I have to apologize for being slow to update the blog, but progress is has continued on the restoration. I started stripping the paint on the car using a chemical stripper, and it became very clear that this was going to be a difficult or nearly impossible job. When the car was painted the first time, a self-etching primer was used and it would take many hundreds of hours to complete the job. At some point I had to make a decision if the effort was even worth it -- my decision was that it was not, so I began looking into alternatives. I didn't really want to repaint the car, so I did a bit more research and I discovered soda blasting. Soda blasting is similar to sand blasting with the exception that rather than sand, baking soda is used as the medium. Unlike sand, baking soda does not damage rubber, plastics, or glass.
This past fall, I had a local company called Superior Polymer come to my house and soda blast the car and the results were amazing. It is almost impossible to know that the car was ever painted, and the job was completed in half of a day.
I removed the rear quarter panels and T-panel so that they could be done off the car and minimize the amount of medium that would get into the engine bay. The interior is mostly stripped so I just used plastic to cover the dash area
Take a look at this video of the passengers side quarter panel being completed, it is pretty cool to see how well this works! The paint easily comes out of every nook and cranny, and we were even able to strip the paint from the inside of the doors. There is literally no trace of this car being previously painted. Honestly I would never consider attempting to do this job myself again, this process had such great results, and was incredibly quick. My precious time can now be spent doing the rest of the restoration.
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