Slowly, But Surely

 Stripping the old paint off the GT6 is a real pain in the proverbial, but the result is so satisfying.

Asd you can see at the top of the photo, on the roof, the previous paint has been trowelled on and is a couple of millimetres thick. The twisted wire brush on a grinder, however, makes short work of it. 

Any rust I find is firmly ground out, treated with Jenolite and then I'm applying a coat of etch primer to the bare metal as protection as I go along. A little every day, even if just a few square inches. 

Given the noise I make with the grinder, I invested in some chemical paint remover. Modern paint strippers perform very poorly against the stuff you could get decades ago, as the dangerous chemicals have been removed. You're lucky to be able to strip away a single layer of paint, let alone the thickness I have on the GT6. Methylene chloride (or dichloromethane) stripper is no longer commercially available to Joe Public (it was banned in 2012) but that's not to say you can't find it if you know where to look. However, even Starchem Synstryp (£44 for 5 litres), which is as good as Nitromors of old, has difficulty getting through the layers and I fear it's going to have to be mechanical methods to cut through the original paint and two subsequent resprays.

As you can see from this photo below, the Synstryp has had little noticeable effect (the paint removed on the right was done before I took possession of the car), despite having been covered in plastic sheeting overnight.

It's a fact of life that, when you're restoring a car, you occasionally come across things that make you weep. This area on the nearside rear turned out to have a lot of body filler under the paint - and body filler usually, although not always, hides rust. Below is was what I found on grinding the filler away, which had to be done. Filler will have to be reapplied to get a contour (or lead loading), but for now the rust has been neutralised with Jenolite and a coat of primer applied.

Progressing around the back end of the car....

Had a go at the original rear hatch a few days ago, but uncovered some holes under paint bubbles. They can be brazed (or, again, lead loaded), but it's lucky I have a near-perfect spare hatch, which can be seen in situ in the first photo at the top.

Welding the holes up is not a solution, as welding causes the base metal to melt and would likely distort it (this doesn't matter so much on parts of the body that are hidden). Brazing only heats the filler metal, which has a low melting point. The filler metal used in brazing is an alloy of copper and zinc (aka brass), which melts around 500°C. When heated to its melting point, brass flows into the gap between two pieces of metal that need to be joined, or into a hole, creating a strong bond that can be easily filed or ground down. Lead loading is similar, but lead is used, although I've never performed lead loading myself. Lead obviously can't be sanded - it's too dangerous in terms of the dust. In any case, the extent of these holes indicate more rust inside, probably caused by a leaking hatch window seal, so the only long-term solution is cropping and brazing in a new section. That said, I'm going to use the spare hatch and merely use the glass and fittings from the old one, selling on the old one to someone desperate enough to do the necessary work on the perforations.

Ref the compressor - I've discovered that only very powerful, industrial electric compressors costing several thousand quid, or petrol driven compressors produce the 15cfm (cubic feet per minute) of air displacement necessary for good sandblasting, but even the 2nd hand petrol ones are expensive. You're lucky if an ordinary electric one produces anything more than 6.5cfm. The search progresses. 

I'm still keen on buying or making a rotisserie (like in the photo below) so I can attack the underside of the tub once I've fettled the topside. 2nd hand metal ones go for around £200-£450, but I've seen perfectly adequate, DIY wooden ones on YouTube. Rather than rotating the body in situ, the wooden ones take up more space, as they roll over with the tub - a bit like a half Michelin Man suit. Space limitations in my garage may necessitate a metal one, especially when I get the replacement chassis, which will be placed next to the car.

I have a habit of picking up used oil drums from our local Ford dealer - they let me have them for nothing. I usually turn them into braziers for burning garden rubbish.

Now I have a choice - use it to make an oil barrel BBQ (the engineers on the ships I sailed on were masters at turning these into huge BBQs that serviced the entire crew), use it as practice for plasma cutting and welding (yes, I'll fill it with water before using the plasma cutter on it) or use the metal, which is similar gauge to classic car body metal, to have a go at fabricating a new transmission tunnel for the GT6. Of course, I'd need to get some metal bending machinery for the last option.....

Talking of metal bending, my panel beating hammers and dollies arrived - without the dollies. Not best pleased with the e-Bay seller in China, but they have replied with an apology and the offer of a £5 discount, which isn't of the slightest value to me, as I was more interested in the dollies than the hammers. I have to say, however, that Chinese companies have good customer service and do get back to you immediately.

This is bringing back all my memories of 30 odd years ago, when I totally rebuilt an MGB roadster from the ground up. The MGB was relatively easy, as I'd labelled all the parts as I disassembled the car. The GT6, however, has had a lot of work done by someone else which, when combined with my lack of familiarity with the Spitfire or GT6, makes it a more taxing and time-consuming job.