My 72 wheel wells are old, dirty and beyond fixing up (almost as bad as it's owner ;-) . Is there some sort of liner for it, the wheel well not the owner ;-) ?

 

If they are beyond cleaning and painting, several folks have used brush-on truck bed liner. If you can't find it in a 'satin' black, maybe a good auto paint supply store can line you up with an additive to tone down the gloss. The liner material will help smooth-out the rough areas.

 

Any details on that. Here in The Netherlands we don't have that much paint/coating stuff around.

Thx

 

How far do you want to go with the clean-up?

To go from this to...



this, took about a week per tub..









I'm hoping it was worth the effort once the body goes down on the frame.

 

Bed liner coating (for back area of pickup trucks) is available as brush-on material. It is thick, waterproof, and wears like iron after curing. I don't know if such is available in Europe. Perhaps you can find some spray on [or brush on] undercoating in matte black; similar to bed liner, but not as thick or durable.

 

That looks FANTASTIC .Is that the bedliner material as mentioned?

 

No bedliner here.

Clean, sand, prime and paint with acrylic enamel. The toughest part was sculpting the old bonding material left by the factory.

 

EastLTD,
You have inspired me to press on with cleaning, sanding and painting the wheel wells, mine aren't halve as bad as yours. Consider this topic closed.

Mind you, you did a great job!! How the heck did you sand them machine or hand? Any advise?

 

Unfortunately, most of the work must be done by hand due to the limited space.

I started with a chemical stripper to remove the years of road dirt and factory undercoating material. Then moved on to 80 grit paper to smooth out the panels. The excess factory bonding material was removed with a heat gun and scraper and then more sanding. (I did cheat a little with an air grinder, but it had limited use)

To clean-up the edges I used a two part putty to fill and reshape the seams. More sanding, filling, sanding, filling....(Not only did I do the wheel wells but also the floor and the bottom of the rear deck so it was quite an undertaking).

Once satisfied with the finish, I primed the underbody with high build epoxy primer and started sanding again, now with 240 grit paper followed by 400 grit.

I noticed my gravity feed gun was cumbersum to use under the car, so I invested in a pressure pot sprayer which allowed me to spray at any angle.

I mixed a quart of Dupont Enamel into the pot and sprayed three coats onto the underbody. The pressure pot cost me $125 but was well worth the investment as I've been able to use it for my engine bay as well.

Although the finish is not perfect, it looks a lot better then it did and hopefully will make the car stand out a little more when its complete.

Good luck with the job and don't give up when your fingers get raw from the sand paper. Try to avoid saying "that's good enough". Its your car and your labour is free.

Here are a few shots of the primer phase. You can see in these shots, there was still lots of sanding to go.

 

Great job,

Maybe when I do a frame off in 10 years of so my Vette can look as good underneath as that. currently I'm doing a frame on, since the frame is in fairly good shape. The planning is to have it at the paint shop on April 18. I'll have it back in may, can't wait to see the result. Have been working on and off for 2 years now. Sanding, laminating, filling and more sanding. Did I see it correctly is your vette Yellow? Mine will be sunflower yellow, with the black zl1 stripe.