Project "well, I don't know what to do with it yet"

I spent too much of my life sanding today. Consequently the roof is in a much better shape than it was yesterday but there are still some minor areas that need finishing.

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Also filled in some rust damage at the rear that I'd cleaned up, leaving minor pitting. I want a nice clean edge and it didn't require much material adding, so in went the P38:

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I'll sand that off to perfection tomorrow morning.

Lastly, a health and safety reminder to you all:

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Always wear a mask when doing heavy sanding work, otherwise you'll be inhaling all that various dirt, dust, paint and adhesives. It's not pleasant and it's not really very good for you! That dirt that's accumulated on it is merely from me breathing!

Hopefully tomorrow I can finally finish this roof and then the next few steps should be very quick ones!
 
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Cheers! Someone's just listed the wheels I want for it on eBay too, so fingers crossed.

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The only thing I would like to know is how much they weigh so will endeavour to find that out - the Sprint alloys aren't exactly heavy but being thick castings, not featherweight either. Ideally I'd like something lighter...
 
most importantly, how wide are those wheels? :D

should look great when the paint is finished.
 
You do have a great talent with these things, just spent like half an hour reading the whole thread and I'm very impressed keep it up!
 
I love dolomite sprints, I dunno why, I just think there really easy on the eye and clean lines. I hope you do a good job with it
 
A friend of mine had an old Dolly, I remember seeing it becoming as one with nature in his garden in Kent, that was about 15 years ago. :p Showed him this thread last night and he told me to tell you (which you probably already know)

"Tell that sprint guy about the solid rack mount. if he has a rubber bush at both ends of the rod oversteer is a bugger to keep under control. it's just a clamp that stops the rack from having any play on the subframe. Makes such a difference to all the dolomites."
 
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austinpowers said:
A friend of mine had an old Dolly....
Click to expand...

Hey Austin, it's a good tip indeed! Nice to know this kind of info is being passed around still :)

I used to run solid alloy mounts on the V8 but replaced one for a stock item with uprated polybush, as the alloy ones I had didn't give (bar clamping) any lateral support so if you really clobbered it, the rack might move.

People use both alloy mounts a lot but a good compromise is to fit only one. This gives the additional rigidity and feedback required while the other (preferably polybushed) side gives a little compliance and noise/vibration damping, whilst also positively locating the rack to the subframe.

In other news - It's been cold out today:

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Roads are that pretty treacherous mix of compacted snow and ice. I couldn't walk down the hill to the garage (a KA had been abandoned at the bottom) , I had to stick to the verge! A low of -7 was recorded last night and it was a brisk -4 whilst I was out mucking around.

Anyway, I didn't get much done as my neighbour needed to use his garage overnight so I only managed to finish sanding the roof (finally!) and then fired it up to shunt it out into the yard. It'll be going back in first thing tomorrow morning.

Survivor, anyone?

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Quick, to the Thunderdome! :D

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I did notice a slight mismatch between the door and the wing whilst doing this - Presumably because the wing was primed and 3 coats deep whilst the other was only a rough 2 coats. The door, with fewer coats, still shows some of the underlying paint which gives it more of a sheen and makes it less intense black.

To resolve this I shall do another coat tomorrow and check that it's equal, before progressing too much further. Other than that, just more prep, some primer and then start masking everything up!

.......and finally remove that blasted bumper and windscreen :D

Car runs good though, given the climate - and my neighbour was very impressed with the engine work. It is a little agricultural and unsettled when it's dead cold and on choke though, so I'll probably lightly strip the carbs and give them a good clean, then reset them to 'factory' settings. That should get rid of the erratic cold idle.

Roll on tomorrow!
 
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First point of action for today:

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The cold's been getting to the battery, which to be fair is a beat-up old thing. I whipped it out and stuck it on a trickle charge, to see if it can be revived.

Next was this issue:

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I'd slapped some black paint (rollered) onto the boot lid only to find that for whatever reason the paint wasn't providing good coverage, sticking properly or looking particularly good. It had to come off - and that wasn't going to be fun.

Firstly I scraped as much off as I could using a razor, then set about it with sandpaper and my Black & Decker. It took a good hour to get to this state:

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......and after another 30 minutes scraping, sanding and staring blankly into space:

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Voila! Now that it was clean of old paint, I wiped it down thoroughly to get it clean then gave it a quick prime, so it could settle overnight:

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I'm getting a nice flat surface from it, which is great. Fortunately the test patches of primer are now coming out nice and smooth on the roof too, after all the corrective sanding. As such, both these elements will be ready for black soon.

Consuming the rest of my time in the garage today was roughly sanding down all the remaining panels, cleaning the worst of the dust off and filling all the unrequired trim holes and superficial body damage. You can see the dots of filler along the top edge of the door, where a chrome strip used to run. I might, at some point, consider replacing filler with **** of weld, for a more permanant modification.

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I also dotted a fair bit of primer around to cover bare metal I'd exposed during sanding.

Remarkably, I actually made an attempt at removing the rear bumper today. Didn't complete that though - got bored, tired, half asphyxiated and hungry by that point - so I'll get that done tomorrow.

The rest of the day will be spent getting the car out of the garage, cleaning it thoroughly, then doing any final prep on the panels. I may even start spraying!
 
Finally happy with the roof now:

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The boot lid's also got a nice finish to it so everything's almost ready to go.

Had another cold one today:

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A low of -12 was recorded during the night (although it was more like -9). It claimed another victim, in the form of our Jeep battery! Still, it's given 6 years of service so it was a fair cop.

Today my mother very kindly lent a helping hand, so between us we got all the final sanding done:

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...and then any other prep finished, so it was just a case of washing it down to get rid of all the grime and grease:

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VXG is now back in the garage drying out thoroughly so in the morning I will mask everything off and then hit the paints!

I gave up trying to remove the rear bumper in the end, it turned into too much of a pain to get off easily. It is, for the meanwhile, intended to stay on the car so I've just prepped around it which turned out not to be too difficult, fortunately. Just some masking required to protect it, of course!

More tomorrow :)
 
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that boot lid still looked shiny under the black, small wonder it never got good adhesion. You need to sand it with 600 prior to paint until the surface is gloss-free. Maybe 800 by hand, 600 on a DA will be fine but might still show sanding marks in the finish by hand.

Whats the temperature in your garage like too? Most paints simply won't work properly in temperatures under 12C and that temp needs to be maintained for a good while after painting for it to cure properly. If it's left in sub-zero temperatures then bad things might happen. Most annoying thing that could happen is trapped solvents, in which case you might see a perfectly good finish, but when you put the car in the sun come spring-time the solvents will bubble out from underneath leaving you with the tell-tale pin-holes caused by solvent pop. If that doesn't happen then you might get some other phenomena like shrinkage or wrinkling.
Not meaning to be a doom-mongorer here or anything, but you need a good amount of heat for painting cars.

Oh yeah, and check that primer you are using is water-proof, many are not, and I notice it's being left outside.
 
Clarkey, I think you may be right about the bootlid - when I did it I was in a rush and had previously gone over it with 80 to break up the surface then 120 on my machine to smooth it over but still, don't know what happened there. I had some odd reactions with spraypaint in that area which may point at something else (although fixed now) - I suspect more to a point it was due to the garage being -2 and the paint probably the same, looking back! :D

Am keeping the garage well heated now (should be toasty tomorrow) for 'real' paint so hopefully it should hold up just fine. I have a directional gas heater for really warming up panels when required which helps an awful lot if necessary.

It's only been left outside overnight once (and I sanded it all over the next day), those shots are mostly just from shunting it out to clean so have no fear! I have to run the car outside because it only just fits in the garage lengthways - so if I need to work on the nose (like today) then it has to come out.

I could probably fit it in diagonally without trial but I can't be bothered to move everything around inside :D

As always though, thanks for the info! When the final coats go on I shall keep the heaters going for a day or two, as curing it properly was something that had crossed my mind....
 
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Oh and I think I might get it rolling on these instead now, as they're reminiscent of Corvette alloys :D

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Plus, as a bonus, they're 6J and 14"! Get them blacked up (maybe) and I'll be sorted....
 
Looking good Lewis - whenever I find a place with a garage I'd love a go at doing some bodywork myself.

Out of interest, how much do you think this project owes you so far?
 
Negating insurance and fuel costs, around 750 quid :) You could do something much cheaper if you went with a 1300/1500/1850.

Mine had quite a few mods when I bought it plus it is (unbelievably) road legal. It was cheap, even for the condition it was in, at the time. A complete project Sprint without T&T usually costs 500 quid these days on its own.

I'm half tempted, if I'm happy with how it goes, to enter it in the PPC 999 challenge sometime or maybe the UK Street Racing series :D

.....just for the lulz, more than anything! :p
 
That's a lot of fun for not a lot of money. Some real good stuff so far, quite excited to see the coming updates!

When I have the time/space I will seriously consider doing something similar.
 
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