Only the wheel arch lips and the door jambs remain to be stripped of their old paint…feels like progress. I’m going to try doing the jambs with chemical stripper, which should be an adventure. Chemical strippers (in my experience) seem like they should work great but are almost always as tedious as mechanical stripping, with the bonus of noxious, messy goop to contend with.
I wasn’t going to take the doors off but I just couldn’t see doing a good job otherwise–I removed them today. As a “bonus,” this will be a good time to replace the driver’s door hinges, which have a bit of slop in them.
I’m going to paint back as far as the radiator support–I’ll redo the engine bay itself in the future when I pull the motor to install the overdrive transmission, and will repaint all of the pieces like the radiator, hydraulic cylinder cover and heater as well as the actual engine bay itself at that time. In the meantime, I’ve removed all of the bits that normally would live up in the nose. I need to degrease and scuff up this area.
Once the jambs are done, I will need to scuff up the entire car before I can prime. I still need to strip the bonnet, inside of the hatch and the edges of the doors, but I’m planning on doing all of that chemically. I’m ready to be done picking bits of wire brush out of my clothes!
Boy does this look familiar! The last British car I took to bare metal was my 68 XKE 2+2 Coupe. Finally sold it to a British Airways Captain who finished the restoration. The chemical strip is truly a messy messy way to go but sometimes it is best, yes? Thoroughly enjoy your site, we share the same hobby(sickness?)of British bikes and cars. I do leak over to a few German and Japanese loves on occasion. Keep up the good work. Mark