Priya's SX/4 project

[priya]

Thanks Whuntmore, its been a lot of work and its going pretty slowly, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now.  I'm annoyed to be sidelined by winter, but I'll be back at it in the spring and judging by past progress I'm predicting I'll have the car done next year.

[mojobean]

very cool work, very well done.  Im very excited to see this progression

[priya]

Thanks Mojobean.

[amc78concord]

And this is my first time seeing this post, I couldn't get enough! I've been reading for about 45 minutes now lol.  I love the pictures of your work, you sure know what you're doing...As everyone says, just fantastic, that can't even describe it...EXTRAORDINARY, BREATH-TAKING... 

If you have any update, I'm sure we're all DYING to hear!

Once again, great work.  I nominate you as AMCEagleNest member of the year if we did such a thing 

[priya]

Wow, thanks amc78concord!  I expect to back at it in April.  My husband says in the spring he's selling the van I'm driving now so I have to get the SX/4 done by the winter of 2010 or I won't have anything to drive - gulp!

[shaggimo]

Are you seriously going to drive it in the winter when it's done??

[priya]

Yes, in fact it'll be solely a winter car, that was my intention for it from day one.  I bought a 79 Corvette at the end of November that'll be my summer car and I won't be driving that in the winter.

[Whuntmore]

I can't wait to see what you've done to your car.  any updates?

[priya]

Hi Whuntmore, just saw your post.  I got back in the garage April 1st but haven't been highly motivated so nothing major to report as of yet.  Hopefully I'll have something done worth documenting soon.

[Whuntmore]

That's cool...  I just really like following these projects, and yours is interesting to see the work you've done.  Looking forward to the next update!

[priya]

Well, I've been working on the SX/4 for over a couple of months and It seems like I haven't accomplished much.  There's been 3 or 4 times the normal amount of rainfall this spring and I tend to not work when its raining so that's part of it but I'm still surprised I'm not further along.  I had hoped to have the car ready for paint at the end of last month but I'm still a ways away from that yet.  Its been a lot of filling and sanding so I thought I'd post a few pictures of the sort of work I've been doing recently.

The driver's door although it has no rust has needed quite a bit of work.  The window frame had what appeared to be a minor bend in it and my husband and I spent a lot of time straightening it out but the gap between the right side of the window frame at the top of the door frame is about 1/2" larger than the gap between the lower right side of the window frame and the door frame even though the door is properly aligned so more work is needed.  The door had a lot of dings in it so I decided it was easier to remove all the paint, body fill the entire door and sand down the entire area:




The body fill on the door has been sanded to 80 grit and the door primed so any bare metal doesn't rust until I get back to the finer sanding:


I'm now working on prepping the engine compartment for paint, here's how it looked before I started:



Here's how it looked after I removed the stuff that's coming off for paint, cleaned the grease and dirt off of it, sandblasted the rusty areas and spot primed to prevent rust until I get the finish sanding done:


There was a fair bit of rusty surfaces in the engine compartment and I was prepared to find holes after the sandblasting but the panels all turned out to be solid despite the rust.

[priya]

I finally got a chance to see if I was done with all the rust repairs.  I could see some surface rust around the windshield frame and thought that once I got the windshield out and sandblasted that I might find some holes.  Here's the worst area I found after the windshield was removed:


After sandblasting and checking to see if a scratch awl would poke through after a solid whack it turns out the windshield frame is solid and I don't have to do any more rust repairs to do - woohoo!

[Whuntmore]

Great work!  It's looking awesome, and thanks for the updates. 

[priya]

No problem.   I figured after 2 1/2 months I was long overdue to get some sort of progress report.  I've done more on the car but its not the sort of stuff that really shows much of a change.

[amc78concord]

Lookin good there...I really, really, really, really......... wanna see MORE! lol 

Post more when you get another update..