Gerahead's 71 Dart

The Labor Day weekend at the track was a mixed bag of results. The weather was very cool, even for this time of year. The net result is that the Comet ran 0.3 quicker than it did over the 4th of July weekend at the same track, with the same tune-up! The bad thing is that when the eliminations started, I had the absolute worst reaction time of the weekend and ended up a first round runner-up! Damn :angry7: The up side is that I got home early and had plenty of time to get everything put away.

........Now Dart progress. I started sanding on the outside of the deck lid on Sunday afternoon, since I didn't feel obligated to spend prime weekend time watching the local NFL team stumble over their units. My plan was to use a DA with 80 grit discs to peel away the paint on the outer surface. I am now rethinking that strategy. I spent 2-1/2 hours on it and didn't even get half of the top surface down to bare steel. My original plan had been to sand all the old paint and bomb primer off the car. At this rate, I will not live long enough to complete the job! I will be trying two alternatives. Plus a modification to the current process. I noticed that the pad for the DA is concave toward the center of the pad, so I was only effectively using the outer circumference of the disc to sand. I am going to find a flatter pad to see how much it improves the process. I am also going to try ditching the DA in favor of a conventional disc sander with and without a coarser grit on the disc. I will at least use this to knock down to the first layer of primer this way. I found that under the bomb primer, there are two good coats of paint with primer and sealer on the first coat. I am also going to try one of the fiber abrasive cups on my offset grinder. That may work even better than the disc sander because there is less chance of boogering up the sheet metal if I get careless.........not that there is a chance of that happening. I'll let you all know how the experiment plays out. L8r.

Jim