Practically Classics Forum

Debate has been ongoing in the workshop over the last few days on the best way to remove the paint / rust from the bodyshell & panels:
I have had bodyshells blasted before today but whilst it removes rust & paint - it does not access the hidden box sections of the chassis etc - further to this blasting tends to distort the panels and it is just pointless having a bodyshell taken to bare metal to put four buckets of bodyfiller back in it to repair the blasting distortion damage - not to mention the weeks of rubbing down.

Several companies offer a chemical dipping service, so you take the bodyshell & panels to them - they dip them to bare metal, you collect them and undertake any repairs then return the shell & panels to be redipped and then they phosphate prime everything - all sounds good until you write the cheque out for £2,855 + vat and you have to deliver & collect the shell and panels to them twice - so no change out of £3,500 then

I have had a chat to few contacts in the trade and it would appear that what most of them are now doing with restorations on a budget is having the shell & panels intially dipped to bare metal, then undertaking the repairs, 2 pack phosphate priming to all accessable areas and using a high quality cavity wax treatment to all other areas. The intially dipping process is circa £1,000 - the other processess are then undertaken in house making a decent saving.

The final alternative is a bucket of paint stripper, poly carbon discs, rust converters for the cavities & our inhouse media blasters (both grit & soda) plus a lot of time, effort & mess.

Anyone else with a good idea ? (I have already thought of just moving house and switching the phone off)

As yet another forum member who is impressed by your skills and the high level of restoration, dare I suggest that the "cheap" dip may be the second best option ("expensive" dip being the preferred one if money had been available)?

My theory being that you will spend many unhappy hours trying to remove paint and rust if you don't dip the car - and miss what is in the box sections. If you were to go and do a "paying job" in those hours, you would surely earn far more than the £1,000 (maybe even more than the £3,500!). From my limited experience with blasting, you'll use a heck of a lot of media (I used about 250 kilos for the bonnet of one of my tractors - but I got the media for nothing!), make a heck of a mess that needs clearing up (though mine went on our lawn as "lawn sand") and get very bored. Similarly, using sanders and/or stripper soon starts to cost money!

I've just had a quick look at my spreadsheet for my smaller tractor and the chassis must have cost nearly £200 for materials to strip paint (sanding discs, wire brushes, stripper and rust remover/converter). Add to that the many boring and messy days that I spent stripping paint and rust: I reckon that I could have earned well over £1000 on minimum wages if I'd had a second job for that time.

I don't know your budget; it must be more than mine was (very limited as I had to finish another tractor while doing the first and it cost even more to strip and repaint!) but I'd hate to see such a high class job being "spoilt" just to save what may end up being "loose change".

One thing's for sure, it will end up an excellent car and certainly shows how a test for "roadworthyness" doesn't necessarily mean the car is safe to use on the road!

Still looking into the bare metaling of the bodyshell & panels - several forum posts (other forums) are leading us to beleive that although the chemical dipping process is effective - owners of the vehicles have had extensive problems with the new paintwork on the car several months after the event as a direct result of the dipping process - so more research yet to be had and thought about - meanwhile Keith & Peter built a partition in the new workshop to act as a divison between the bodyshop & the workshop

Next on the list was the steering box mounting on the offside inner wing - also the subject of accident damage

Nearside inner wing assessment

Managed to get away from the office a little early on Monday so came the long way home and called in at the workshop for a couple of hours