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We also sanded and prepped the inside of the hood for painting. I sprayed the exposed metal and surface rusted area with rust encapsulator too, that product is what makes the exposed metal look black. I was surprised how the original paint was not adhered to the metal very well, lots of it just sanded right off with barely a stroke or two of the sandpaper. Poor prep before painting I am going to guess but it lasted 57 years. Steve then painted it using the paint gun: he has not had much experience using a paint gun but he is getting good at that.
Steve decided to break out an old restorers trick and recreated the hood liner using fiberglass ceiling tiles. By fitting the tiles with the seams under the hood braces – it is hard to tell that is what he used.
This car has very little rust, but I found some! I removed all the trim around all 4 wheel wells as well as the rocker mounding along the bottom of the car below the doors etc. The front drivers fender corner trim was completely packed with mud: no wonder fenders rot out here. This is the only corner that had a bunch of surface rust as a result of all that grit grinding the paint away. That mess all hides under the trim but I don’t want it to rust any further. So I prepped that, some flakes of paint were bubbled with rust so I scraped that away but the metal is still solid. I coated with rust encapsulator and since we had paint left after painting everything else: why not give it a shot too! I will touch up that little bit along the edge later after the car gets properly polished.
I banged out a bunch of dents in the passenger side rocker molding, wet sanded them with many finer and finer grits then polished them: turned out ok for my first try at that. The rest of the pieces just needed a good polishing. I did the one corner piece then took a comparative photo – very pleased how well they came back to life!