Ernie's Woody Restoration

February 21st was Inspection Day at Dave's Garage in the desert.  Three generations of Ernie & Jane's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren visited the Woody to inspect the progress, ask questions, share memories, ask more questions, and eat warm cookies.  Dave was a wonderful host and we appreciated his  hospitality,  patience, and the opportunity to see the Woody's restoration in progress. Inspection completed to everyone's satisfaction! 

Hi Ann! Click image to enlarge We did get the remaining undercoating off the car this past weekend.  It was a slog but the body, fenders etc, are now ready to move forward as soon as I finish vacuuming and blowing everything out of all crevices.   I will have a few square feet feet of the underside of the hood to hand strip as the blaster was very concerned with warping the metal with the amount of time it would take to get the undercoating off.  I'd leave it except the painting process will be much better with it removed. We discovered a bit more rust in a few areas but again, given the age, its to be expected.  We likely would have missed some of it had we not fully stripped the car. All told, the woody took over 3700 lbs of recycled glass media to remove undercoating, paint and corrosion.  That is more than 2X his previous high mark... Here are a few pictures. Click image to enlarge Click image to enlarge Now begins the proce...

Hi Ann, Thank you for the most recent card!  It is crazy to see the car so close to when it was new. I was holding off a few days on this update as I hoped to say the media blasting would be complete.  Alas, we are not there just yet as the media blaster ran out of abrasives.  This undercoating is proving very difficult as I told you on the phone.  If the weather holds, we might get finished today but it could be rain delayed. We can't risk getting the car wet at this stage. The outside of the car and frame are stripped.  We still have about half of the floor, 25% of the back of one fender and the hood remaining.   Here are some pictures of the process.  The metal is in very good condition with just a few additional spots of repair needed aside from some of the problem spots we already knew about. Looking good! A prior repair (poor by today's standards) Firewall looks like NEW ! The floor cleaned up pretty good...