Cleaning and painting
I need an easy way to get access to the underbody for cleaning and painting. If I had a I was surfing the web a while back and I came across Dean camaro web page (his web site is listed in the links page of the site) and he was cleaning the under body of his 1969 camaro. He supported the rear of the car with jackstands and attached a crossmember to the front of his camaro. He then used an engine lift to raise the front of the body. Well I thought that this was a great idea, unless the car falls on you, so when I need to clean and paint my camaro I did the same thing.
Cleaning the underbody was a very wet 2 ½ hours. I rented a 3000-psi pressure washer from the local Home Depot. It removed the grease and grime from the underbody very well. In the pictures I am in regular cloths. After about 10 minutes of that I put on a poncho. I was almost dry by the time I was finished. I also set up a halogen light to illuminate the underbody as it was getting late towards the end of the cleaning.
After I had finished that and returned the pressure washer I wheeled the camaro in and inspected the underbody. The underside and firewall was extremely clean. I then fired up the HVLP gun and sprayed the car with chassis black. I have also remounted the sub-frame to the body.
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The exhaust system
Removing the exhaust sytem was a real chore. After removing the exhaust hangers I had to move the pipes in all direction to get them up and over the axle. The system had to have weighted at least 60 pounds per side. It felt like the mufflers were filled with concrete. This system will be replace with a Flowmaster American Thunder system with stainless steel tips. |
Cleaing with the magic wand
I call it the magic wand because it really was one. It quickly removes 4in. wide strips of paint, grease, and sand. Some area I had to go over again because they were extra stubborn. |
Close up
As I said before I put on a poncho sortly after this picture was taken to prevent getting soaked( I still got pretty wet though). |
The painted underbody
That fresh paint really looks good. |
This was taken just after painting. |
The painted firewall
I draped plastic sheeting over every thing to prevent over spray on all of the equipment around the camaro. |
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