AG-111 - Painting and Touch-Ups

Over the weekend I coated the pan with AG-111. Recommended application was with a brush, but  decided to use my HVLP gun instead, and it worked great. The finish turned out a lot more glossy than I thought it would be, but I'm good with it. Applied a fog coat first (which I had to look up how to do), "spraying at a farther distance making quick paths to slowly cover to full color saturation". I let that tack up and then applied a second "double wet pass" coat. I let that dry for a day and then came back to fill in the seams, and hard-to-get-to areas with a brush afterward. Overall, the process was a lot easier than I thought. I'm pretty happy with the Master Series so far. We'll see how it performs once it's completely cured.

Mastercoat Sealer

Last weekend I sealed the pan with Mastercoat permanent rust sealer. I went this route after much consideration. I wanted to preserve the original soundproofing on the tunnel. Its in great condition and there is no reason to remove it. I considered powder coating to be the best option until I read about the possibilities of cracking and chipping over time, with no great options for repair. Secondly, the entire pan would need to be baked at 300-400 F, which would destroy the original soundproofing that I was trying to save. So I decided to go with Master Series Mastercoat. It's worked well so far. I applied the first coat with foam brushes, recommended by the manufacturer. It took me around two hours to coat the entire thing, so I decided to spray the second coat. The sealer seams to "expand" as it dries, filling in all areas around where I brushed.

Ready for paint, I decided to use AG111, more on that in the next post. Now I am debating whether or not to wait to paint it until I'm ready to paint the front end and axle tubes so that I can paint them all at once. Maybe I'm thinking too much into it.

More Sandblasting, Rust-Proofing and Final Cleanup

On the final leg of sandblasting, I removed the torsion bars and spring plates to get a thorough sandblast and rust-proof in-between. In order to do this, I made the pan level, knocked the spring plates out just enough to pop off of their stops and measured the angle with an angle finder so that I could reinstall them correctly. 16 degrees on both sides!

With these removed, I finished sandblasting the pan. I underestimated how much of a hassle sandblasting this pan myself would be. It took me around two months doing it myself in my free time.  If I were to do it again, I would just drop it off somewhere. Anyway, I ended up doing it in sections, making the realization that I couldn't do the whole thing at one time with the small sandblaster that I had. I carefully rust-proofed it as I went with phosphoric acid.

It's finally completed and rust free. there were several areas where some stubborn undercoating had to be removed by hand, but it wasn't too bad.

Final Cleanup Before Paint