Having a Blast!

I was finally able to sort out some stuff with this project and get it moving forward again.  Media blasting is complete, and I even got a couple other things done while I was waiting for the work to be completed.  View all of it and the aftermath ahead!









After calling several places in the local area to get pricing and references, I finally settled on a local company to take care of my little beast for me.  Oregon PowderCoating has a very good reputation for this kind of work.  In addition to blasting they also (as their name implies) do powder coating.  Their staff was extremely helpful and helped easy the concerns I had getting this work done.  This company has been doing projects like mine for over a decade. Their references spoke very highly of them.  Looking at their pricing and completed work, I can see why.

A coworker of mine hauls cars for people off and on.  He has a 25' enclosed trailer and was willing to help me get this thing over to them.  For some reason I never got any pictures of it in the trailer.  I meant to, but it just didn't end up that way.

Waiting for the trailer

Once it was onsite, they helped walk me through what I was looking for with the blasting.  They even provided a place to store it out of the weather so it had somewhere to sit before they could get to it.

Onsite at the blaster

Onsite at the blaster

Since I was also doing powder coating, they put all of those items on a palette and took me into their magical room of colors. They have quite a selection.  Pretty much any color you can think of.  There is a section of them that are more 'standard' and cost less than the custom ones.

I left that place feeling very confident I made a good choice using them.  I also lined up a body shop that was nearby to come and look at it when it was done.


They called me back precisely when they said they would and let me know it was ready for pickup.  Talk about nervous.. Now I got to see what secrets were hiding under all that paint.

Floors? What floors?!

Trunk issues

The floors where what I expected.  This included the floor of the trunk.  I knew up front that those would need to be replaced.
















I had three hoods going into this project.  I figured two of them would be 'iffy'.  My uncle guessed that one of the two he was giving me would be the best of them with the least amounts of dents and body filler.  He was right on the money.  That hood was clean and shouldn't take a lot to get it redone.

Worst hood

Best hood

The body was clean in all the spots I was worried about.  Typically the first place to go one these is the lower rear quarters.  They fill with water and just rot.  These are actually pretty good!

Passenger fender

Driver fender

The worst of it was the passenger's side.  It looks like at some point the car had been hit.  Someone had taken a slide hammer and drilled holes in the body to pull the dent back out.  They did this on the passenger door as well.  It's bad enough I'm looking for some replacement panels to see if I can just re-skin it.  A buddy of mine mentioned that people pay good money for stickers that look like bullet holes and I should just leave it like that.

Passenger quarter damage

Front damage

Also looks like part of the front was hit (or hit something) as the front
support the headlights mounts to is dented on the passenger side.  It's amazing what a little body filler can hide!  I'm actually in awe of the bodywork done to this.  Whoever did it was a real artist.  You couldn't even tell the damage was there visually.  That guy was an artist!

Back from powder coat

Clean and shiny

The parts that were powder coated turned out amazing.  They even wrap them in foam stuff when they hand them back to you and shrink wrap it to a palette.   They covered all of the holes I asked them too and the final result is fantastic.  Seeing some final color on a few things really helps me drive toward getting this completed.



Total cost for all of the blasting and powder coating was only $870.  I was expecting it to be more than double that price, especially given the quality.

Back home again!

While I waited for the blasting to be completed, I started work on the gauge cluster of the car.  Since this was made in the 1970s, they enjoyed plenty of that plastic woodwork.  The gauge cluster was no exception.  It's made of a decent plastic, but had a plastic wood 'sticker' placed over top of it.  Understandably my uncle didn't like this stuff and he painted the whole thing black.

Painted cluster

Area of fake wood panel removed

Cluster closeup

I could have just cleaned and repainted it, but I wanted to go a different route.  Having more than one of these things, I remembered having one that had a textured plastic gauge cluster.  I guessed that likely that's what was under this painted wood stuffs.

I chipped out a small piece and it verified my suspicions.  I like the look of the bare cluster better, so I started removing all of this stuff. What a mess.  It'd only come off in tiny pieces as it was super brittle.  Removing it left behind a huge mess of glue.

A rag with some rubbing alcohol helped soften the glue so it could be scrubbed off without damaging the plastic underneath.  The entire assembly still needs some final cleanup and maybe a little bit of paint, but I think the overall look is a lot cleaner than before.  AND there's no more 'plastic wood'.

Dash with sticker and glue removed

Dash with sticker and glue removed