(^112) themotorhood.com
STEP NINE
Here, the de-rusted panel is sitting back on the dead
donor FE Holden for comparison. The results speak
for themselves. Cheap, fast, or good — pick two! It’s
not fast, but it’s cheap and good! Commercial acid
stripping costs $250–$350 a panel — not to mention
the travel time back and forth to pick up and drop
off. We invested $170 in our entire set-up, plus a
few weekends of work. The total time spent on one
panel was approximately two hours, mostly due to
our OCD compelling us to get every minute speck of
foreign matter off. Less fussy folk would spend only
the time it takes to wash off the crud.
STEP EIGHT
The transformation was
astounding, for not much
effort at all. All our FE Holden
guards were identically rusty,
so this is an accurate and fair
comparison. The bare steel
panel shown has been lightly
sandblasted to remove some
stubborn paint and body filler
in some crevices. The molasses
will not always remove paint,
but we have found that it will
soften older, lead-based, acrylic
paints, making paint removal
way easier. We wiped the bare
steel with phosphoric acid to
give a protective short-term
coating so we could carry out
metal-finish panel work later.
frankie
(Frankie)
#1