906-001
September 25, 2003

We want to keep this car as light as it was when it was raced by Porsche,
but we still need to take off the paint one layer at a time to see what the paint will tell us.

I have sanded the primer and the top coat with 120 grit. At the same time, block sanding is happening.

To keep the weight down, we are going to prime one coat and paint one coat.

The two dots are more evidence about the front hood straps that were installed on the car at LeMans. When the car was painted yellow, these were covered over.

You can see both sides here.

I finally got my new toy, the Stinger III steam cleaner. Our old one was a Stinger I
and made about 1100 psi. This one makes 1600 and boy does it make a difference.
Rather than sanding the paint off, I am using hydro power with a lot of heat.

It will take about a day to strip all the crap off the car, inside and out.

If I stay here long enough, I could probably blow off the primer too, but it actually stuck pretty good.

I will try to blow off all the areas that have paint, inside and out.

High pressure water and steam cleaned the serial tag like new.
S I will not remove the serial tag. All the work will be done around it.

Sanding all these areas is a great way to get the paint off, but it takes longer than steam cleaning.

You could imagine trying to sand door jams and battery boxes.
These were both de-painted and cleaned in a matter of minutes.

The wheels are holding the car up so it will drain in the back.

The front trunk area was only hand painted (silver gel coat) on the sides of the cooler opening.
The "number two" was grease penciled under the trunk. This number represents identification only.
It has no bearing on the chassis being 001. Let's just call it a production number.

You can see the bottom is quite oil stained. This will all be steamed off to original gel coat silver.

It's tedious work, but you really accomplish a lot and you clean at the same time.

It's coming onto about 3pm and still more to go.

In the picture on the right, I am scrapping some tar balls that were stuck inside the
front and rear wheel wells. It appears the car was driven over some fresh tarmac.
This left residue that was actually painted over when the car was painted yellow.

Every ounce of paint will be removed. This car needs to race at its original weight.

I am finished with the bottom and will turn it on its side to get the last paint stuck in corners and joints.

After it's finished, into the body shop it goes for repair work before paint.

 

<< Previous Update | Next Update >>