The long, hard grind

Today I spent most of the day painting the panel to go over the lower back window. The front side, shown in the photo had not been primed yesterday due to a pop up thunderstorm. Thus, today I primed the side shown. That was quite quick because by the time I'd got to the end of the sheet it was almost dry enough to start over with the second coat. I gave it half an hour then did the second coat.

So, after the second coat of primer was dry, I put on the four coats of topcoat - two per side. As it all dried fairly quickly, that was no big problem. That was the only thing I didn't take a photo of today. The first corner of the first coat of topcoat came from a can of semi-gloss black paint that had enough for just a small amount of paint. That was good - I could get rid of an empty can. Then I started on a half-empty black gloss can. That'll be fine for all sides of the metal sheeting. I can paint the visible parts grey later. The important thing is to protect and install.

Having some spare time left in the day I took out the angle grinder and used a flapper disk to remove the Bondo. That worked a bit but the welds are so blobby and piled up that I quickly shredded the flapper disk. Thinking harder I pulled out the sand blaster and sand blasted the Bondo to almost no effect. That surprised me! I had a nice sand shower though.

Then I put the grinding disk into the angle grinder and started to grind the welds flush. That was an operation that was more successful than anything else. 

During the grinding, the poor adhesion of the weld to the fridge steel became very apparent. I intended to work all the way around but another pop up thunderstorm threatened so having done some of the work (and got a lot of shards of hot ground metal in uncomfortable places), I quit for the day.

With gaps in the welding very apparent, there was a loud metalic pinging noise. I would not be surprised to find that the door has now sprung back to being where it should be, which was really the aim of removing the too thin steel panel. Tomorrow I'll grind more of the bulbous welds flat and might cut the steel out. I realised I don't care if I remove it all or not. I just want to get enough out that I can sand blast any rust then paint thickly with rust-killing primer. Then I can rivet the new panel in place.

The bottom window is getting much closer to being sorted out. I might still need to trim the top right corner because of the rivets filling holes in the body. I'll have to see how that goes though. Once the bottom panel is in place then I shall be a lot happier.