To those few of us guys who lived by the "t'is far better to repair than replace" creed, those are lightly rusted.
I dunno... the driver's side's pretty hammered. After today, though, I've got most of the plastic out and it's mostly down to original paint or bare metal. I don't think there's anything new left to discover at this point, but she's pretty bad.
More progress yesterday and today, although it's all further deconstruction of existing paint and damage. Yesterday both fenders got another round of paint stripper rinsed off with the worn "blast" tip of my pressure washer. I got the sides down to the factory Go-Mango paint, and on the driver's side down to the plastic filler in the dogleg area. Paint stripper does a number on plastic filler, as does the pressure washer. I enhanced this picture a bit in Photoshop to better highlight the tracks the pressure washer was making in the filler. If you click on it to enlarge, it's really evident:
There's not as much evil there as I expected, but I expect most of what's pictured will need to be cut away and replaced with new metal. The passenger's side isn't as bad, but will require surgery nonetheless.
The overall results of yesterday's efforts looked like this today when I started:
Prior to getting into chemicals and high-pressure rinses, I got after the LH fender with small screwdriver to attack the still-soft filler that was left behind. Here's what I pried free:
After some attention from a 2" 36-grit disc on the die grinder to move remaining plastic, here's what's left of the LH bumper recess:
Oof.
After securing a new pressure tip and a couple of scrapers to go after Agnes' roof, I started the chemisty in earnest yet again. My main goal here wasn't to get to bare metal so much as it was to diminish my sanding time. Also with no cap on the container the old paint stripper was starting to crystallize. I needed to use the rest of it prior to it petrifying for good. As I was pouring it, there were large chunks of what looked like rock salt in it that were chunks of solidified stripper. I only needed to work on the tops of the fenders, thank goodness, since I was pretty happy with where I was on the sides. Other than a half-assed round with the stripper and a rinse tip, I'd done very little to the tops.
Chunky-style paint stripper applied. The RH fender is still largely the third coat of orange as evidenced by the remaining stripe above the headlamp area:
Better living through chemistry. Check out the Dark Burnt Orange beneath the peeling primer. It's hard to tell in the picture, but it was gorgeous (and actually quite shiny). Also notice it's stuck to the back side of the lifted primer:
And my results after significant soak time and probably 45 minutes with the pressure washer, still using the worn blast tip:
A
lot of filler came out of that hole up toward the front of the driver's fender.
Other than the fender tops, the only other place I applied more stripper--because I was literally almost out, so why not--was the forward end of the passenger's side. It's kind of amazing how much worse the driver's side fender is than the passenger's side, considering that the paint trail indicates these fenders have literally spent their lives together. That bumper recess is positively gorgeous by comparison, although not without minor issue:
You can also tell a lot more paint is gone from that fender overall even though I only stripped from the area defined by the back edge of the marker lamp forward, and from the center body line to the top edge.
Remember when I said the inner brace behind the headlamp bucket that bolts to the core support is completely shot? Check it out. That line where the two overlap (they're the same piece of metal) should be perpendicular to the bottom edge that meets the outer skin. Yeah, it's bent like that because it's that rotten. The black/dark grey areas are original paint/undercoating, other than the plastic shield bolted to the brace. Thank God these are the same as the later-model fenders!
"Highlights" of other damage, all on the driver's side.
Front corner, with multiple shapes and body lines. I can't wait to attempt this:
The rear of the mounting flange, near the hood hinge:
The forward edge of the mounting flange, with a nice hole along the cut line and quite a bit of missing "overlap" metal:
Finally, here's the top of the fender. Coming in from the right, where the orange stops along the upper & lower edges is where the paint also stops. All those dark areas are rust. The pitting is heavy in places but there's very little perforation. I'll either glass bead or soda blast that area and see what's livable and what needs attention.
Overall, I'm very happy with the results of stripping simply because sanding through all that paint would've been nightmarish in terms of both time and cost. I'm gettin' old and discs ain't cheap!
Weather permitting I'll go after 'em again with the sander tomorrow and rattle-can prime to stop flash rusting (which I've already got, visible above). Weather
not permitting, I'll work on Agnes' scalp. If the forecast is worth a damn, it'll be Agnes in the AM, fenders later in the day.
