11-01-2008

I did some more sandblasting today and got a lot of the smaller parts of the engine bay cleaned up I started with the air cleaner covers and they cleaned up nicely. I then primed and painted them and (except for some small dents in one of the covers) they look brand new

I then got the brake/clutch master cylinders cover blasted, primed and painted. It looked great for about an hour but then the paint started to wrinkle. It looked like the crinkle-finish on the metal dashboards on the MK-I MG's...I'm gonna have to redo it and I'm still not sure why it wrinkled up on me...oh well.

I also finished up the opening into which the heater box fits. I had previously cleaned it out and applied a few coats of truck bed liner to it. Today, I primed and painted it thouroughly. I want to make sure this area is well protected because if it rusts, you have a world of trouble replacing the metal in there. It is buried inside of a lot of other metal and is one of the most involved repairs to make on the whole car...I'd rather avoid that!

I also got the radiator support panel sandblasted, primed and painted black. It also looks like new. I ran out of sand when I was 75% finished on this panel so I had to get out the broom and sweep old sand up off the driveway, sift it and reuse it. Got it finished, but just barely. I'll need a few more bags of sand since I'd rather pay $7.00 per bag than spend half an hour getting a half a bucket swept from the driveway...I'm cheap, but not that cheap!

I started cleaning the driver side of the engine bay inner fender well. I got it about half done and primered after I pulled off the brake hydraulics. I'm gong to have to get into the area surrounding the support frame for the brak/clutch master but it is really tight in there. I may have to go ahead and sandblast the area and spend the rest of the year getting sand out of the car.