Not such a blast

I decided that rather than farming out the blasting of our Giulia I'd do it myself. It seemed to be much more economical and much less of a hassle. The closest blaster is a few hours away and it would require at least 2 trips up and back to get the car done, not to mention the harrowing ordeal of strapping a bodyshell to a dolly on to a trailer.........yuck.

After some research I ordered a relatively inexpensive dual-media blaster from Eastwood. I'm in a position where I need to clean up some metal in the nose and in the trunk section before I continue to repair some of the metal in those areas. I took a break from welding and finally got the blaster out and gave it a try last weekend. My compressor is an Ingersol Rand rated at 12.3 CFM@ 125PSI and it has a 40 gallon tank. The blaster is only supposed to require about 8CFM@80PSI, so I figured I'd have enough muscle for the job.

I started with aluminum oxide in the tank as I knew I'd be working on some areas with some sound deadener, some heavy glue, and some rust.

Now I know why people pay others to blast their cars for them. While it's rather satisfying, it's kind of a hassle, and it makes a helluva mess (I expected that part). Unfortunately I was not able to make much progress as I'd only get a short burst of usable blasting before the pressure would drop and I'd have to wait 30 seconds or more for the pressure in the blaster tank to build back up. It was extremely frustrating, and my compressor was running non-stop. After an hour or more of blasting intermittently like this I had only gotten a few small areas blasted, although the results were pretty good.

After thinking about it and discussing it with some friends I came to the conclusion that the reason my compressor couldn't keep the tank pressurized was the very long run I had in between it and the blaster. Just like a long extension cord, the volume of air I am able to move through my plumbed air lines to the tank is insufficient to refill the blaster.

With this in mind I set about to rectify the situation. I went to a local hose/fitting store and purchased 8 feet of 1/2 inch hose, along with several 1/2 inch high flow fittings. I wanted the run of hose to be as short as possible but I need at least enough to be able to get the blaster out of the garage and have some room to move it around. I will connect this 1/2 inch hose directly to the compressor tank and then in to the soda blaster. The only thing in between will be the regulator. I'm hoping that will be sufficient to help me to be able to blast for more than a few seconds before having to take a break.

Chela got in on the blasting action too. Here's some pictures of the process and the results:

Welding progress

The last couple of days in the Cowpoke Racing garage have been more fruitful. After a lot of trial and error and using some different techniques I am happy to report that I've actually gotten to a point where I can get the metal from the new tail section to tack to the rest of the car. The welds aren't pretty and I have lots of grinding to do, but I did get the tail section welded on. I still have lots more tacks to make to "connect the dots" but it's fairly well lined up and it's not coming off again. Due to the nature of the remanfactured panel, I could not get it to line up at all the critical points. I had to choose which seam I wanted lined up, and so I chose the top crease on the left rear fender. With this body line properly aligned, other areas don't line up, but I figure they're easier to modify and less likely to be noticed if they're not perfect. You can see the first area that will need to be worked (where the trunk lid shuts) in the picture below:

I've also started cutting out the rusted out gas tank mounting flange and fitting the section that Kevin sent me from his donor car (thanks Kevin!). I should have my soda/sand blaster in the next couple of days and I'm anxious to use it to prep some more of the trunk for more welding and eventually primer.

I had a friend who has restored several concours quality cars come over to the shop and take a look at my progress. I was more heartened by what he didn't say than what he did. He didn't say "dude, you're in way over your head and this is never going to look good, wtf are you thinking?", so that's good.