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The Guilty ConscienceAfter about six months of neglecting the outside of the car, I decided to sort out a few rust spots and problem areas. In the end I got carried away and ended up re-spraying most of the front end that had considerable stone chip damage. Off came the fog lights, bumper, trim, headlights and the whole area was fixed up and painted. The new spoiler was already quite peppered with stone chips; I don’t think I was generous enough with the paint first time round. The front end looks much better now, what with a re-painted front bumper and the headlight surrounds painted white. I was now on a roll. Next on the list were the wing mirrors that had lost a lot of their paint. It was a pain removing them as the bolts are tricky to get to and of course you have to take the door trim to bits. The bolts on mine required a deep socket (13mm) to get them off. From the day I’ve owned the car, the drivers mirror has had a dent in it, so I took the opportunity to fill the hole before masking and repainting them. Several coats later, and a rub with some thousand grit wet and dry, the mirrors looked as good as new. So far the paint has resisted the stones and grit that get flung up from the road. The rear boot lid needed a small area re-spraying. This would have been unnecessary if certain people had been more careful with their huge bunches of keys when opening the boot lid ! Not an easy place to re-paint, but I took my time and the end result is very pleasing. The last job on the agenda for this year was to do some minor restoration of the engine bay. The seams at the tops of the wings were going quite brown with rust and in places the old tin worm had eaten right through. For this job, I used an electric drill with a rotary brush and removed the paint and rust to the bare metal. I was very careful with where I was painting and in fact one of the longest jobs was masking off the front end of the car which took ages but was worth the effort. I also did a similar job on the battery tray area which was suffering the effects of leaking acid attacking the metal work I must admit that I thought it would be a disaster trying to re-spray such small sections. However, the end results look really good and it is hard to see the paint joins. The engine bay looks really smart again – although on a working car like mine it is not long before there is more work to be done. Following this hive of activity, I decided to polish the car up and take some photographs of her in the sunshine. I think that she looks better than ever, and yes she drives as well as she looks ! The secret is lots of TLC. Hope that you agree ! |
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