January 14, 2000 Must Scrape More Undercoat!

Every few weeks, I realize I must put down what I’m doing and scrape some more undercoating. It’s my least favorite job of automotive restoration because there’s no clean way to do it. The flakes of undercoating get everywhere and I spend almost an equal amount of time cleaning up compared to actaul scraping, and that’s not counting the time it takes to clean the stuff out of my hair!

I put on my coveralls, gloves, and goggles, and spread out some plastic sheeting to try and catch the falling debris. I start with a small area, and try to scrape as much of the undercoating with a 1-1/2 inch putty knife. The pictures I took to show my progress don’t really do my work justice. Although the metal surfaces still look dirty after scraping, they are clean of old undercoating and are ready for a rust resistant primer.

After about an hour of scraping, I crawl out from under the car, and try to find something better to do. Craining my neck, and contorting my body only exacerbate my bad back, and soon I find myself sweeping up the floor under the car dreading the next time I have to go back and scrape some more!

I packed up the grille in a box I made to bring all pieces to the CBS construction shop. It wasn’t the prettiest box, but it did it’s job. All I can say is, Thank God for gaffer’s tape!