Scraping and Wire Brushing the Undercoat

This is a truly seven layer suck cake if I ever had one. I removed the undercoating from the '66 LTD and it came off really easy with a propane torch. I don't think I spent 2 partial days on it and it was done. However the '66 LTD was taken care of and obviously garaged in Wichita Kansas.

This fine specimen along with another '66 gal 500 2 dr hardtop were extracted from the Zuni Indian Reservation. When I say extracted more like unearthed where they sat in a field in the hot dry desert sun since before I was born.

The heat of the countless years/decades cooked that undercoating as well as the paint on to a whole new level I didn't think was possible. I've kept track of the contiguous hours of just scraping and wire brushing with a small propane torch and it's now 28 solid hours of this and I still have a way to go.

Here's some before pictures:

It doesn't look bad, but there's rust forming under this factory undercoating.

I like how Ford loaded the undercoat on the area that would ultimately be coated with engine and tranny oil from 60's sealing technology (really lack of it) and left the more important areas devoid of the coating. (rolling eyes)

Now the fun starts. Well when I say fun I mean a truly grueling job.

As of the yesterday this is where I left off. I spent 2-1/4 hours and only cleared 2/3's of one wheel well. I went through 4 pounds of propane already. But you can see the revealing rust uncovered. This old undercoating has to be removed in order to treat this rust properly and stop it from getting any worse. I figure another 10 solid hours to finish this.

And people wonder why it costs ludicrous amounts of money to redo an old car.

What makes this bad is that it's hard enough to be a ***** to get off, but soft enough where you couldn't sand blast it. When I blasted the exterior of the car, I tried some spots and the sand just embedded into the undercoat and that's all that happened, it didn't actually remove any of it.

The only other way is to acid dip the entire body, but either way you look at it, it's expensive to ship and dip or just pay the man hours to manually strip.

What makes this so bad is the seam sealer has asbestos in it, in fact it's just rubber and asbestos, so in removing this you have to get kitted up pretty well in a suit, full respirator and of course eye protection. I usually reserve this till later in the day when I can work with the doors open and not roast to death even with a fan running against me.

Next up a few misc bits of transmission and engine.