back from blast

Jumping right in..

I spoke with the media blasting place a few times in the last few weeks about when I could expect the car to be finished. I was told the first few times that they didn't start it because they knew it was going to be a big job and they wanted to clear the smaller projects out of the way before getting stuck on this one.

This worked out initially because I was waiting for space to open up over at Nitradyne where the fab work is getting done, but after a couple weeks I was starting to get antsy for a few reasons

 1) there was no progress on the chassis just sitting in some shop waiting to get blasted, I need access for measurements or whatever and couldnt just go take them.

 2) The space over at Nitradyne had opened up and Art was waiting to get going only to have me tell him that it wasn't done yet. Even though its out of my control, I don't like promising things and not delivering.

I called insistently for a few days straight and I think they got the picture. She called back and told me that the undercoat was 'brutal' and they had to rent a bigger compressor and buy a different nozzle with more 'umph'.. but it would be done on Saturday and I could come get it then.

Saturday rolled around and I picked up Art and grabbed a dolly from uhaul and headed over.

Sure enough, there it was sitting out front when we pulled up, cept this time it was a bright raw silver, as soon as I saw it I got stoked all over again on the project. At this point it is REALLY is a blank canvas. Small things like windows sealant and stickers that would have taken endless hours of scrubbing and scraping were blasted away. Now everything was lined up to start to peice it back together.

Saturday morning pick up

Hooked up to the 4Runner

We noticed right away that just like Id thought there was only the one spot of bondo right above the rust spot that needed to be repaired anyways. sweet. It's actually is a super straight clean chassis that is worth saving, relief.

I could tell the guy they'd sent in on a Saturday to handle the pick up wanted to leave so we we wasted no time, Art and I had it hooked up and ready to go in 5 min flat. There was the fine pink and red powder over everything but the 40min drive on the freeway to the shop would take care of most of that for me.

Towing literally felt like there was nothing attached to the truck. I would gamble to say that the tow dolly weighed much more than the chassis itself, it could literally be rolled around with a pinky finger

Coupla freeways later we arrived at the shop where I could get a closer look at what we were dealing with...

The roof was too thin to blast, instead of risking warped metal I just had them leave it alone. nothing a little aircraft remover wont take care of.

Its nice to have every bit down to the metal, it blasted away bits of surface rust that i was worried about without a trace. Upon the initial glances I found nothing new that i hadnt seen before, actually there were now less questions and a better idea of the extent of the metal work on the places that I knew would need it. All and all totally worth the money.

The bottom was nice and smooth, theres a few spots thet'll require some manual wire wheeling to finish up but its 98% gone and ready for stitching. i'd estimate its about 70+lbs lighter. That stuff is dense.

 

The engine sealant is basically foam and would just bounce the media off, no problem if peels off easly in big chunks with a flathead screw driver and some light taps from a hammer. The whole bay would maybe take 15min to remove.

Cross member is coming out and being replaced with a fresh painted new one with the correct mount set up

 Here you can see the rear speaker tray that'll be removed along with the trunk lid arms. The trunk is going to be held on with mini latches at the front installed in the gutters and toggle latches on the back corners. To access the fuel cell for fueling the trunk will be removed as a whole from the car. This allows me to run an aggressive GT wing set up and not have to worry about the opening arc of the trunk.

Heres the heinous trans tunnel it'll soon be in a dumpster with a more elegant solution in its place.  Most of the bracket provisions under the windshield will be cleaned up also. The cross brace of the cage will act as the 'dash board' to affix things too like the steering column, switch panel, cluster, kill switch. Most holes in the firewall will be plugged as well, looking into mil-spec connectors for the harnesses.

In the shop.. ready to go

Ive got much more to update but stopping here for the night...