Stop the Corrosion

We had quite the exciting weekend dealing with hurricane Irene. Fortunately, we came through relatively unscathed while many around us were not so fortunate. I’ll relay one sad, Corvair related incident. The lovely Loriann and I used to live in a house on block over from our current domicile. It had a one car, stone-walled garage. During the three years we lived there, the garage was mainly the home to my LeMans, but I did replace the head on First One while she was parked inside those close confines. Yesterday evening, the lovely Loriann and I were walking the dog though the neighborhood and passed by our old place. We were shocked to see that a huge oak had toppled onto the roof of the garage completely destroying it. It didn’t appear there were any vehicles inside, and I shudder to think how I’d have felt had a tree fallen on my garage with one of the old cars inside.

Prior to the walk, I spent a few hours in the garage. It was time to coat the bare metal on and around Ringo’s welded-on patches. First, I sanded the areas destined for epoxy primer giving some tooth to the existing paint and removing the light rust that had already set in. Next, I laid out a mix of plastic sheeting, old bed sheets, and discarded beach towels covering nearly everything but the areas to be primed. The last little bits of exposed bodywork were protected with taped on masking paper. This was followed by thorough wipe down using wax and grease remover. With the body ready to shoot, I filled my air cooler bucket with cold water, hooked up my paint-only air hose, and got out my smaller paint gun and painting supplies. After changing into a long sleeve shirt and pants, donning my painting skull-cap, and strapping on my respirator, I mixed the Summit Racing epoxy primer and catalyst to the 1:1 ratio and laid down a single, medium coat. With the 30 minute flash time to kill before I could open up the garage, I cleaned the gun and drank a celebratory beer.

The following photos illustrate the results of my afternoon of labor.