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69 V8 Convertible Bug Update with pics

906 views 0 replies 1 participant last post by  zbhover 
#1 ·
Hello everyone, I just thought I’d send you all an update on the work I’ve got done on our V8 bug in the last couple of weekends. I got the front bumper and body mounts cut off, wire wheeled the front end of the chassis, sand blasted the front end of the chassis, primed the front end of the chassis, front sway bar, and front springs, and finally undercoated the front end and suspension and steering parts with some Hurculiner roll on bedliner.

Below are a few pictures, but I uploaded a lot more to my website: www.zbcreations.com/index3.html the chassis, costs, and visitor gallery sections got updated.


Since the last update I cut off the front body and bumper mounts, later on I'll probably have to shorten the front of the frame up a bit more, but I'll leave it long for now. This is also after I took a wire wheel in a 4.5 inch angle grinder to remove as much of the rust and grime as I could.


I was planning on sand blasting the chassis down, but my blaster is just a small suction feed, and I only have a 5hp 30 gallon compressor so it would have been very slow going.

I went through 1 and a half wire wheels and a couple hours to get it to look this good, but I wanted to remove as much rust as I possibly could instead of just covering it all up with the master series silver primer.


Here is my fancy sand blaster........ At work 2 sand blast cabinets got ordered and the guns were plastic and ceramic. Being that I work in a foundry and they blast hot castings with these and there are also a lot of careless people the guns would have gotten melted and broken in no time so we ordered some different guns and my boss told me to take these home........... THANKS DAVE!!!

For quite some time now I've been meaning to make a portable blaster with this gun, but never got around to it...... Oh well this worked just fine.


Here it is after getting sand blasted. Also for now I'm just cleaned up the front end of the chassis, that way I can get it all assembled again. I know I'll need to weld on the engine mounts latter, but I can grind it back down to metal in those spots and touch it up latter.

I want to get the front end put all back together so I can get the engine leveled up, the drive line angle figured out, and make the trans. cross member....

I was able to blast off probably 95% of the rust on the outside of the frame and probably 85% on the inside.


Here is my highly advanced abrasive collection system..... LOL I just sifted it through the screen into the bucket and reused it. I think I reused the sand 4 times and it was still cutting good and I still have about 3/4 of the sand left so I'll use it again later.


This is after I got 2 coats of the master series silver rust proofing primer on. So far I'm real happy with the stuff, it covers great and I did a couple tests and it seemed to work. Still I didn't want to just cover over all the rust. I rather get rid as much as possible.

I brushed everything on with a foam brush on the outside of the frame, and sprayed the inside with my little bluepoint gun. The paint was almost to think to spray, but it worked ok. I was able to get at least 95% of the inside of the frame coated, so that should help keep it from rusting from the inside out.

I'm also upgrading my front sway bar to a ZQ8 from a s10 extreme, its much larger dia. I forgot to take pictures, but I took it to work and glass bead blasted it, and then primed with at the same time as the frame. I also took my new moog coil springs to work and threw them in my steel shot blaster and cleaned them up and primed them.


Before I ever new about master series primer and chassis paint I already bought some Hurculiner roll on bedliner. A local Menards was moving to a new location so I got 3 gallons for $60.00!!! I figured the bedliner would hold up better and not get chipped and help keep the frame from getting rusty again.


Here is the frame coated with the bedliner. It might not be as pretty as a nice shiny smooth paint job, but I think it will hold up better...... Plus you can't really see much of the frame anyways. Master Series also has a gloss black chassis paint that is supposed to be pretty good, but I haven't tried it.


I think it turned out pretty good, I was worried that being put on by hand the texture would be un even, but its very uniform. I actually didn't use the roller, there were more curves, pockets, etc than flat spots so I dabbed it all on with a brush. If I brushed and rollered it there were two different textures.

I ended up using a whole gallon to do the front end of the frame and all the suspension and steering parts. I recomend having a helper if you can though, by the time I got the the last coat on the last few parts it was starting to get pretty thick in the can. Also have a couple spare brushing ready. And last but not lease where long sleeves, I didn't because it was round 95 outside, but then I had to pick lots of rubber goo out of my arm hair......... OUCH


Here you can see all the other parts hanging and coated. The coil springs are going to stay silver, they suck enough to paint let alone try to put this stuff on them....... LOL


The 2" drop spindles, center link and lower control arms after they got coated. These are where the stuff was getting a bit thick on me so they have a slightly different texture to them.


Steering box, tie rod ends, and splash sheilds, and there is my other coil spring in the background.


And there is my sway bar and the other coil spring. I'll grind the hurculiner off where the bushings go later. I'll give all this stuff at least a week to dry and then hopefully I'll have time to start re-assembling the front end again next weekend. I also got some rustoleum spray on bed liner to get the hard to reach spots inside the frame to make sure 100% of the metal was covered in the front end.
 
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