Donovan, when you need to remove more of that undercoating, try 3M adhesive remover, especially if you already have it on hand. I think it will cut that undercoating......
BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Thank you Shawn, I truly appreciate the compliment.
Everything you outlined above is absolutely true, and I do actually fully understand that. I guess it’s just me venting my frustrations about something I felt could’ve potentially been done much MUCH better.
Don’t feel guilty, I always appreciate constructive criticism. As you said, I would’ve found that something hinky was up eventually anyways, and indeed I did.
Thanks Jared, I will be sure to check that out. I think once the inside of the tail panel is done and it comes time to strip the rest of the trunk I’ll be seriously looking at having it dry ice blasted. I know of and have a couple of my customers that do it and I think it’ll be just the ticket.
The results look amazing, and it doesn’t damage anything.
I totally get that. But as detail-oriented as you are, Oldsmobile would have gone out of business waiting for you to QC check your work to your satisfaction. Could you imagine cloning yourself to build cars like GM? Building one car every three weeks wouldn't keep the lights on. 🤪
Time for this week’s update.
I kinda fell into the “well, I’m into it this far so I might as well…” syndrome, so I did a little more body filler work on the inside of the rear panel. I had some rust that was found underneath the undercoating behind the passenger’s side taillight, so I mechanically removed it as best as I could and then treated the remaining deeper pits with rust converter.
This unfortunately left some pretty aggressive grinder marks in the metal, so I decided it would be silly to make the rest beautiful and leave those marks there. So a little more was done behind both taillights, and on the flange above the tank filler neck hump which is a high visibility location.
Once that was done and I was satisfied with it, I next turned my attention to the seam between the rear panel and the trunk floor. I cleaned it thoroughly with wax and grease remover after scuffing it with red ScotchBrite, then masked off roughly 3/8” either side of it:
With the seam prepped and ready to go, I mixed up a small amount of grey epoxy primer and brushed it into the seam:
After letting it cure overnight, I scuffed the epoxy and thoroughly cleaned it again in preparation for the actual seam sealer. Working slowly and methodically doing small sections at a time, I laid in the sealer and smoothed it out nicely with a bathroom caulking tool. The 3M heavy bodied seam sealer I use sets up pretty quickly, so after reaching the end of the seam I was able to start back at the other end and unmask it right away.
My version of a sealed seam:
After letting the seam sealer set up overnight, I then sanded the edges of the epoxy primer and seam sealer with 80 grit to feather it in to the surrounding metal so it’ll appear nearly seamless (pardon the pun 😅) afterwards.
So this now concludes most of the work to the backside of the tail panel. Next up is to mask, epoxy prime and high build prime it, but I’m holding off on that for a little bit. I will do it very soon, but would like to move the back end of the car away from the air compressor first so it doesn’t suck in all the overspray. That is going to entail turning the car around, for which I’m going to need some help.
In the meantime, I decided to tackle the bodywork on the outside of the passenger side quarter extension I built and welded on. This might seem unnecessary at this point, but there actually is method to my madness. That being that I have to make sure that the metal work on the outside is good before I (eventually) paint the inside. If I found that I needed to do any hammer and dolly work to the extension (and I did), it would ruin the painted surface on the inside.
The filler work ties into the existing quarter panel here, but this was only necessary to get the shapes correct. Everything forward of the lower recess will eventually be cut off to accept the new quarter panel but for now the filler work is a means to an end on the extensions.
The filler work inside the lower recesses was done months earlier when I was preparing for narrowing and tucking the back bumper and before I found the issue with the crooked tail panel.
I still have just a couple little pinholes to address as seen as black spots in the pictures, but that’s less than an hour’s work to fix up.
This is a deceptively difficult area to work, there’s an awful lot going on in a lot of different areas on a lot of different planes in a very small spot. It’s taken me nearly a week to get this small area just right, but I’m very pleased with the outcome now.
Mike has been doing some pretty trick stuff to the metal filler panel between the back window and the trunk this winter, but I’m out of room for pictures in this post so those’ll have to wait for the next one.
Next I’ll be repeating this body filler work to the driver’s side quarter extension, and then working my way inwards towards the middle of the rear panel. Oh, and priming the inside of the rear panel in there somewhere too.
Stay tuned.
I kinda fell into the “well, I’m into it this far so I might as well…” syndrome, so I did a little more body filler work on the inside of the rear panel. I had some rust that was found underneath the undercoating behind the passenger’s side taillight, so I mechanically removed it as best as I could and then treated the remaining deeper pits with rust converter.
This unfortunately left some pretty aggressive grinder marks in the metal, so I decided it would be silly to make the rest beautiful and leave those marks there. So a little more was done behind both taillights, and on the flange above the tank filler neck hump which is a high visibility location.
Once that was done and I was satisfied with it, I next turned my attention to the seam between the rear panel and the trunk floor. I cleaned it thoroughly with wax and grease remover after scuffing it with red ScotchBrite, then masked off roughly 3/8” either side of it:
With the seam prepped and ready to go, I mixed up a small amount of grey epoxy primer and brushed it into the seam:
After letting it cure overnight, I scuffed the epoxy and thoroughly cleaned it again in preparation for the actual seam sealer. Working slowly and methodically doing small sections at a time, I laid in the sealer and smoothed it out nicely with a bathroom caulking tool. The 3M heavy bodied seam sealer I use sets up pretty quickly, so after reaching the end of the seam I was able to start back at the other end and unmask it right away.
My version of a sealed seam:
After letting the seam sealer set up overnight, I then sanded the edges of the epoxy primer and seam sealer with 80 grit to feather it in to the surrounding metal so it’ll appear nearly seamless (pardon the pun 😅) afterwards.
So this now concludes most of the work to the backside of the tail panel. Next up is to mask, epoxy prime and high build prime it, but I’m holding off on that for a little bit. I will do it very soon, but would like to move the back end of the car away from the air compressor first so it doesn’t suck in all the overspray. That is going to entail turning the car around, for which I’m going to need some help.
In the meantime, I decided to tackle the bodywork on the outside of the passenger side quarter extension I built and welded on. This might seem unnecessary at this point, but there actually is method to my madness. That being that I have to make sure that the metal work on the outside is good before I (eventually) paint the inside. If I found that I needed to do any hammer and dolly work to the extension (and I did), it would ruin the painted surface on the inside.
The filler work ties into the existing quarter panel here, but this was only necessary to get the shapes correct. Everything forward of the lower recess will eventually be cut off to accept the new quarter panel but for now the filler work is a means to an end on the extensions.
The filler work inside the lower recesses was done months earlier when I was preparing for narrowing and tucking the back bumper and before I found the issue with the crooked tail panel.
I still have just a couple little pinholes to address as seen as black spots in the pictures, but that’s less than an hour’s work to fix up.
This is a deceptively difficult area to work, there’s an awful lot going on in a lot of different areas on a lot of different planes in a very small spot. It’s taken me nearly a week to get this small area just right, but I’m very pleased with the outcome now.
Mike has been doing some pretty trick stuff to the metal filler panel between the back window and the trunk this winter, but I’m out of room for pictures in this post so those’ll have to wait for the next one.
Next I’ll be repeating this body filler work to the driver’s side quarter extension, and then working my way inwards towards the middle of the rear panel. Oh, and priming the inside of the rear panel in there somewhere too.
Stay tuned.
I’ve been off on holidays all this week, and of course the weather has gone for shjt, so there’s been a lot of garage time by default lately.
I’ve completed the filler work on the outside of the driver’s side quarter extension…
…and am now onto the outside of the back panel finally.
One of my customers runs a dry ice cleaning company, so when I was in there a few weeks ago I approached him about options on removing all the old rubberized undercoating from inside the trunk I’ve been struggling with lately. I was thinking the dry ice blasting might work well, but he suggested that we try removing it with his laser ablation cleaning system instead. So a date was set, and earlier this week he came to the Skunkworks with his system to try it out.
It was slow and time consuming as he had to remove it layer by layer, but it turned all that old crap to nothing more than smoke and dust.
It took 2 full 7 hour days to complete, but I have to say the results are outstanding. He was able to get into every single little nook and cranny that would’ve been impossible to do manually, and all without affecting the underlying surfaces.
Simply amazing.
This is it, this tiny little machine. So effective, but also so incredibly expensive. He said this unit cost $40K, plus the required permits and licensing to be able to use it.
😮
What he was able to accomplish in 2 days time would’ve taken me well over 200 hours to do mechanically, and I still wouldn’t have been able to do as good a job as this did. Sometimes you just have to pony up and pay for a job to be done smarter rather than harder.
The finished results, main trunk floor…
…spare tire well:
Passenger side brackets…
…driver’s side brackets:
Hinge boxes. This is where the little machine really shone. I had foolishly sprayed these as well, and had absolutely no way to remove the coating from them. With the versatility and precision that the laser is able to be manipulated, he was able to get all of the surfaces cleaned off without affecting anything else.
A few more overall pictures:
So now that that’s finally done, I can address some previously hidden sins, weld up some no longer needed holes, and set about making a couple of long wanted modifications.
Starting with transforming the bottom of the spare tire well into a flat bottom to properly mount the battery and hold-down assembly I just bought. Back under the knife again…
It’s a much bigger hole than it looks in the above picture!
So that’s where we’re at. Here’s a link to some very short videos of the laser cleaning process, check it out, it’s fascinating to watch and highly effective. (And you don’t have to have Instagram to be able to view them).
D.
I’ve completed the filler work on the outside of the driver’s side quarter extension…
…and am now onto the outside of the back panel finally.
One of my customers runs a dry ice cleaning company, so when I was in there a few weeks ago I approached him about options on removing all the old rubberized undercoating from inside the trunk I’ve been struggling with lately. I was thinking the dry ice blasting might work well, but he suggested that we try removing it with his laser ablation cleaning system instead. So a date was set, and earlier this week he came to the Skunkworks with his system to try it out.
It was slow and time consuming as he had to remove it layer by layer, but it turned all that old crap to nothing more than smoke and dust.
It took 2 full 7 hour days to complete, but I have to say the results are outstanding. He was able to get into every single little nook and cranny that would’ve been impossible to do manually, and all without affecting the underlying surfaces.
Simply amazing.
This is it, this tiny little machine. So effective, but also so incredibly expensive. He said this unit cost $40K, plus the required permits and licensing to be able to use it.
😮
What he was able to accomplish in 2 days time would’ve taken me well over 200 hours to do mechanically, and I still wouldn’t have been able to do as good a job as this did. Sometimes you just have to pony up and pay for a job to be done smarter rather than harder.
The finished results, main trunk floor…
…spare tire well:
Passenger side brackets…
…driver’s side brackets:
Hinge boxes. This is where the little machine really shone. I had foolishly sprayed these as well, and had absolutely no way to remove the coating from them. With the versatility and precision that the laser is able to be manipulated, he was able to get all of the surfaces cleaned off without affecting anything else.
A few more overall pictures:
So now that that’s finally done, I can address some previously hidden sins, weld up some no longer needed holes, and set about making a couple of long wanted modifications.
Starting with transforming the bottom of the spare tire well into a flat bottom to properly mount the battery and hold-down assembly I just bought. Back under the knife again…
It’s a much bigger hole than it looks in the above picture!
So that’s where we’re at. Here’s a link to some very short videos of the laser cleaning process, check it out, it’s fascinating to watch and highly effective. (And you don’t have to have Instagram to be able to view them).
D.
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I posted a video of the laser cleaning once and nobody cared, but this proves EXACTLY how much one could accomplish using it. The results are incredible and I'm very glad to see someone go this route because I'll never be able to. Awesome stuff.
That’s a fact. The precision with which it’s able to be used is amazing, not to mention the variety of different beam patterns it has. There’s a rotating square and circle, a straight line that’s adjustable in length, and a few others I can’t remember off hand. They’re all very effective in their own way.
It removes all coatings off the surfaces, but apparently where it really shines is with rust removal. When the body goes up on the rotisserie I’ll be sending the car down to him to dry ice blast the underside to remove the old truck bed liner coating, and then have him laser it to remove any and all surface rust that I’m sure it’ll have hiding underneath.
I don’t think it’s a matter of people not caring, but perhaps more so that not everyone necessarily has a use for such a service, or even access to it. Also people have conveniently short memories, myself included, so that may play a factor into it too.
Regardless, I’m super pleased with the results. It was a bit expensive but well worth it in my opinion, for my needs. Look at me, embracing technology!
MotoIQ has some really good articles about dry ice blasting, I was impressed with how clean you could get something without ruining everything around the treated area. The best equipment isn't the best if not in competent hands. That laser stuff is the new new for sure. You'll see me embracing it as soon as I can get my own unit off of Amazon for $100. C'mon technology do your thing!
