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Hi John
I've just picked up a '58 Sprint Veloce Confortavole, mostly complete, but needing a full restoration, including un-doing a very bodged previous rebuild.
The floor boards & chassis rails are very bad, so will have to be cut out & replaced. When I jacked up the front, the doors became difficult to open & close.........
Firstly I must mention that the blasting company I use is, owned by a Vintage car enthusiast & the guy doing the blasting has been there for 25 years, so is well versed with the intricacies of car sheet metal & ferrous oxide. Plus he uses a fine grit sand.
I'm going to have the '58 shell completely sandblasted, inside & out, and will have my one '57 Sprint Normale blasted at the same time - I need to do floors on both cars, so will use the one as a template for the other.
Bottom line is that the 750 cars were hand built out of *thick* steel & unless your blaster is a real cowboy, they come out really well - your car has some deep-seated rust issues and mechanical stripping will sadly not eradicate the rust out of the pits in the metal.
If the blaster is good, he will work over the car doing little bits at a time & move regularly, often returning to a panel 5 or 10 times to prevent a heat build up = warping.
In your shoes I'd investigate some local blasting companies, get some references and check out their work. If you have to transport the shell some distance, make up a steel frame with wheels & use a trailer. To prevent rust starting as soon as the blasting gun is switched off, I recomend using a product called "Deoxydene" or "Deoxit" - basically a colourless liquid you wipe on the panels to prevent rust forming for 5 to 10 days - in my case I use a 5 litre garden sprayer & drench the shell inside & out - the excess flows out of the holes where the floor boards *used* to be.
Media blasting opinions are like ar$e-h0les - everybody has one - if the blaster is good, then you end up with a clean shell - if you go cheap & use a dodgy blaster = warped panels. I don't believe that you can manually remove rust by grinding & over many years of playing with Vintage & Classic cars, we've successfully blasted quite a few bodies.
Saying that, I haven't done a 105 Series car yet - there I would be wary as the sheet metal is rather thinner than the early cars & in the case of the flush nose cars, even thinner again.
Your car, your call - shout if you need more info
Ciao
Greig
Some 750's
Some 101's
Some 105's
Some others
P.S - DON'T DIP IT - the acid eats the aluminium stiffeners which the Factory inserted into the front chassis rails - these are what your upper & lower front suspension A Arms bolt up to.
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