Hi Pat,
My '62 TR4 has undercoating in the wheel wells that I sprayed in there
many, many years ago. Under it is the original paint, body color, no
texture like modern cars have on the rockers, just plain old paint like
the entire rest of the body. I'm pretty sure TR3s were originally
finished the same way.
My experience with the undercoating was that it looked pretty good, at
first. A nice, quick, cheap fix. The black spray can stuff. Understand
my car was originally Spa White and all the outer body panels had been
resprayed by the PO - ala Maaco - Screaming Porsche Orange. So something
*had* to be done!
In the long run, however, spray can undercoating begins to look more
like mud, as dirt and grime stick to it and won't wash off. It also
develops cracks and allows water past pretty easily, so may have
actually encouraged as much rust as it prevented. In some areas it
eventually dropped off in chunks.
Now that I am stripping the car and doing a ground up restoration, I
find other areas where is stuck tighter than my ex-wife's teeth, when
she tried to bite the cap off the super glue (the finger nail thing, you
know?) <g>.
See previous list discussions for methods of undercoating removal
(including where I jokingly mentioned a welding torch... that was just a
joke! Really!).
So, I would say undercoating is a quick easy solution, short term. But
certainly not the best in the long run.
I plan to use a more modern finishing technique, body colored, like they
use on rocker panels these days. I'm not sure if that's a textured
undercoating or a textured clear topcoat... I still have a *lot* of
other work to do before I even think about getting the car painted.
Cheers!
Alan Myers
San Jose, Calif.
'62 TR4 CT17602L
Pat wrote:
>
> I'm told that the inside wheel wells of the TR3 were painted. yes/no ?
>
> I am so tempted to use the black undercoating in them.. as they hide a huge
> amount if prep sins Vs painting. It also simplifies so much the logistics of
> moving the body around for painting etc and a whole lot cheaper.
>
> What is the best thing to do with the inner wheel wells ? Paint or black
> Undercoating ? (I don't really want to paint the undercoating...
>
> What would/did you do ? After thoughts ?
>
> Thanks,Pat
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