Continuing to plug along despite the frigid temps.
Finally pulled the gas tank:
Very happy to find that the mounting flange for the tank was really as rust free as it appeared before I pulled the tank. With the ability to water to attack this piece from both sides this seems like a minor miracle:
Pulled the fuel pump mounting bracket with the pump still on it. I just cut the old lines since they're toast. The line feeding the pump was quite a sight....the inside is absolutely solid with what looks just like half-cured tar.
Figured I'd deal with the scale and rust now that everything's as accessible as it's ever going to be.
This is my high-tech blast booth:
It did an OK job of containing the media and dust so that cleanup afterwards wasn't a nightmare. It sure wasn't pleasant crawling around under there with a worklight, sandblaster, and wearing fogged up goggles over glasses and a respirator. I'll be picking media out of my eyes and ears for days.
This is the passenger inner rear quarter and frame rail middle through blasting the light scale. All of the rust here (and on the other frame rail in the tub) was just light surface stuff. Where the original undercoating was intact I just left it. This car will not be driven in bad weather and will be garaged....no way I was going to try to remove all of the old Waxoyl.
Next photos are of the blasted areas after two coats of Rust Destroyer. After it has a good long time to dry (i.e. next week) I'm going to shoot it with Rustoleum flat black so that it blends in with the old undercoating. May shoot some rubberized undercoating on top of that down the road as well.
Inner side of the rear valence is perforated toward the driver's side. Most likely I'll leave it this way until after the car is on the road. New paint isn't in the budget for this year and the outer side of the valence is also in need of patching so I'll probably have this taken car of when the car goes in for paint.
Remainder of inner valence had only surface rust on the underside....of course there's no way to see the other side of it.
The inner/under rear quarter pieces on both sides are also nice and solid and had only light surface rust. This is the passenger side.
Back side of the passenger rear wheel well is also intact:
I still need to blast the frame section up above the rear axle on the passenger side and inspect and possibly blast the inner/under rear quarter on the driver's side. I just had had my fill of blasting before I got that stuff done. Nasty work.
If anyone in the northeast can recommend a shop that does gas tank repairs and sealing I'd appreciate it. Otherwise I'll start searching on my own (when I tried to find a shop to work on the tank in SENF I never did find anyone local and ended up buying a cheap aftermarket tank. That's not in the budget for this project since there do not appear to be any cheap tanks for these things.