Blasting the rear interior

Over the weekend I decided to sandblast the rear package area of the Ghia. It was pretty gnarley back there and I wanted more practice with the pressure blaster now that I know how to use it. I got the best results with the regulator set around 50PSI. I again was using fine grit black beauty. I rolled the car into the driveway (neighbors LOVED that) and I covered the interior up with a large tarp. My car is on a dolly, so I have plentey of room to get "inside" it from underneath the dolly. The tarp helped keep the media contained to a really small area. When I do the rest of the body, I'll be tarping areas to keep clean up nice and simple. I spent about 3 hours on Saturday and another 3 hours on Sunday. A fair amount of the time was to get things set up and get the blaster loaded. I went through 250 lbs of media

Package area before the blast

Driver's side fender well

About 1/2 way through (end of Saturday)

I forgot to take a pic when I finished blasting, so here is the interior in DP90 sealer

Another shot of the area in sealer. I see a spot I missed.

Sandblasting Heat Exchanger

I finally found some time to try out the pointers Brian gave me on my sandblaster. I throttled down the media supply and let it rip on one of my heat exchangers. I also bought some high temp paint (500F) so I could paint the exchanger right after I blasted it.

I used black beauty slag from Reed Materials. It took about 1/2 a bag (50lbs) and about 1/2 an hour to get the part clean enough for paint.

Right and left heat exchangers before blasting

Left exchangers after media blasting


Left exchanger in high temp primer

Left exchanger in high temp Detroit Diesel Green Paint. Much better than the rusted out P.O.S. in the first pic!

Rotisserie Under Way

I scavenged a few pieces of 1/4" thick 2.5"x2.5" square tube to make the pieces and parts for my rotisserie. Last night I welded up the main uprights and tonight I'll make the outriggers. I am going to make the outriggers bolt on so I can break the contraption down and store it under my truck in the garage.

Small bits of progress, but I feel this time will pay huge dividends when I sandblast and start to fix holes on the bottom side of the car.

Project moving along again

I haven't got any new pics to post, but I have some progress to report. I have re-established contact with a fellow car buff who has offered to assist me in getting my rockers fitted up. He has a lift in his garage we are going to use to get the heater channels fit correctly. I am going to take the body and chassis over to his house, we will use his lift like a fork lift and seperate and mate the body as many times as it takes for everything to fit. We are tentatively scheduled for 3 weekends from now.

In the mean time, I am preping the car a bit and building a rotisserie. I made up the front and back skewers this evening out of some angle iron and the tubes out of a trashed front beam. I am expecting some 2-1/2" square tubing to come my way early next week. I will make the bottom of the rotisserie when that arrives. After we get the rockers fit up, I am going to mount the car to the rotisserie and bring it back home.

I also received a lesson in how to 'tune in' my sandblaster. I gave up on it last year when it took about 4 hours to blast an area the size of a butter tub. I found out one of the valves needs to run at 50% instead of 100%. The full open position causes too much media to clog the feed tube and then everything surges instead of running smoothly. After we get the rockers in, I plan on a full-on sandblasting.

I'll post pics of the rotisserie when I get it built.