piazzanoob

Before the car could be sent off for sand blasting and coating the underside. It needed to be clean underneath of any grease or oil due to the sandblaster spreading it around and causing the paint not to stick. so off i went for a drive to where i had access to a steam cleaner. oh wait and a forklift too so before any steam cleaning was done i put a steel i beam under the forklift mast so that if the forklift happen to lower itself it would rest on the steel beam. then sprayed some degreaser on the underside then steam cleaned it off the underside was actually still quite clean as i had already cleaned the underside last year for compliance. but still had some grease around the steering box which i removed as much as i could. now on its own wheels to be driven home. then once i got it home i put a waterproof car cover i had over it due to it staying outside for the night as it was going to the blasters first thing in the morning. And plus i knew it was going to rain that night. wasn't so keen on a swimming pool inside the car. so this cover is an extra large one. well not an american spec big one oh and yes it did rain quite heavy that night/morning.

cheers The battery that is in mine isnt old and have tested it. even mint on cold starts also volt gauge is same when hot or cold. and starter has been checked over and all cables new. so i know that side is okay but the carb in this thing is still shit and due for the bin and doesn't run all that well. plus ignition timing might need tweaking with but was waiting till setting up with new carb. also runs waay to hot gets up at 100 degrees when in traffic as factory finger cutting fan with no shroud doesn't do anything. got electric fan to fit plus @The Bronze put a reduction starter in his and said it helped alot.

yeah just painting that floor gave the inside a big night and day difference to what it was. mostly noticeable in the boot space. also the inside smell is night and day difference too

hope your recovery is all going well. personally think painting the engine stuff the same colour as the body could look too much of the same colour like overdone but could also look great like alot of show cars have done. take a look at this build and see what you think of the red also wrinkle black or red could work or get the aluminum components vapour blasted. but whatever you end up doing will still look great as the current build is!

I think they need to go around the full arch. as is it looks ATM as if there not made for that car etc personally not a fan of black flares on your car but i see the big wheel gap issue. Perhaps go up a profile in tyre size? also are these separate body and chassis? could possibly drop the body down some more with lower made body mounts.

And then with that done i applied two coats of the white knight PPG rust guard paint. Came out pretty good not too fussed anyway as the carpet will cover it too. also applied with a paint brush so not exactly a quick job. and now just to get the underside blasted and painted

with the car being back on the ground it was time to have a tidy up and set to work on cleaning up the inside of the floors It started with cleaning up the old underlay crap off the floor Just used a scraper and got most of it off even mum came out to lend a hand and the last photo shows the only rust that was in the floor being on the rear passengers side i then got the wire brush and an abrasive disc on the grinder to get the surface ready for paint i also while i was at it cleaned up the patch on the R/F floor abit more. then after this i cleaned the whole floor with prepsol and twice in some place so it was clean and ready for paint. And covered the holes in the floor to prevent paint spilling on the floor

now the next job was to get it down off the stands unfortunately not many photos were taken due to being the jack operator so for this job i decided to borrow another trolley jack to help with the job this was also a slow job being that remove one block then let it back down as we were unable to do big drops on the jacks then once we were at a height where we could remove the trestle stands we placed some blocks with the axle stands at full height. then remove blocks from below or above the jack and drop the axle stand down a notch. this job took about 2 hours with 3 people and this was all done by the help of on the jack m8

Cheers have acquired another trolley jack so will make the job 100x easier

so after it having a few coats of primer on the sills i gave it one final light sand to help with a better paint finish. i then gave the sills a blow down and wipe and laid some paint down with some paint that i had matched up using the fuel flap as a sample colour name seems right to me then applied one light coat And while i was waiting for this coat to tack on... I then applied a few more coats on each side with them not being very thick coats with leaving some time before applying each coat. ended up using the whole amount i filled the gun up with And didn't end up with any runs in the paint and a pretty good finish for a non paint guy. could've got a better finish if i had applied the coats thicker but also didn't want runs haha oh and next up ill take it off the stands which should be quicker than it went up

now with some bog smith work... after letting the etch primer dry i applied some body filler to both sides And with the drivers side needing much less. we then sanded it and sanded it then added more bog and sanded it again. with about 10 hours of shaping the sills as i keep finding inperfections in the bodyline and sanding and bogging. we then masked up the car to set with putting some primer on tapped two of these thin plastic masking sheets together due to the width of the car. then we pulled out some primer we had but it turned out the primer had separated and it was fucked although the last time we used it was to do the piazza so it was a few years ago now. so ended up going to supercheap as it was a sunday and they had some. laided some primer down then sanded some more then went out to supercheap again to get some spot putty put some spot putty on as the filler gets air pockets in it. oh and @GuyWithAviators where's all your stock gone. everytime i go in your store you dont have it in stock then sanded that and got it to a acceptable level as the rest of the car isn't show spec. next you will find how good a non professional can get a paint job

doesn't sound like you've had much luck with cars and jacks in the past

wait i don't suppose your @bigfoot are ya?

now with the important part of the job also as seen in the previous post that i had already stripped 90 percent of the bog and paint off the passengers sill the next part was to remove the drivers side bog and paint and the other 10 percent from the passengers. oh thanks bog smiths which then to this point which revealed only really one big dent photo doesn't really show the actual size is much bigger than the photos then stripped the rest of the passengers if you look closer at the photo you will find a dark line which is a big long dent in the sill and again with a dent in the front like the other side and some previous panel pulling had been found due to holes in the steel that would've been from a screw type puller then pulled my pullers out had purchased the one on the left as its a eastwood kit as came with an attachment for the mig welder to weld the the pins on but didn't work that well. nor did the puller have any good way of getting it tight enough onto the pins to pull. does work but would only really work on thin flat panels. would not recommend though but the one on the right we made up ourself with some stuff lying around but is just abit heavy to use but works 100% so got the dents out to a reasonable level without tearing the metal with using both pullers. which came out like this so grounded the welds off and any other shitty bits and applied some etch primer just brush painted this on due to the small amount needed. now next ill show you how to be a bog smith cheers m8

Yeah that's true main thing to do is a nice carb and tune and give the cooling system a good once over and get it running abit cooler. but after that will just be cosmetic things oh and lets no forget some more low low

Oh mate that would've been the quicker option

Yeah but there is still a big amount of work and money involved to where it's a good reliable car. But have driven it quite abit as is with US plates and no wof and rego just the compliance paperwork. So most of the big buzz I got from driving it has worn off abit but still enjoy the shit out of driving it. The hori reactions are the best tbh haha

With the amount of work involved in the sills yeah nah fuck that. Plus trying to pull dents out bog it sand it and paint it isn't that easy at the low height while trying to do a reasonable job of it Plus old man wouldn't help if it was that low due to old back etc so that was more of the deciding factor

Haha yeah much better. need to keep up to speed with the progress of the build thread. But updating it becomes a much bigger job than working on the car in my opinion. Sills are all done and painted and the car is currently in the blast booth getting sandblasted underneath then I'll be painting the whole underside for the rest of today.

Yeah mate much scarier then that night. Ended up getting a wing man mate to come which helped that night from standing there awkwardly. Also had some good sharns but none good enough bothering with getting their numbers. Yeah the jacking process wasn't much of an enjoyable one to say the least haha

Could put some braces but I liked the idea of being able to go under the car while on a creaper seat. Plus just the stands felt sufficient enough for my liking.

mate you should just finish it. super cool and fun go kart would buy myself but also got too much shit and other projects. now just chuck up some videos when its done

so with more stuff to do i got to work ' figured i would start off with doing the sills this was one of the dents in the sill that the engineer had noted he want done when he first inspected the car so i pulled that dent out when i did the chassis repair and left it bare so you could see the repair was not bogged up. unfortunately i have no photos of the excess bog that was on the sills so started with grinding one side with one side on axle stands and lying on the floor oh and some lovely bog dust collected And now at this point i knew this job was to big of a job to be doing while lying down and a 2 post hoist wouldn't help due to the arms being in the way. And with having no one with a belly lift hoist that would allow me to do grinding and sanding. we had some heavy duty steel trestles that we would jack the car onto this was the full height on the axle stands i had and so now prior to the photo being taken is where the jacking process started turning to shit. before hand the front was on the wheels and one block of wood above that on each side that you can see one the L/H wheel and the rear i had managed to jack high enough by stacking wood above the floor jack and placing two bunnings saw horses bellow the diff which was super dodgy and making creaking noises while the weight was on it. i figured i better get them out asap before they collapse so i got the trolley jack again on the rear diff and stacked about 3 logs high above the jack to which i got it high enough to slide the steel trestle under the drivers side L/H sill but needed to come up another 50mm to side it under the chassis And now i was at the point the blocks above the jack were starting to tip and the front wheels were close to rolling off the wheel and blocks due to not having the brakes applied. so i stood there holding the wheel from rolling off the edge and thought about what the fuck am i doing with my life while feeling help less so i gave my bro a call to get to mine asap before it falls off the jacks. but before he arrives the blocks and the jack slip out and fuck off 1.5 metres away and the rear makes a sudden drop while the steel trestle takes most of the weight while stitting on the drivers side sill. and the saw horse luckly not collapsing. while the car sitting on one big gangster lean enough of one that if the saw horse collapsed the car would've roll over onto the starlet and crushing me to a slow and painful death. so did some more unsafe jacking and got it to the point of the photo above. much safer than before. by this point some helping hands had arrive to help out with the jacking process. also had the over paid safety inspector on site to keep things in control so with the use of some quality Japanese alloy wheels cobble stones and blocks of wood and a trolley jack we got it high enough safely to place the trestles underneath the chassis. and by this point it still wasn't at a nice comfortable working height. so the next day we got some bigger blocks and cut some up to place above the trestles and did some jacking again To which we ended up at this comfortable height to work with. safer than a hoist m8 also having 1 trolley jack to do this job is painful. but got there in the end also gave it the rock test and passed flying colors. now your inner safety Nazi can tell me off

i think personally you would be better off buying yourself a small blasting cabinet and doing stuff yourself. but this depends on what budget you are working with also it would also be good to use a stripper disc on the chassis and other bits as i have found wire wheels are not super abrasive just some info you properly already know but yeah super cool ute and looking forward to progress

so seen as all the work that was required on the engineers cert check sheet was done. I arranged a time with him to come view it on one of the hoists at work so he comes inspects the work and is quite impressed with the chassis repair and replacement floors bits put in. so figured sweet it will get signed off... well he wanted where the chassis repair was done painted right up until the wheel arch meets along the back rail and the other side to suit. well FFS i left the underside unpainted so you could see the repair. then wants the leftover bog taken off the bottom of the sills as when it was painted in the states the sills were bogged and left the bottom side untouched as you cant see it right. and he also wanted the floor inside the car cleaned up and painted in a couple of areas due to him stating its surface rust. that i was fine with then he starts going on about the very very light underbody surface rust. to which i said i would get it done after its legal and stated that it would be getting lightly sand blasted then painted. to which hes reply is oh just put some rust converter on it then a top coat. cheers m8 so now im left with more stuff to do and all this stuff being not on the list he wrote. this made my blood boil due to him already inspecting the car and not saying the first time round which fucks me around as i could of already had that stuff done. so now i have 0 faith in these repair cert cunts doesn't know shit from chewed up dates.