I finally took the plunge and began to strip the paint of my E-Type.
After two years of people saying "nice, but when are you going to
paint it" I finally succumbed. Some time ago I asked the list for
suggestions of paint shops in the SF Bay area and got very depressed
after hearing quotes in the $6-10k range for stripping it to bare metal
and painting it. And that was just for an exterior-only paint job
that didn't include the underside of the bonnet etc.
So I decided the only way this was going to get done was to learn
how to do the prep work myself and just leave the final paint work to
the pros.
I chose to chemically strip the paint, after listening to everyone's
advice: you can do it at your own pace and there is no risk of taking
off more than you intended. There is quite a bit of lead filler around
the fancier curves of the E's body and over enthusiastic sanding,
or worse yet, sand blasting would do irreversible damage. The sand
blasting would have left a microscopically pitted surface to encourage
corrosion as well.
The stripper I used is called 'aircraft' and is a methyl chloride slime
which works effectively providing you can stand the smell. With the garage
door open and a fan you can survive. I used 2 one gallon cans of the
stuff, but the first can was largely wasted because I started out by
not scraping until I had first covered the entire car with the
stuff and by then the first part had dried out too much. I also incorrectly
thought that heating the body up in the sun would speed the process,
but the solvent just evaporates faster. The best way turned out to be
doing an area like one door at a time, laying plastic food wrap over it
to retard the drying out process, and then scraping it after about 20 min
while it is still wet and slimy. A second coat and coarse steel wool
gets the primer and stubborn remainders off.
Next I discovered that not all parts of the car stripped equally as
easy. Parts on the doors and wings were being particularly obstinate.
The dreaded bondo of earlier repairs had been discovered!
This was the disheartening part, to scrape away the gradually softening
bondo and discover shoddy repair work to a whole lot of little "parking
lot" dings. At least there was no rust to speak of, just good solid
metal, but the body work cowboys had pulled dents out by drilling
lots of holes to grip the panel rather than disassemble it to beat it
out properly. To add insult to injury they neither closed the holes
afterward nor primed the surface, just slapped bondo on. Thanks to
the California climate nothing rusted in spite of the abuse.
I have since discovered that I can replace a door skin for very little
($70 from Welsh Jaguar) so I think I would like to repair it properly.
At the moment it looks like a Mafia staff car with machine gun holes
down the side of the door.
It turns out that the door skin is only crimped on
so It can be removed by grinding around the edges. I think I can do
that but I am not sure I should try crimping the new one on myself.
** Anyone had experience with this?
One can also buy a wheel arch repair panel for about the same low price,
but that looks more difficult to replace. I would guess that the existing
panel has to be cut out to match the new one which is then seam welded
in place and then ground back. I haven't decided whether or not to do this
as the damage to the arch is minimal and could be patched. Suggestions
welcomed on this one as well.
The only corrosion I found was in the boot under the fuel tank. Getting
the fuel tank out is a story in itself. Basically it just doesn't come
out and must have been put in before any of the car was built. You see
there is a welded seam ledge around the edges of the boot and the tank
has a similar seam of identical dimensions, and the two may never pass
each other. You can just slide the tank from one end of the boot to
the other. Pausing for a pint saved the day for it was then that the
purpose of that little 8" gap in the boot ledge became clear. The gap is
just above the number plate screw holes and is just long enough to allow
the lip of the petrol tank to be eased onto the top of the ledge so that
when the tank is now slid to the other side of the boot it is suddenly
outside the car! Like a clever Chinese puzzle.
** But how am I going to get it back in without scratching
the new paint?
The rust is confined to one corner so I think a welded patch should do.
I had always cleaned around the drain holes under the spare wheel, but
you just can't get to the ones under the tank. The drain holes held
another secret - I had always cleaned and opened them from inside the
car so never noticed that two of them plug blind holes from underneath
the boot. They serve to drain the hollow crossmembers that reinforce the
floor of the boot. When I opened them, out came rusty crud and when I
worked it over with the wire brush on my angle grinder there wasn't much
metal left around the holes. Another welded patch should fix it ok though.
By the way, I bought the angle grinder just for this stripping job
and it was a worthwhile investment (Makita 4" angle grinder, 11,000 rpm,
$50 from Price Club and $12 for the wire brush heads).
All this fun at the rear end of the car turned out to be just a learning
experience for the next step of stripping down the E-Type bonnet. But
as this story is getting rather long and you are probably all yawning
and nodding off by now I'll save it for next week.
Still, if you are likeminded and foolish enough to contemplate doing
something like stripping down your E for painting, this might be
useful stuff (hope you are reading this Jennifer!).
Notice how I haven't even mentioned the colour yet. 'course its grey
metal now but it used to be sand, a Jaguar colour of 1964,'65. I just
can't get excited about this colour, even though I saw one just a couple
weeks ago at Dick 'n Dales beautifully restored in this colour. I know
the purists say to leave it in original colours, but after all this
work why can't I have something classy like BRG? Or how about opalescent
silver grey from the same era, or even golden sand which came a little
later? I've never seen golden sand, any one know of an example or
a photo of one?
Well, tune in next week to find out why anyone in their right mind
would want to completely disassemble an E-Type bonnet, but don't hold
your breath waiting for the word reassemble to appear here!
Patrick Krejcik
- former driver of a Series I 4.2 FHC.
|