Well i finally finished! At first I thought it would never stop raining, but i soldiered on anyhow
So there I was happily washing away, getting equal parts spray from the jet wash and rain from the sky, when lo and behold my bad luck struck - some of you may have come to expect all my jobs to be fraught with disaster, and for good reason - as the jet wash hose decided enough was enough and did this
So out comes the hose pipe to finish off.
Once inside and all nice and clean I started to strip things off, like the aerial, wipers, scuttle and washer jets. I took this opportunity to spruce up the scuttle and wipers, going for matt black on the scuttle and gloss black on the wipers.
On to the buffing, the most laborious and boring job I can think of, but it pays off. All was going well until, you know, bad luck and all. The machine polisher had given in and just packed up, which it has done many times before, so I stripped it down to have a gander, but no loose wires or burnt out motors this time, it's just kaput and for no good reason. So I was left staring at this with the dread of hand polishing running through my mind
All I had left was the area beneath the swage line on the door and rear wing, which just so happened to be the worst part of the body work with a big scuff I was gifted by some tool who got too close the other day.
But all was not lost as the pneumatic DA sander came to the rescue, and I finished off the buff with that. Thankfully I could then do the stage 2 as well, as I was certainly not doing the entire car by hand.
After this everything went strangely smoothly, with no further mishaps, the sun coming out to play a frankly blindingly good job of the paintwork (it's all in the products :lol
. So I eventually got it finished after 7 hours of hard graft, cleaning or repairing virtually everything in sight, leaving just a little bit more interior work to keep me busy tomorrow morning once we've all piled onto the stand. Mind you I did forget to 'smoke' (paint black) my rear fogs, which are the nasty UV faded milky red colour right now, but that's just a small thing.
Overall I'm really happy with the end result, and it amazes me every time just how well the paint comes back to life, even after all these years and dodgy resprays. It was difficult to get a good picture as we were hurrying to get packed up at work when I'd finished, and besides many more photos will be taken tomorrow, not to mention those who'll see it in the flesh, but here's one for posterity
In all honesty you can't even tell I've put blood, sweat and teabags into it all day but what the hell its there.
Anyway I moustache and get to bed, as I'll be up at 3am to hit the road down to FordFair.
See you there (if you're going)
k: