I've started working on the restoration of my 66 Karmann Ghia. I've never done body work of any sort. I've disassembled the major parts of the car and have the body off of the frame. I bought a mig welder and a few other tools to do the job. I found that parts of the car was covered with as much as 1/4" of bondo, which covered very badly rusted metal. So now I have a few questions.
- paint stripping. I've tried chemical stripping, sanding with an electric vibrating sander, a 3M hard plastic stripping pad in a drill, heat gun. What I've found that works best for me is just 7" 80 grit sanding disc in an air powered sander. Everthing else takes too long. I can't sand blast because the body in on saw horses in my shop. I just sand very carefully until I start to see sparks and then move on to a new area. After a while the outer floppy part of the sand paper stops cutting very fast so it gets easier to avoid sparks. Does this sound like a valid way to remove paint? I was not planning to remove the paint from the sound parts of the car, just the rusty areas or where I need to cut and weld, etc. Is there any reason to strip the paint from the good areas? It seems to me that since 90% of the metal is as good as new, why strip it? It's lasted for almost 40 years.
- Now that I have shiny bare metal on parts of the car, what can I do to protect it until I later prime or paint it? I may be working on this part time for a year. I'm just in the discovery phase right now: finding out what parts need work. It seems that I could just leave the bare metal alone and later, just before priming, I could easily just lightly sand off and rust that appears because of humidity, and then treat it with marine clean, metal ready or whatever a year from now.
- I've cut out the old pan halves and will soon weld in the new ones. Should I just paint the black por15 on the bottom of the new pan? Many people say to grind the welds, marine clean, metal-ready, then por15 paint. Or should I also sandblast the bottom of the new pans, then treat as above? Same process for the top of the pans? I CAN sandblast the pans, tunnel, etc, since I can move it outside of the shop.
- What about stainless steel replacement parts, like the heater channels? Does any one make them? Would it be practical to have them made or make them yourself? I've been told that you can weld stainless steel to mild steel. That seems like the right way to fix this. Did anyone ever consider that?
thanks, Tom