Starting restoration, some general questions

['76mintgrün'02]

 

 I highly recommend a variable-speed angle grinder.  They're kind of expensive, but money well spent if you do much grinding.  10,000 rpm can be pretty obnoxious.  Especially with wire wheels.

 

[Hans]

You might consider the trade-off of doing all of that vs what you're going to do with the car. Having a bottom that you eat off (so to speak) is fine, but who is going to see it? How often would you go to a full on concours? I would attend to obvious rust and then seal the bottom. 

[Oldtimerfahrer]

Need the 125mm variant with a safety cover wide enough to take a 125mm stainless wire wheel....a lot of the 125mm grinders expect a 115mm wheel...suboptimal....

Andrew

[wim van wesemael]

I do have a suitable 125mm variable speed angle grinder. Luckily. I did however found out that maxing it out greatly helps with stripping speed of the gray rubber undercoating. 

 

As for how perfect I'm doing it. It's a mental thing. I'm not taking apart an entire car and spending a small fortune, more then I might for the rest of my life on a car just to do a sub optimal job. 

Especially because being more meticulous is only costing me time and not money. So just skipping in this phase because of me being lazy is not an option ?

[stephers]

I would get 2 grinders so when one starts to get hot,, you can switch up     I bought 6 of them from Harbour Freight when they were on sale  ( for 9.99 , hell uva deal )   5 years ago and still have 4 of them working fine, broke one when I dropped it     

 

Thanks, Rick

[Son of Marty]

+1 on the hardly safe grinders I have 3 of them so I don't have to change wheels and cut off wheel when welding they last a couple of years before they give up and I toss them and get another. You will need to have a good grinder for the heavy work. 

[Hans]

On 12/24/2021 at 3:41 PM, wim van wesemael said:

 

 

As for how perfect I'm doing it. It's a mental thing. I'm not taking apart an entire car and spending a small fortune, more then I might for the rest of my life on a car just to do a sub optimal job. 

Especially because being more meticulous is only costing me time and not money. So just skipping in this phase because of me being lazy is not an option ?

What I can tell you is that after having stripped my 2000CS to the bare shell (as in pic above) and put it all back together, there will be plenty of opportunity for time consuming, fastidious, endless, frustrating and hopefully in the end, satisfying labour. All I'm saying is why strip all that stuff unless you absolutely have to?

[wim van wesemael]

You're right. 

Unfortunately there isn't an awful lot of places left without rust. 

I'm just starting out but it's difficult deciding how far to go. 

Anyway whether I'm going to bare metal or not, I do have tot prepare it for a spray over.