Sorry for the late update to the thread.
By then I had decided to keep her black for few years and got a basic wax (graphene wax) done at Waxhouse, Ccochin and she looked amazing.
You guys are going to murder me when u read the rest of the story
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Found original Mille metal fan.
So I drove her around for few days but I really wanted to get her paint color changed!
I checked into
AUTOSTARKE ( owned by Nippon Group ) authorised dealers for Toyota, Kia, Lexus, Chevy, was amazed by the sprawling infrastructure and equipment levels and checked her in.
Drove her in at around midnight, the arrangements were perfectly made for me as the security guards were ready for me
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Parked her into one of there interactive bays meant for Chevy cars and I went back.
Next day at around 11am I got a call from there service advisor that the car has been inspected and found some issues with detailed pictures on my WhatsApp. I felt like i had given one of my newer cars to the dealership for service
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The floor board and the under-body had some rust, some minor oil leaks here and there which was expected on a 70 year old car.
I decided against the traditional cutting gas welding patching as those are really temporary fixes and I needed a permanent solution.
I bought ready made 16 guage (Japan metal is the local term) machine pressed sheets with lines already in them for floor (generic). It's basically plug and play and was already galvanised during manufacture it should last very long indeed as well. The entire floor area upto to the boot will be changed by this one sheet! Since those lines are machine pressed it prevents the metal from loosing its strength during manual adding of lines suring tinkering.
The floor sheets.
My goal was clear as i intended to keep this one forever so decided to do a full pin to pin restoration in the highest possible standards available especially since Autostarke had such infrastructure as well.
Now the stripping began, every single nut and bolt on this car had to be restored to original factory condition, so we decided to remove the engine gearbox, differentials, all suspension components, axles, frame and leave the car on just its shell.
The subframe and suspension arms and other components removed.
I realised the best way to do a clean and future proof job is to do blasting (sandblasting/copper slag) only then the deep rust will be exposed and problem areas could be detected as manual sanding has its limitations in identifying the depth of rust.
After sandblasting.
The real clean metal exposed and perfect working space for any tinker
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As it was fully sandblasted and now its bare surface is very vulnerable to the high humidity and could catch surface rust quickly so I had to act quickly to preserve the metal while it undergoes tinkering works.
Owatrol dealer in India, lijeet was kind enough to send me in
OWATROL rust inhibiting oil coating within few minutes and we coated it on top of bare metal. This oil works by seeping into the pores of metal and acting as a sealer on the meat preventing rust formation and rust popping out which was perfect for my build.
After OWATROL cowing.
This was done in their painting booth and left there to dry for 3 days.
Pictures after 3 days. Perfectly coated and protected.
So these are the latest updates and work is progressing well, will post updates as the work moves onto the next stage!
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