler piece is filled with body filler instead of lead.  I don't really see any rust so it shouldn't be too difficult to repair

My first surprise.  I had no idea there was rust around the side light.  Both sides.  Not so bad to repair but I'm concerned with the effect of welding on the lead filler.

Lower Front Fender
Not really a surprise but more than I expected.  This will be a lot of work but I can't believe this was filled with body filler before.,

Other fender not so bad bust will still require some work.

I know I'm not done with body work but I didn't want the freshly blasted body to start rusting so this is a single coat of self-etching primer.  Black was the only color I could find local so black it is.  Guess it will help when I add the buff color filler primer later.

From a distance, car looks good, even in flat black primer.

Dash and window pillars are pretty much rust free, not much work to do there.

Back on the frame so I can officially join the pieces back together.  I still have a LOT of work to do on the boot section before its ready, as the next pictures show.

This is the deck lid or maybe the surface of the moon, not sure which one.  The black paint really highlights the pitted sections.  I will probably cut out the worst sections and patch what I can.

The other side of the deck lid, not quite as bad.

All in all, its very exciting to get it back and have all of that done.  I don't have to wait on anyone else until I'm ready for the top coat.  Next week, I hope to permanently attach the sills to the cowl.  After that, I can weld in the fenders.  Then I can focus on finishing the body work on the boot section.