Started work on the engine bay

Well the sanding is completed. Were just waiting for our body shop to come over and show us where they want the pannels cut for the new ones to go on.

We’ve started to clean the ziebart off the engine bay so that we can cut the rear tray out and smooth it all ready for the respray. Were using petrol and cloths to clean the worst off it off and it works quite well although it’s hard work. If the weathers good next weekend we should be able to get this finished on the Saturday.

Sunday were off to DC10 really looking forward to this show!

Here’s a few catch up pictures of our MK1 Polo still looking very sorry for it’s self, we cant wait to see it with a fresh coat of Manila Green paint.

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Polo sanding again

Well with the weather as good as it was over the weekend I cracked on with the sanding. The roof is now down to the metal and this now leaves us with the bonnet, drivers side, tail gate and one door to sand. The it’s the engine bay were going to clean it all out first then decide what needs cutting out and smoothing. Main thing was that after the winter it was great to get back into the project!

Starting to see the light!

Well the metal!

We’ve spent another six hours stripping and sanding the MK1 Polo and it’s starting to show progress. We have decided to take the outer shell back to the metal so that it can have a proper job done on the respray and we can makes sure that there is no underlying rust issues. So far we’ve been over the moon with a car that’s thirty two years old, its got minimal rust and rot issues and what we have found were either replacing the panel completely or the area can be patched.  All this work now will hopefully means less prep work required by the body shop who will do the respray down to a minimum cost.

We recon two more days like saturday and we will be ready for the car to go in for the welding. We need to hire an engine hoist to take the 1.1 power plant out to give us access to the engine bay and allow us to smooth it.

While the cars away we’ll then be able to work on the engine cleaning painting and polishing and also spec out the interior retrim.

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Paint Stripping the MK1 Polo

Spent most of Saturday paint stripping the Polo panels its hard boring work but its got to be done and once we got into it when it started getting dark at 4.30pm we didn’t really want to stop.

The horrid purple paint is comming off quite easy and once we have it all off were going to sand the rest of the body work back to the metal so that the body shop have as little prep work to carry out as possible, this will save us quite a bit of money we hope.

Mark did say yesterday if money was no object he’d say “Sod it let the body shop do th lot lol” if only!

Next week if the weathers with us we recon we can break the back of the sanding the advantage of the MK1 Polo is it being so small.