Progress has been slow but consistent.

I decided to take a stab at doing some repair to the trunk of the TI. The tank had a leak at the seam, and the lip in the tank well was hanging on by prayers and nostalgia for the days before the Great Rains. The trunk lid was eaten through at the left rear panel, and had crustiness all along the bottom edge.

Here’s the trunk while I was fixing up the inner lip that keeps the tank from dropping out and skipping across the road in ball of 91 octane flames.

And here’s the result, after sanding down the entire trunk and applying POR-15 where there were some pinholes, a coat or two of primer, and semi-gloss black enamel.

And the tank got a very special two-tone paint job. Nothing exceeds like excess, so I make sure the edge was sealed with JB weld, POR-15 (the kind with metal flakes in it), and various coats of primer and rattle can black, topping it off with some silver enamel that is supposed to be for painting wheels but, well, ok, maybe I got carried away.

It’s still rough around the edge, but the seal is good and as imperfect a fix as this is I think it’ll last another 45 years.

As for the trunklid, it was rough at the back left corner, where rust had eaten through the back side and most of the inner panel. I didn’t get ‘before’ pics of this but here’s the part I cut out and the new patch panel already welded in.

After grinding it down as flush as possible, I threw a coat of self-etching primer on it and called it a day. I’m pretty happy with this repair, though it will still need some light bondo treatment to cover up the seams.

And the ‘final product:

Posted Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 3:23 pm. Filed under 1966 Giulia TI, Alfa Romeo, Body Work. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or Trackback from your own site.