Well, as i said earlier, the show bug bit. Finding the fine line between street and show is a hard one. How much time and money do u spend? How many spotwelds on the crossmember do i fill? Well, moneywise, the undercarriage set me back close to 700 Australian peso's. Pretty damn cheap stuff really! This included, paints, primers, and all other detail requirements. I also replaced the front springs, tie rod ends, wheel bearings, steering rack boots and most other vital suspension compnentry. The ball joints, front shocks and the rear springs and shocks had only done 5000km at the most so they were fine.
Another front end was sourced, and was initially gonna be powder coated and bolted back in. I stripped it all down and got to work with 5 litres of lrp and a shit load of rags. I HATE GREASE! Mate, 20 yrs of grime and grease certainly goes on easier than it comes off!
When all was finally clean, the stub axles were deburred so they were totally smooth - yet still remained a stub axle and not a toothpic..... Thank god for the trusty die grinder. Then it was off to the sand blasters. I told him to send it off to the powder coaters when he was done. However, i got thinking. Why do all this work and then just go and powder coat it? Why not seam weld and fill all this stuff? So i rescued my suspension from the powder coaters and went home.
With dad and his trusty mig, the front crossmember was seam welded along the bottom and where the rack mounts are. The spotwelds were filled - every single one! and the same with the top and bottom arms, stubs, disc backing plates the lot - everything got the moulding treatment.
I filed all of the metal edges smooth and round, like on the edges of the arms and the crossmember.
The approach i find most effective, is to pick a part, start it and finish it. So when u are working on a part it's easy to get carried away in the moulding process because you're only concentrating on one part. It takes ages, and i'm a fussy bastard. I knew the car would be driven daily so 2k the only option for paint finish. |
