Weekend Sixteen

 

The Extreme makes it home to AutoAtlanta. The weekend was great weather so we put the car outside on our lift in order to clean and prep the bottom.
We took inventory of the car and the next steps needed. Once off the ground, we started removing the suspension components. Check out the engine bay - what a nightmare. This really shows the benefit of removing everything from a car when painted. Since we didn't take this car down to bare shell we have left ourselves with lots of back-tracking to clean everything up after paint. Lucky for us this is not going to be a concours car!
Of course that bumper shock has to go since we will be retrofitting the car with early chrome bumpers. Oh my! Look at that cancer attacking the car in the pedal board reinforcement area. How did I miss that the first time? More welding after the fact. Of course the rotors are rusted on and the screws have to be broken loose.
Everything will have to come off the car and be sandblasted and painted. Rotors, hubs, wheel bearings are all removed. More and more pieces come off the car. Dr. 914 would have a fit if he saw this one.
Springs are gone now. It'll be great to see our new coil overs in the rear suspension. Car is coming apart pretty quick. The more that comes off makes me wonder what our new completion deadline should be.
McLean starts his cleanup procedure. We spray the underside with a muratic adic compound. Ask McLean to recommend something for your project. He knows how to clean and prep anything. After letting everything soak a while we take the steam cleaner to it. We'll still have to remove more and wire brush a lot, but at least the project is back in our hands.
The cleaning continues with more and more coming off the car. You can see the sucky pain in the engine bay. This is going to have to be stripped off and repainted.
The inner fender wells are going to have to be stipper and painted also. You can also see a freshly sandblasted brake shield.
The gas tank area is next. If only time had permitted to strip everything off the car before the paint, we could have also painted this area. Since we repainted the original color this area should clean up just fine. We will pull all the components, clean the area and then dye or paint any pieces before reinstalling them.
Yes, it may seem like we are going backwards, but these are necessary steps to have a clean car.