Introducing...

My glamorous garage assistant:

So, I was delighted to got some much needed assistance last weekend in the form of my girlfriend, who turned out to be an absolute demon with the angle grinder and drill-mounted wire brush. Whoooop! Plus, she later confessed that she enjoyed working on the car – so I have a feeling that she is likely to become a regular fixture in this ongoing resto story...

Started with the inside of the rear quarter panels and got them primed up:

Then we began stripping the driver’s side front quarter:

A close-up of a couple of really crusty areas that made me shiver:

As usual there was a lot of filler slapped all over the place and a lot of tatty old repair patches slowly emerged from beneath the underseal:

Whilst my girlfriend battled on with the dirty work I decided to upgrade my front saw horse. Basically narrowed it to about a third of the original width and added some heavy duty braked casters to the bottom:

I actually ended up removing the top angled cross-brace sections as it was preventing the car from sitting back down on it correctly (forgot to factor-in the obvious!). Even without these sections it felt suitably sturdy and as the shell is now almost completely stripped of components I was not too concerned about the weight issue compromising the integrity of the structure.

It feels great to have a bit more working space around the front of the car now. I will get the rear saw horse sorted out next and then the shell should be fully maneuverable at last!

Shiny, shiny metal!

I have to dedicate the next couple of weeks to some personal work, so my garage time is going to be severely restricted. So, I thought I would go for a 'quick win' and strip back the entire underside of the chassis before I slack off. This knotted angle grinder wire wheel was the best method that I found for taking off the thick underseal crust:

An interesting view of my workspace filled with a dense atmosphere of dust. I really like the shards of ethereal light hitting the pan! I decided to set-up a better system for dust extraction at this point as my satuarated mask could only take so much:

After a few hours of messy but fun (honestly) work I had everything stripped and thankfully it all appears to be rather solid:

However, I did come across some ugly welding on both sides of the transmission mount. Although this part of the car will never be seen I will probably clean this area up nonetheless - after all, I will always know that it is there!:  

The only area that is a little shabby is just at the front by the Napoleon's Hat. Nothing too major - just some pitting and a few pinholes: 

Looking fresh after a lick of metal primer: