Stripping the Car Down to Bare Metal

The car was disassembled and stripped at the paintshop to see what was under the paint. All the panels on the car were either original to the car or original Ford panels, no reproductions.






The passenger quarter panel needs to be replaced due to a crunch probably 20 years ago at least.





To save money I'm going to replace the two front fenders with Ford tooling fenders. The old fenders have holes that were drilled to fix some small dents many years ago and holes for emblems that I'm not going to use. Cheaper to replace them than remove all the old paint and filler, then fill the holes and straighten.

The doors don't *need* to be replaced, but there's rust along the bottom seams and on the metal grain pattern, so I am replacing them.

Overall, the exterior wasn't too bad at all. This last photo shows the cowl area when I was about 85% done stripping it (months after the previous photos were taken...) The cowl had no rust at all, so I put a nice coat of POR-15 into it to keep it that way. I poured it in the vents with a funnel and small rubber hose and then used a 2-3 foot extension wand with a sponge on the end through the access holes to wipe smooth. The shop air was able to push it into the seams really well.