The rear bumper bracket has a nut and bolt to rusty to remove. Cut-off tool to the rescue. Purchased from Harbor Freight on sale for about $7.00, and cut-off discs (pack of 10) from there, also. Be sure to wear safety goggles.
The roof of Beavis has some deep scratches and surface rust caused by (I think) running the car through the woods under some tree branches. The paint needs to be removed, and I have a couple of methods to test:
1.) Chemical paint stripper, and some elbow grease with a metal scraper.
2.) A ‘flap’ disc attached to an angle grinder
3.) A coating removal disc like the ones from 3M
4.) Palm sander with coarse sand paper
The chemical paint stripper works reasonably well, but there’s a lot of manual work with the scraper, and it’s not a pleasant chemical. The flap disc removes the paint and primer very well, but also scuffs up the metal a bit much and leaves lots of scratches in the surface.
Received new floor pans today. I ordered these from a supplier on eBay (eBay ID: CarParts) for $62.55 each, shipping included. Jack points and cross braces are included, and are welded-on. Seat brackets are also included.
The price was quite low, so my expectations were, too. Shortly after paying for them, I noticed that eBay had marked their userID as “No longer a registered user”. CarParts had a feedback rating of about 37000, so they were selling a lot of stuff. Perhaps they had some billing issues? Not sure. I was a little worried, and sent some messages to the website (carparts.com) and found out the pans had already shipped. That was a relief. Pans showed up a day or two later.
Pans are made in Brazil. They look OK. I’ve never installed floor pans before, so I have no idea how they should look/feel. Will know more when I put them in. Everyone talks about the thickness of the metal, so I put the caliper on it — .061 or thereabouts. According to this UNC web page that works out to 16 gauge metal. Other sites, users, and suppliers refer to 18 gauge metal for floor pans, so maybe that’s what these are. I’m not sure how much thickness is added by the paint, and how that affects the gauge.
I cut my hand pulling the pan out of the box — the sheet metal is sharp. I hope that’s not one of those lessons that take a lot of ‘experience’ to learn.
The company still has them on the website (here’s the passenger side: Floor Pan, P/N:113-701 060), albeit at a little higher price ($104.99).
Received an auto body solder kit today that I purchased off of eBay. It was $89.99 plus shipping. The item is the Eastwood Body Solder Leading Kit Basic with DVD.
I thought this would be a better product than the usual plastic body filler (like the Bondo brand). I’ve read that the plastic fillers are moisture magnets. Plus, I think that sticking some more metal on the car has to be a stronger repair than plastic.
Kit includes two paddles for spreading the lead, a body file and file handle, 1 lb. of tinning butter, 1 lb. tin of tallow (to keep the wood paddles from igniting, I guess), five acid brushes to spread the butter, eight sticks of lead (30/70 solder, actually), and an instructional DVD. Of course, you also need some kind of torch (think I will get an inexpensive propane torch.)
