Principal Body Work
Richard's Corvair
The Restoration of my 1960 Corvair
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Month 21
After several months of putting it off, finally the body shop finished their backlog of work and began working seriously on the car.
There was a bit of surface rust from sitting idle between their original sanding and this phase, so it required a lot of sanding to bare, shiny steel.
As you saw in previous months, the serious welding of patches and straightening was done prior to this phase, so here most of the work centered on taking out small dents that had been caused by hail or banging in its 48 years of life.
Since the roof had caved in, it took a bit of heating and hammering to get out the creases.
Here is a little before and after of some of the areas. There were only a few places where it had rusted all the way through, all of which were cut out and replaced with new steel. There were a lot of areas that had been dented and somewhat straightened by previous owners. All of these required re-doing.
The rear fenders were slightly bent inwards fairly close to the tires, so they had to be straightened as well.
Now the doors came off again for sanding and priming of the door posts and the inner parts of the doors.
The doors, hood and trunk lid had a spots from welding, some rust, dents and scratches, and anti-rust paint from last year after sandblasting.
If all goes well we will paint in a couple of weeks.
There was a bit of surface rust from sitting idle between their original sanding and this phase, so it required a lot of sanding to bare, shiny steel.
As you saw in previous months, the serious welding of patches and straightening was done prior to this phase, so here most of the work centered on taking out small dents that had been caused by hail or banging in its 48 years of life.
Since the roof had caved in, it took a bit of heating and hammering to get out the creases.
Here is a little before and after of some of the areas. There were only a few places where it had rusted all the way through, all of which were cut out and replaced with new steel. There were a lot of areas that had been dented and somewhat straightened by previous owners. All of these required re-doing.
The rear fenders were slightly bent inwards fairly close to the tires, so they had to be straightened as well.
Now the doors came off again for sanding and priming of the door posts and the inner parts of the doors.
The doors, hood and trunk lid had a spots from welding, some rust, dents and scratches, and anti-rust paint from last year after sandblasting.
If all goes well we will paint in a couple of weeks.
