Well,
1st of all extremely sorry for not updating the status for quite a long time. Lots of work has been done in between. All because of Mandeep's effort (standing at the workshop for hours everyday and shuttling between places in this scorching summer!) as I am able to go to the workshop only on weekends!
To start with, we decided to modify the body to some extent to make it look better. The door area was made tapered, some job was done on the bonnet to make it identical to the CJ. Also the rear floors were replaced with brand new ones.
The body was taken off the chasis and this was the condition after initial body work
The replaced floors
Work on the chasis to clean it up properly and smoothening the surfaces to get ready for paint
The chasis after cleaning, though there was not much of rust formation. It was done with the machine-operated wire wheel in stead of manual cleaning & sanding. The whole chasis was prepared in almost 1/5th time. The workshop folks were really happy when mandeep showed them how to do it, as it reduced their workload a lot!
The differentials were taken off to paint separately. The rear diff being cleaned:
The shockers after cleaning and painting:
Part of the tank:
The colour for the chasis was decided to be in mat black, and this is how it looks:
I don't have the pic of the full chasis after it was painted, as it was completed the next day.
After the chsis was painted, the body was brought back on it and the final work on the body was started. The surface was smoothened and body fillers were applied. The filler was Esdee based dry one in stead of the conventional wet based ones. This hardens very soon and it really takes some effort to sand & chip it out properly. Mandeep was really finicky about the details and the finishing and finally it came out quite good. The modifications on the cowl and the bonnet were also done. Meanwhile we got a roll cage fabricated from 2.5" CRC pipe and rectangular plates were fabricated to mount the same on the body.
Another snap:
The jeep with the rollcage:
So after all these, finally the body was ready to get the paintjob. The base coat was done last week and here are couple of snaps.
The coat being prepared:
Fender before paint
And this is how it looked after the paint:
The bonnet, before and after:
The body being moved for the paint:
And it turns out to be:
So that was the progress till last week. Now the final paint is remaining; it will start after we get the proper shade. In sheer anticipation and excitement to see the final outcome. And my wife too is equally (or may be more) enthusiastic about the whole thing, accompanying me everywhere from the workshop to mayapuri to get the feel of the entire episode.
-regards,