Auto Restoration 101

My son, Richard and I decided to go ahead and weld the stress cracks in the frame before it was blasted. I also made some reinforcement plates for the rear frame above the rear spring brackets. This was an obvious weak area from the factory. Richard welded them at the same time he welded the stress cracks. On Friday morning RC Sandblasting showed up to continue on the rest of the parts. This time he was able to blast the frame, doors, fenders, inner fenders, trunk lid, grille surround and some miscellaneous parts. Our blaster tackled the frame first. When it was completed Richard took some time to blow out all of the sand. We then rolled it into the spray booth. While Richard was getting it ready to paint he noticed some more stress cracks that we had missed. He welded them up and then checked it over once more. Richard was able to spray the frame with a good coat of Zero-Rust and then he applied two coats of semi-gloss black paint to the entire frame before the day was over.
On the frames that need to look original semi-gloss we use a product made by Akzo Nobel called U-Tech 200. It is a durable urethane paint. I purchase it in a gallon kit which is three quarts of color and one quart of activator. I have them pre-flatten it for me to whatever gloss I need. We used a 50% gloss black on this frame.
The frame turned out really nice and is now ready for assembly.

This is the front of the frame after it was sandblasted.

The frame is ready to paint. We have it installed on our “low buck rotisserie”.

This is what the boxing plate reinforcements look like. It should prevent the frame from cracking and bending here like it did before.

Here the frame is painted. It is now ready for re-assembly.