Getting ready for the road again

[Anders Dinsen]

Hej Frederik!

So am I (looking forward to what's next and the end result!) - I have a plan, but also do what makes sense to do, and like the vacuum actuator, I don't always know what comes next. Red is the colour of my car, by definition, original and beautiful. The correct red, of course Years ago, I wanted her to be dark blue, and I still think that's a beautiful colour for the Murena, but that's not my car

You are always very welcome here! This weekend will be busy with other stuff, but next weekend perhaps. We can figure out something on Messenger, I think

/Anders

[Anders Dinsen]

Just some photos showing todays progress and some details of the chassis. As can be seen, there's some surface corrosion in the chassis on the right side behind the radiator. Nothing serious, though.

[Jon Weywadt]

Judging from some of the photos of brackets and such, it is time to break out the concentrated Phosphoric acid, to neutralise the rust, before painting with Hammerite.
That was some of the first I did to mine way back when. 

[Anders Dinsen]

Judging from some of the photos of brackets and such, it is time to break out the concentrated Phosphoric acid, to neutralise the rust, before painting with Hammerite.
That was some of the first I did to mine way back when.  

You're right, there are several items that need just that treatment! This one cannot be saved, though.

But it's not the next thing to do: I've decided to steam clean the chassis and that will be my next job, and then brushing down the two rusty surfaces on the chassis, both in preparation for a layer or two of cold-galvanization. Expect more over the weekend

[Anders Dinsen]

Today's small jobs completed:

• Bought a steam cleaner
• Left hand coolant pipe was rubbing against the bracket for the vacuum actuator for the headlights, now it's fixed to the chassis
• Radiator is out
• Steering rack is out as well
• Some surface rust wire brushed, pic shows area in front of the cabin fan

[Anders Dinsen]

The front of the Murena is where lots of of wires, cables, pipes, attachments, bars meet. That's probably the most annoying thing about working on the front: It's a complicated "mess". Most cars have are the same in this respect, of course.

Stripping the front completely is not on my agenda. My car is well kept and good, so there's no need to removing any suspension, brake system, wiring etc.

But not stripping things does make things a bit more complicated: It feels a little like cooking a menu in a too small, unordered kitchen: It can be done, but it requires more concentration and moving things around - and probably a bit more time for thinking, planning, and coffee breaks

I was going to upload a picture of the "mess", but then I had second thoughts and chose this one instead, taken in the evening sun yesterday. It's showing thin rust protection dripping out from the inside of the front cross member. To me, that's beauty

[Anders Dinsen]

Steam cleaning... not hyper efficient in itself, but helps dissolve road dirt so it can be brushed away

[Anders Dinsen]

Right side, steam cleaned. Left side, uncleaned.

[TELBOY]

Impressive. I may get one of those.

[Anders Dinsen]

Impressive. I may get one of those.

I think it's worth the money. The steam helps dissolve the dirt so it can be brushed off. I use a combination of various rotating steel and cleaning brushes. It takes time, but it's rewarding to see something like this. Blasting is probably faster, but has its own issues. There are other areas where the road dirt is really stuck, though. Still working on those!

[Anders Dinsen]

Ok, it's time for a quiz... what is this?

[Anders Dinsen]

First picture is how the Zinga zinc paint turns out, not quite white, but very light grey. See my post on the corrosion thread about this product http://www.matrasport.dk/forum/index.php/topic,2502.0.html

Second is the right hand front on the inside after brushing. Still some dust and dirt to remove before spraying it, but I'm almost there now. Last picture is a very dusty Murena

[Anders Dinsen]

Right side finally cleaned down enough to receive its zinc coat. Looks pretty, I think! Left side is now in progress. I removed the brackets for the coolant pipes under the car to be able to move them around more when I'm working and they are not recoverable 

[TELBOY]

That looks great. Are you going to leave it like that as it has a certain "new" look to it or spray it?

[Anders Dinsen]

I'm probably going to leave most of it exposed as it is as it allows me to see if it "works". The zinga paint is supposed to re-galvanize the steel below by a chemical reaction similar to what happens in warm galvanization, just cold and therefore much slower. The only problem with zinga paint is that it requires a very clean surface, especially regarding the salty white corrosion which our cars naturally suffer from. Red rust is actually not as critical since the zinc can slowly "eat" through it, but the white salts create a boundary between the metal and the zinc-paint so that no re-galvanization takes place.

There are areas which I can't clean to the required standard, e.g. inside the beams. I will spray those areas with a very thin penetrating corrosion protection product based on linseed oil. This should stop any corrosion, including white rust. I plan to give the suspension components that tratement too, just followed by a layer of black corrosion protection which hardens to a thick layer (the linseed oil based product is extremely thin and seems to take weeks to harden, and even then it keeps flowing, so will need to be refreshed from time to time).