Frame Sandblasting

Well, it’s been slow going lately. I haven’t been able to put as much time into working on the car as I would like. As I mentioned in my last update, I decided to build a sandblasting tent in my garage to avoid having to move the frame in and out every time I wanted to sandblast. Plus, fall weather here in Maine can be ‘uncooperative’ at times. After picking up some poly at the local home store, I got to work stringing up a quick tent. The end result is shown below.

Copyright - Tim Cote 2007

A view from the inside of the tent. For an hour and a half of work I think it came out pretty well. I placed a fan in the far corner to help keep air circulating and to help clear out some of the dust. To keep the dust from dumping directly into the garage I made what amounted to a 5 foot long wind sock out of a few household trash bags and taped it around the perimeter of the fan cage. It worked better than I had planned, I just opened the garage door about a foot and the sock carried the dust directly outside.

Copyright - Tim Cote 2007

I continued with the blasting, this time on the bottom of the frame. It was slow going. As it turns out my compressor just can’t push enough air so I had to stop every 5 minutes or so to let the compressor catch up. I would have thought my 30 gallon compressor pushing 6.4 SCFM @ 90psi would have done a little better keeping up, but oh well. I tried using smaller blasting tips but they clogged too often. Buying another compressor isn’t in my future so for now I’ll deal with the delays.

Copyright - Tim Cote 2007

The frame sure looks better after blasting though!

Copyright - Tim Cote 2007

Close-up: Before blasting…

Copyright - Tim Cote 2007

After blasting. It sure does a good job!

Copyright - Tim Cote 2007

Well, that’s it for this update. In addition to the actual ‘work’ shown above, I’ve been doing a considerable amount of research looking at replacement parts and figuring out what I want to replace on the chassis. It’s turning out to be a much larger component of the project than I had originally planned. Although these hours are not reflected in my project timer, I’d guess my time spent doing research is probably about double what’s shown on the timer. Yikes!