Auto Restoration 101

The body was rolled out back of the shop on Friday to get sandblasted. I use RC Mobile Sandblasting out of Wichita, Kansas. He does a great job and really takes the time to do it right. The next step will be to get some primer on it right away. The weather has really been humid in our area this year. If the body sits for too long in bare metal it will start to rust again. We will most likely use Zero-Rust on the insides and on the underside of the floor. On the rest of we will use an epoxy primer.
If you hire someone to sandblast your car make sure they know what they are doing. It is possible for an inexperienced person to actually ruin the body. Sand generates a lot of heat on the metal and can cause major warping of the metal if they are not careful. Our guy has a lot of experience with old cars and knows the techniques to keep the metal from warping. He also uses soda, potash and several grades of sand depending on the condition of the metal, the location of the metal on the car and whether he is removing paint or rust.

Dan from RC Blasting hard at work on the Merc.

The firewall looks nice and clean.

The rear of the car after blasting. I was skeptical at first about having the outer sheetmetal blasted. But after talking it over with Dan he assured me that he could do it without warping the panels. He was right. They turned out nice.

I have some rust repair work to do on the trunk floor and the spare tire well. Both are full of pin holes that were not evident before it was blasted. We will take car of the repairs after we get some primer on the metal to prevent it from flash rusting from the high humidity.