St185 full rebuild

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:49 pm

It was a nice change to get away from the chassis and start on some other parts of the car. The suspension parts were fully disassembled and sand blasted. All parts were painted using a wet on wet method. The sand blasted parts were epoxy primed and then 20 minutes later after the primer had flashed the top coat was applied. This method I've found to give the best results. The paint and primer chemically bond together rather than a mechanical bond between coats from sanding.

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:50 pm

Brake calipers were torn down and sand blasted, painted .

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:52 pm

New seals and installed on calipers. These will get shelved until towards the end of the build .

by **tHeGeeK** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:02 pm

Impressive work! Keep it coming! Great to see another one saved.

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:10 pm

Now the chassis was square and sound I wanted to be able to work on the underside as well as the top. Seeing as I was going to be doing a color change I needed a rotisserie. So I decided I would build one using some donor hubs from a parts car as my pivot point .

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:12 pm

After double checking my clearances I installed the A frames and finally the car was able to spin like a roasted pig!

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:13 pm

Car on rotisserie

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:21 pm

Now it can spin, time to pressure wash off all the years of crud and grease !

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:22 pm

Pressure washing cont.

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:34 pm

After pressure washing and engine degreaser about three or four times I finally got all the caked on grease and mud off. Time to put her in the booth to begin seam sealing and final prep.

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:36 pm

Final prep continued .....
The fire wall had to be painted separately as I was concerned it would be too much to paint all in one go .

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:37 pm

Interior painted and underbody

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:47 pm

Once the underside and firewall was completed, those areas were masked off so the exterior could be painted.

by **chriss402** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:49 pm

I had to remove a lot of the sound deadening material in order to wed things up and straighten sheet metal . I didn't want the car sounding like a tin can afterwards so I opted to install Dynamat on the flooring and foam rubber dynamat on the firewall .