My plan was to have it painted by this afternoon!
I'm a little behind

Mark, looking great, it's come along way from what it was.

Mark I'm a little behind you, mine is all scraped and now I'm on to removing the Tar residue. What did you use to finsh cleaning the tar ??? I scarped for two days the entire rear of the car. Next I think carb cleaner ?? then wire wheel and sand. I ahve a little rust to fix on one side.

Ron

I scraped heavy tar

I used the 4" makita with wire brush for light tar removal

Then I used aircraft paint remover & scraped and hit it with wire brush a little more.

Special thanks to Bill (lastpushbutton) for this information, see his post for waterless paint removal on this PI board

On the wire grinder wheels I had better luck with the heavy duty twisted wire wheels.

Most of the time I was grinding the car but twice it was grinding on me!
Also be carefull use eye protection as the little wires come off that wheel like little darts they don't hurt much but you wouldn't want one in your eye.

Mark 6808
Its coming along good but I signed up for the track event in Vegas for May so now I have a dead line to get her track ready. It won't be no show car but should be a blast to drive.

I have to say I tried EASY OFF and it losened the tar bt was hard to clean up everything else. Then just sharpened a 11/2 scraper and work fine but my arms are sore. But thanks you reconfirmed my thought of the twisted wire wheel on the grinder. Did you use a cup wheel or 4" striaght. I experimented with some old starter fluid and it worked wonders. I have two old cases and may try that before wire wheel only because it evaporates. But thanks for the tips and good luck.

Ron

I used the cup style wheel

You can pick up aircraft paint remover at auto paint store, worked pretty good.

Good job on the bay clean up. Brings back bad memories when I did mine. I saturated with paint stripper then scraped the bulk of it off. I then used a brillo pad to get the cracks and crevices.

When I did mine, I found that the undercoating chipped off quite nicely (and easier to clean up than wet tar). My final clean-up was with lacquer thinner which easily removed the tar and did no damage to the wonderful lime green paint underneath.

I found that old tooth brushes were useful in tight corners. The thinner evaporates quick and you get a nice buzz off it to boot!

Mark,

Exactly, first the easy off only removed what looked like the first layer. Then the scraper seemed to do it real nice. I tried some old cans of starter fluid on a small spot and yes it cleans up nicely. Funny thing though, I found undercoating over bear metal in many places, not the true white original color. Was this the process they used in preping the car NEW ?? very surprizing not much rust.

Ron

Hey Ron,

When I removed all of my undercoat, I too was surprised at the total absence of rust. I did not, however have any bare surfaces. Maybe they took an early cappuccino break when they were painting yours and forgot to finish some spots! One thing that I was also pleased about (and a good reason to strip all that crap off) is to find that there had never been any accident repairs either.

I never tried starter fluid before, but it sounds more expensive than laquer thinner (even though I only used a few cups).

Here's mine "almost" clean...