[1750GT]

...If/when you have this area dipped in acid to remove rust which will require water washing to neutralise the rust what will you use to protect the inner spaces which will want to re-rust....

Good point....I'm hoping to get in there with Por15 followed by cavity wax after paint. I used Por15 in some other recessed areas on the chassis and it seemed to flow (or wet out) and creep pretty well in some of those areas.

..when the door skin goes back on does the lip fold over the same edge and is it triple layered then? please describe I'm not clear on this area. Finding spare,scrap NOS stamping shapes is neat way of simplifying your work load.... very smart way to get there...

Yes and no....the outer skin flange folds down over the inner frame flange only. The extra member that forms the box does not get sandwiched in between these two. If you look closely at this photo you'll see that there is a joggle (or step) in the frame flange and the box section sits in that joggled area.

 

[SuperFab]

Hey Furlan...just a quick thought. The doors, trunk and hood on my Super were e-coated after I repaired them. My concern was that I needed to coat these panels inside and out after they were acid dipped as there was no way to get the bare metal coated way up inside the box sections. When I repaired the doors, I did not remove the skins completely as you did, however. If you think you might want to investigate this option, the outfit I used, Coatings 85, is in Mississauga.

 

[1750GT]

Salve Fabio! I did contact that company a couple of years ago when you gave me their contact. Unfortunately, they expressed no interest in doing this kind of work because it would contaminate their production dipping baths. However they did give me the name of some other smaller shop who might be able to do this work....so I'll check with them again. Thanks for reminding me about this!

 

[1750GT]

Hah!...just as I figured. The other shop name I was given (by someone at Coatings 85 who shall remain nameless) that could possibly do such small jobs was Butcher Enterprises....they ain't a small shop at all and do very large production volumes only. Now they did give me the name of a company called Powdertech (powder coating?) and they might be able to do the doors....I'll check them out next.

 

[cuorealfa]

rossano questo progietto che stai facendo e una cosa meravigliosa.anche io sto cercando di aggiustare una gtv del 74 che e tutta originale ma la mia esperienza non si avvicina alla tua.peccato che non ci troviamo piu vicini cosi mi davi dei consigli.comunque grazie e ci sentiremo a presto. ma oakville canada si trova a est o ovest da diciamo pennsylvania USA

 

[1750GT]

Salve Ben e grazie per i complimenti. Il nostro paesetto si trova 20 km ovest di Toronto...siamo piu vicini di quello che si pensa.

So I guess it's about time for an update....I've been quite busy as of late with non-project things...but I've managed to get the door shells and the original door skins acid dipped and then immediately had my painter epoxy prime them (but wouldn't you know it, I forgot to bring my camera along to take photos of the doors at this point). Needless to say they came out looking like new.....beautifully rust free! After unsuccessfully trying to locate a shop capable of e-coating the doors, I decided that epoxy primer is the next best thing...if not better actually (plus it's not like this car will ever see harsh environments again). The painter also sprayed epoxy primer into the cavities of the box sections on the door using a wand extension on his paint gun.

I also paint stripped the hood clean down to bare metal using paint remover...I opted not to use a wire wheel to do this because I didn't want lead paint (possibly) dust flying around all over the garage.

I was amazed at how many coats of paint had been applied to this hood over the years and when I got down to the original OE paint, I was again amazed at how tough/durable the OE paint was to the paint remover. In all, it took me a good 4 hours or more of labor and about 5 applications of paint remover to finally scrape it clean (surprisingly the process wasn't as messy as I had imagined it would be). I finished it off with the usual Metal Ready phospated acid.....this too is now at the paint shop getting an epoxy prime treatment.

 

[1750GT]

So I managed to jump back on to the trunk lid repair. You may recall I attempted to fix the bulge in the trunk lid skin that appeared after my initial weld repair by heat shrinking with the acetylene torch. Well I can report that although this process did shrink the large bulge down, it resulted in numerous smaller bulges and craters to appear....it is definitely not the way to go.. I could not control the distortion on the panel because there is just too much heat going onto the panel which is next to impossible (at least for an amateur like myself) to control.

So I decided to try the shrinking disk method instead. I loaded a 4 1/2 " metal shrinking disk (which I bought from Dagger tools) on my 11,000 rpm angle grinder (Dagger recommended using it at 5,000 rpm....but I didn't have a power tool that ran at that speed). To my amazement, even with just a 20-30 second duration run on the panel followed by a wet rag cool-down, I could see ever so slightly the high spots shrinking down and flattening out. Since I was able to access both sides of the panel I ran the disk on both sides of the panel (the low spots on one side become high spots on the opposite side when the panel is flipped over).

As such I was able to shrink almost all of the high and lows down very effectively...this also eliminated all the oil canning that was created (unintentionally and by mistake) with the torch the first time. Of course I had to repeat this process numerous times alternating between outside and inside all the while....probably spent over 5 hours in all doing this. Surprisingly the metal never got to blue in color at all....even with 11,000 rpm disc speed.

The photo show how well I think this turned out.....

...before...



..after...



...skin finally repaired...



...and I finally welded up the inside frame as well. All these pieces are now at painters getting epoxied....amen.

 

[daveydog]

Another very good job done there Rossano! Nice to see you're still working on your car, even through the cold winter months. Now you'll know for sure that there's not one speck of rust on that boot lid and the doors!
What type/brand of paint stripper did you use?

 

[PSk]

Another very good job done there Rossano!

+1

Pete

 

[1750GT]

... What type/brand of paint stripper did you use?

Dave I used Circa 1850 furniture paint stripper. Now it probably isn't the strongest product out there to use on baked enamel body paints, but I had some left over from a home project and thought I'd try it out. One good thing is that after scraping the stuff off it dries rather quickly and cleans up easily as well. I'll probably use this to remove the paint from the other panels as well.

 

[1750GT]

+1
Pete

Cheers there Pete.

 

[daveydog]

Thanks Rossano. That's funny you use that brand of paint stripper! I used the same stuff on a '78 Harley Sportster I had a few years ago and it worked really well. Mind you the tank and two fenders were way less square feet than what you're into, but it's great stuff.
I should have kept that bike. But a Japanese collector was in town and he offered me a price I couldn't refuse... But I'm still bummed out about selling it.

I think we all must have those stories about loves lost snif...

 

[GTV-GR]

can u explain the tools used and post a picture plz man? i've scewed up my bonnet a few months ago bigtime, how do u remove the skin from the hood?

 

[1750GT]

Do you mean the trunk lid or the engine hood (bonnet?). If it's the engine hood, I did not have to take it apart at all as it was in very good condition (thanks again GTAlfa for this part)...all I had to do was strip it of it's many layers of paint.

 

[ShadeTree]

Rossano,

Did you do anything to treat the area between the inner bracing and the skin on the hood?

 

[1750GT]

Brad, I didn't remove any paint or primer between the inner frame and the panel itself for the simple fact that I found the baked on factory primer to be extremely durable and so why get rid of it? The visible areas were chipped, had surface rust here and there and had numerous coats of paint applied....so I (as well as the paint shop) felt these visible areas had to be brought down to bare metal in order to ensure the best adhesion for primer/paint.

 

[1750GT]

can u explain the tools used and post a picture plz man? ...

The photos below show the shrinking disc I used on the trunk lid (purchased from Dagger tools). It's not the largest disk that's available on the market, but with the 11,000 rpm angle grinder it worked out quite well. One thing I noticed as I was using the disk is that after about 5 or so surface contacts (with about 15-20 seconds duration at a time) there is some slight build up of metal on the disk. To clean this off, one only needs run the disk over some fine grit sandpaper.






There are some very informative videos on Youtube by John Kelly that show the process better than I can explain it with words (This is part 12 of the series). Note too that the disk he uses is home made and much larger in diameter, however I believe his grinder is running at a lower speed so that the disk's surface contact speed I was getting with my set-up may very well be the same as with his set-up.

 

[1750GT]

Progress has been slow lately but today I managed to pick-up my doors, trunk lid, hood and windscreen panel from the paint shop. They applied a vinyl wash and finished the parts in epoxy primer. I'm very impressed with the hardness of the epoxy primer and am leaning strongly towards having the bottom of the car painted using this material.

 

[1750GT]

Body work is coming close to being finished (I think)...but I keep finding little things that I missed previously....such as cleaning up some surface rust on the rear panel. Nothing major here but these areas were just difficult to access. You'll notice I removed the bumper support brackets as well, I plan on redoing these since I didn't like the way fit....I'll post photos of these at a later date.





The first cleanup step was with paint remover, followed by a de-rusting gel. For this light to medium rust this gel material worked like a charm. I even found a product that is better than what I was using before in that it seems to be a bit stronger. This stuff is brushed on and left to dry fully...then washed off.

 

[Super1600]

I was confused for a second at what part of the GTV you had photographed and then it dawned on me, you were looking up at the bootfloor/petrol tank cutout from below and of course your car is on a rotisserie.

How would one achieve what you are with your car without one. Looks excellent but also good to see for those of all of us who are going down this road, in terms of areas which too are prone to rusting due to the lack of adequate protection. Dave