Bodywork

Over Thanksgiving I finally started a project I should have started 3 years ago: Fix that cracked bondo on the hood.

It's been an eyesore from day one and clearly a hackjob from one of the previous owners. I took the grinder too it, pried off the cracked pieces and sanded down all the rust i could find. Then I started applying layers of bondo, with smoothing and sanding in-between. By Sunday, I had it the hood properly shaped and smooth. I gave the whole thing a light sanding and applied a layer of primer to the whole thing.

Once the the primer dried I could clearly see the terrible crazing that permeated the entire hood. Just another sign of the hack-job of the last hood repair. There was no way around it, I had to take the entire hood down to the metal. That's what I did this weekend. Sanded it to the metal, then used glazing to smooth out some irregularities. Finally I put down a couple of coats of primer.

This morning I was planning on just smoothing out the last coat of primer and heading to the paint shop. Alas, as I did wet clean-up of the hood, I noticed a hairline crack in one spot of the old bondo that had appeared in good condition at the outset. If there's a crack there now, that means there's rust underneath it. I'm not going to waste money painting it with the risk of the hood cracking again. As soon as i get some time, I'll be grinding that section down to the metal and building it back up. So, I guess, no paint until next week.