I finally managed to get doing some work on the car today after a break of nearly 3 months as a number of things have got in the way - some of them were actually to do with the long term progress of the car itself though...
At the start of June I went to see Phil's (Rushingphil) home blasting setup and I liked what I saw so I made the bold, probably stupid, decision that I'm going to blast the car myself. I think it's really just an excuse for me to buy lots more toys
. I decided I was going to pretty much copy what Phil has done as I have no idea what I'm doing really so before I could get a behemoth of a compressor I needed a beefier power feed to my garage as I only had 20A installed. Owing to COVID-19 the compressor took a while to arrive but eventually it got here and I foolishly thought I'd have it installed in a week or so but that week turned into a month! I've not done much plumbing at all and zero compressed air stuff but it's completely bonkers how many different types of fittings and connectors there are out there! I swear that in the end I've ordered over twice of what I actually used just to get the bits I needed and most of the excess stuff I'll never use. I guess most people know what they're doing so it's probably more of an issue for me than most.
Anyway, FINALLY, I have a working setup and I'm really pleased. The compressor is the FIAC 2 x 3HP 250 litre one that RTech sell which is rated at 28CFM with a FAD of 18CFM:
(I know I need to tidy cabling up - the shame of it...). Amusingly I have the anti-vibration feet which are fully adjustable but obviously you can see that it's on tiles to level it up
. Embarrassingly I haven't got a spanner that fits the nuts to adjust the feet. Writing this up reminded me that I need to buy one.
I haven't got my blaster yet as I'm trying to get a suction/vacuum blaster the same as Phil's so that it isn't hugely messy. However, these things are like Unicorn tears at the minute and the only UK importer (sandblasters.co.uk) have been out of stock for months and are currently saying October/November. I have however located a company in Sweden (Pela Tools) who have one and it's supposedly travelling over land and sea as I type.
So, with my first day with a working compressor I thought I'd do a bit of engine bay prep and started removing the various clamps and brackets that are in there. These are spot welded in and I couldn't stand the thought of drilling them out so I got a 10mm belt sander as a few of you on here recommended to me and it's fantastic! Really great at getting these things out. I got the Sealey SA35 and so far it seems to be excellent. However, I only got less than half the bay done as I ran out of belts
. In the photo's below the ones at the top of the firewall that have been removed haven't really been sanded down much because of running out of belts.