|
As September slowly travelled by, I only had one task in mind to do, and that was sand, sand, fill and sand. Anyone who has sanded down a Reliant will know the amount of time it takes and I’m going through sanding disk like there is no tomorrow. Now that all the main areas of damage have been repaired on the body I can concentrate on sanding the body right down to the original gel coat. The amount of cracks I continuously come across is amazing; they are literally everywhere, some are just a few millimetre long where others are huge things. All are being sanded out and refilled with P40.
The top of the car was covered in paint blisters and so I decided to start on the roof. As I sanded away clouds of dust bellowed up and the constant sound of a sander on hollow fibreglass must have drove the neighbours insane. Sadly there was no other way to do it. The drill ate about half a dozen sanding disk for the roof but at last that was done and I mixed up some P40 to fill all the craters where star cracks once lived. Again, when that was set even more sanding ensued. With the roof finished (and jolly smooth to) I started on the front wings and the bonnet. Once they were done, again I filled in any resulting craters and whilst these set I rubbed away like mad with a bit of sandpaper on all the areas that you cant really get the drill into, around the front mouldings etc.
I have to admit looking at the body now, I can see things starting to take shape. When the body was a dirty cracked and somewhat badly damaged body I did wonder at times what I was doing. Looking at all the sanded areas now that are clean and damage / crack free it seems like those days were months ago and that at last it looks how it should. If you look at the photos you will see that the driver’s side front wing is blue right at the front. This is a section that was added to the car by the last owner.
The bonnet is not attached, I am keeping it in place to help keep the engine as clean as I can. So still a long way to go before I can think about painting here but closer than I was last month.
Elvis Payne
September 2004
Go to Part 10 October
|
