Pink slip, grey coat – TI floors continued
I was laid off on Friday, and while that is never Good News, it’s giving me a nice opportunity to work on the TI and other projects with less urgency than the usual weekend timeslots required. On Sunday I etched the floors with some nasty acid stuff that turned the rust black and gave me a headache. I also disassembled the dash and gave it a coat of semi-gloss enamel black, over the original (and chipped/faded/ugly) crackle job. It came out ok. That gave me a headache, too.
So, today, after waking up once at 5:30 am and then again, more successfully, at 11:45 am, I opened up a pint of POR15 and went to town on the TI floors, top and bottom. The topside got two coats, the bottom just one, but it’ll get a healthy dose of rubberized undercoating once the POR15 is cured.
Here's the first coat. I was WAY more generous than I needed to be, but I wanted good coverage. This is standard POR15 grey, nothing fancy at all but it did the job.
After a few hours I applied the second coat, which also revealed that I hadn’t stirred the can enough the first time, since the grey was much much darker.
Here's the second coat, still wet. I painted a bunch of 'while-I'm-at-it' spots (rear seat plug and mounting holes, for example) that didn't really need POR15 or anything else, but are potential moisture/rust traps.
Tomorrow I’ll tape off the glass and apply a couple coats of rattle-can primer over the POR15, and the aforementioned rubberized undercoating to the bottom. Then I can decide what to do in terms of insulation, if any, and whether to install carpets or just rubber mats. Stock, the car would have come with carpeting, probably the nice grey wool found on most Alfas of the time. I think my budget might not permit that, but grey or black in short pile nylon would be ok, if a little boring. Maybe Jesus (Angulo) has some better options.
Here's the dash, repainted but still disassembled on my living room floor. It's a 30-minute job to get all the bits and parts off of it, probably longer in reverse. I'm missing the pad that goes over the passenger side; if I can find a template I'll just fabricate one out of wood, and borrow some of Matt's leftover upholstery to cover it.
I still need to decide how to attack the exterior of this car. It’s got rust all over the place; none of it is catastrophic but it’s definitely there. I might just grind off everything I can myself and let an actual body shop take care of the patches and paint. This will never be a concours car, but some semi-professional body work plus having Jesus finish up the interior would definitely make it a nice looking and comfortable driver.
July 31st, 2009 at 10:51 am
Give me a shout if you want some of that vinyl I used on my Super dash.
Matt