Wandered outside without a set agenda…
There was still a solid frost on the ground, so I decided to do something with the heat gun. …which was a removing the tar from the floor.
Specifically, I tried the technique that worked well with the Mercedes, which is to heat the underside of the floor.
It worked well.
All four sections of the floor took less than an hour. There’s a plug at the front of both front floors that’s a mess of body sealant, which sucked, but the rest of it was pretty easy.
Then clean the remainder off with thinners. Cold morning means that I didn’t gas myself with fumes either.
The “heavy duty” gloves don’t survive well. If you look closely, this was triple bagged…
Onto the tar on the firewall. I assumed that it would be about the same as the floor stuff, only thinner.
It isn’t. It melts a lot easier, and I struggled with access and (particularly) modulating the heat, so this much smaller area took about an hour.
The big positive is that I discovered that I can simply heat the residual goo and wipe it off without thinners.
Moar cleaning, and then some aerosol paint.
Like always, the photos are flattering, but it looks pretty good.
Because this car sat around, all the bare metal under the dash has surface rust - not noticeable on a road car, but pretty obvious when the interior was stripped out.
The surround for the steering column has a second flange to hold the carpet down, so I cut that out before painting it.
Forgot to take “before” photos, but here’s the “after”.
Note the spacers under the shifter assembly. They’re a length of threaded rod with a rod coupler screwed on, and then a lock nut on each end. Raises the shifter by almost 60mm.
Yes, the yellow is a bit garish, but it’s a clean, bright colour and makes things easier to see under the dash.
Obligatory steering lock-ectomy.
Used up some old silver on the steering column. Looks awful (like the Tim Man), but better than rust.
Edit: The tar I collected weighed a total of 4kg. It’s a lot of work for a 4kg saving, but it does make the interior look a lot better too.
Haven’t updated the costs in a while.
Two more tins of paint: $21.
Adhesive vinyl: $50 ($40 for the 102mm wide roll of yellow from ebay, $10 for the white and silver offcuts from the local sign writer).
8mm threaded rod: $8
1.5m of Exhaust pipe: $37
Still need to include the tin of clear and thinners.
