I love shopping!

[Kats66Pny]

Air Compressor.................................................. 
Several pneumatic tools for air compressor....... 
Paint remover disk for grinder............................ 
Media Blaster..................................................... 

Tools to work on Gert FINALLY!! 

[AzPete]

Ssssooooooo......does this mean you are keeping her? Nice shopping for sure.

[Kats66Pny]

Yeah going to keep her.

Next weekend going to take a trip and buy a cowl vent assy, and some other parts for her down in Houston or maybe Waco. 

[silverblueBP]

I'm calling BS


 

[Kats66Pny]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[silverblueBP]

You are gonna LOVE sand blasting.

Tip, do not wear a thong and bikini top while sand blasting[1] and whatever you do wait till the hottest days to blast 

A 3/8" air ratchet will be a nice addition too.

1.	unless you'll be taking pics)

[Kats66Pny]

What's going to add to the fun of blasting... doing it in my garage! 

[abrahamfh]

Congratulations Kat, I am so excited for you. 

There is seriously no greater feeling than working on your car and watching the progress unfold.

I don't know a lot, but slowly learning as I go, if I can be of any help let me know.

[Kats66Pny]

Thanks!  I've been waiting since May when I got Gert to get tools to work on her. I almost got a welder, but we decided to pass on that since neither of us knows how to weld and we have folks who've offered to weld stuff if needed. We would have also bought a blasting cabinet, but since we don't own a truck, only 2 small cars... no way to get it home. Yet. Hubby might be getting a Chevy S10 pickup March 19th. 

Now that I have some tools... where to start?!  Engine bay of course. Got to clean it up, repair the hole left by the battery acid.

[34isgreat]

   Hope you got some good PPE to wear when using the sand blaster. I have done that and it will take your hide off! Also I think you live in Texas, do not wait until it's hot to do the sand blasting, wearing the needed face shield and hood is hell when it's 100 degrees outside. Cant wait to see pics of Gert as you progress, you will be doing this  in no time!

[Kats66Pny]

PPE.. Check! 

Oh yeah... I won't be doing much when the summer heat starts in. My garage will turn into an oven! I'm hoping to get most of the hard labor work knocked out before the summer heat wave. I might wait though to install carpet though when it's hot out. I read that installing carpet works better if you lay it out in the sun to warm it up.

Oh yeah I almost forgot... I learned of an auto paint place in town that I can get tons of stuff for body work there instead of having to order stuff or use auto part store stuff. We stopped by yesterday, but they closed at 1pm so I'll have to check it out Monday. I'm curious if they carry POR or if I'm going to have to order it. I was told 1 gallon would be more than enough to do my mustang.

[sigtauenus]

Kat, I blasted my fastback in the garage and it was a big mistake, at least the way I did it. 

There is an open hole in the garage for attic access, although we typically use the pull down ladder inside the house for access to the main attic for storage.  The blasting dust went up through the garage hole and settled on everything we had in storage.  It also went through the door to the house and settled on everything in the adjacent den.  Obviously everything in the garage was covered.

I recommend you remove everything from the garage you don't want to have covered with dust, or don't want to spend hours trying to clean up afterwards, and seal off the garage from the house really well.  Seriously, you may not think it is a big deal to blow the dust off of stuff with compressed air, but it is an absolute mess.  You would be better taking everything in the garage and putting it in a corner of your living room or a spare bedroom, it will be time saved in the long run over trying to clean it after blasting.

[Kats66Pny]

I was thinking of using a staple gun and hang up some thick plastic sheeting from the ceiling all around Gert.. like a tent, and make something like Dne's little vacuum/blaster gadget with my shop vac that I never use and just do small area's at a time to help cut down on mess.

[sigtauenus]

I did something similar (which is why I left everything open in the garage.  I took a 2x4 and rolled it a few times in the edge of a tarp, then screwed the 2x4 right into the ceiling joists in the garage, rolled the bottom of the tarp in 2x4 to hold it down against the floor, effectively doing the same as you describe.  It contained the worst of the dust, but still much got around it as I previously described.  If you keep stuff in the garage, I would still cover it with plastic, or put large garage bags over it, etc.  It is amazing where that fine dust can creep into and settle.

[monkeystash]

Why not roll it out into the driveway, blast it, and roll it back into the garage?  That's the way I did mine.  Also, without a moisture filter, your blaster will clog up in a matter of minutes. 

 

[Kats66Pny]

Why not roll it out into the driveway, blast it, and roll it back into the garage?

.... because 2 doors down lives a cop who is anal retentive.

Most of the rust and body clean up will be done by grinding. I won't be blasting the whole body. The blaster is for those awkward places so I can spot blast. Misc parts will be put in a blasting cabinet to clean.

[abrahamfh]

Now that I have some tools... where to start?!  Engine bay of course. Got to clean it up, repair the hole left by the battery acid.

That's exactly what I'm doing Kat, as much as I want to jump into the LS rocker I am forcing myself to repair everything in the engine bay and slowly work my way to Fred's arse. LoL

[stangg]

I used POR 15 years ago to help preserve the floors on my El Camino... even with the proper prep POR-15 did not hold up to the magical salvation that it was hyped up to be.   Once you get the surface cleaned up, epoxy prime it then topcoat it with the correct sheen paint.   It will look much better than the Peel Off Rust product...  I hate that crap.   For as many people that it works fine for there are probably 2 that it did not.

If you don't blast the whole area,  then you might want to get one of these right angle die grinders and a bunch of roloc discs to manually strip metal down.    I just did both sides of the radiator support on my el camino yesterday with the brown discs and it came out very nice.  The 2 inch discs makes it fairly easy to get into tight areas...  you can also get a variety of sanding discs for the grinder to sand down welds too.   If you are going to do a lot of metal prep,  then this tool is a must have in my opinion. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001X1YOM?ie=UTF8&tag=bestcoverycom-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B0001X1YOM

[sigtauenus]

Having used POR-15 myself as well as epoxy, I have come to the conclusion that epoxy is the way to go.  POR-15 is a product marketed to the DIYer unable to use epoxy or other truely professional paint products.

Check out this thread in a SPI forum, particularly post 10. 

http://www.spiuserforum.com/showthread.php?285-POR-15-Question

[Kats66Pny]

Well I've never used an air compressor before OR a paint gun... so who knows how well I will do using paint products. I'm only doing the engine bay so I guess it doesn't matter if it doesn't come out looking super nice, right? 

[GTchris]

Is there anyone around you that does sand blasting that you could take the car to ?

When I was looking into having my whole car done I was quoted $700.00

I cannot imagine that having just the engine bay blasted would cost all that much. The upside is if you do not have the blaster and safety gear already or know someone that you could borrow one from, you would not have to buy one; and you would not have that mess in your garage.

Another thing I noticed is that the compressor that you have while it is not small is not very big either. It looks like it is about the same size tank as the compressor I have. Is the compressor you bought a 120V or a 240V? The one I have is a 120V. It works awesome for about 30sec when blasting then the performance really starts to drop off. That's okay for small parts but I could see it taking quite a while to do an engine bay waiting for the compressor to catch up constantly.

I know that there were previous posts regarding gear, this is an absolute must. The media you use is very bad stuff if you get it in your lungs. I still wear a mask when I use my cabinet ( a descent mask, not just one of those cheapo paper things) and the cabinet has a vacuum and a filter on it.

[sigtauenus]

Well I've never used an air compressor before OR a paint gun... so who knows how well I will do using paint products. I'm only doing the engine bay so I guess it doesn't matter if it doesn't come out looking super nice, right? 

The engine bay is very forgiving.  I made a lot of mistakes on mine doing it myself, spraying with HVLP and epoxy for the first time ever.  I'm glad I did it though, learned quite a bit and next time will be better.

[stangg]

Well I've never used an air compressor before OR a paint gun... so who knows how well I will do using paint products. I'm only doing the engine bay so I guess it doesn't matter if it doesn't come out looking super nice, right? 

I guess my point is that POR doesn't protect as well as most expect it too.   To me,  it doesn't look right either,  worst of all its a royal pain in the butt to clean up.    If you're concerned about spraying paint with a compressor,  then think about using spray boms.   A lot of folks still use duplicor paint to detail parts and engine bays.   I think rustoleum's rusty metal primer works pretty good on parts I don't care to break out the epoxy on.   

If your engine bay has some surface rust... clean it up as much as you can mechanically,  then when you go to the autobody supply store,  see if they have Marson One Step.   It's a rust converter that does a great job stabilizing rust and a lot cheaper and easier to use than POR.   You'll need to prime and paint over it,  but it's very easy to use.   I usually brush it on with an acid brush or one of those 50 cent 2" brushes from harbor freight.  With decent prep you can still do a very nice job with inexpensive paints.   

[cmayna]

Kat,
Are you considering blasting the entire car? Have you shopped around for a local media blaster to do the entire shell?   Aluminum Oxide is not near as harsh as sand.  I'd consider it big time before I ever put my garage though such an ordeal.

[Kats66Pny]

I'm not blasting the whole car or the whole engine bay. Paint will be removed via grinder w/sanding disks and/or aircraft stripper and any hard to reach odd shaped places will be spot blasted. That;s the plan as of now. I won't know everything for sure until I strip the whole car down to metal and see what's under the paint and bondo.