Meet my red-headed stepchild!

[echassin]

More tedium today:



I know these panels look the same in a pic as they did yesterday, but I fawned over them again all day today with the DA and blocks until only factory baked-on finishes remain. Every molecule of red or clear that was added at a later date is gone, yet I exposed as little metal as possible in order to minimize the chances of any peeling (the car will sleep outside in the elements).

I also spent the day eliminating even the tiniest dings I could find:



As an example, there's one on the lower left of the above pic which was not apparent with shiny paint, but which block sanding readily exposed as a persistance of red surrounded by exposed primer.

Filling, sanding, filling, sanding, ...

I also spent some time on the inner skin of Jim's hood, which I will clean and touch up as needed. I cleaned the small areas of rust with a Dremel. here's the first spot I did:



Then I touched up the bare metal with Rustoleum primer, over which I'll dab on color. The inside of the skin likely has a bit of rust also, but I have a plan:

My neighbor works at GE and when he saw my little spray can of Cosmoline, he chuckled and said "we have 55 gallon drums of that stuff at the plant. If you want, I'll bring you a gallon". HECK YEAH!

It's the thick stuff. He said you heat it and brush it on, and it will flow everywhere before cooling and hardening. I'll do the hood skin, the fender bottoms, all the hard lines, the rear arches again, heck I may dip the whole car in it

And more sanding

[fredybender]

[echassin]

Aaaaaaaand....

...a sunroof panel is coming from California

[scirocco*joe]

Aaaaaaaand....

...a sunroof panel is coming from California

Sweet business!

[heerschap]

nice work! man the more I browse this fourm the more i want to buy that rocco i found

[echassin]

Thank you sir!

Today my neighbor dropped this off:



Real Cosmoline by the bucket, as much as I need.

Hee hee.

Ha ha.

Muahaha

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAA *cough* haha.

I'm gonna slather the stuff on anything that dared rust in the first 25 years of service

Then I finished the inside of the hood:



All dirt and excess Cosmoline removed, the whole thing buffed my hand, and color touchups where needed. Not show-worthy but better than factory, so good enough for me

Next is to gift wrap the inner panels and prime the outsides.

[polov8]

All Great stuff! I loooove reading your threads!

Attention to detail and workmanship are always right up there.

[S3sh1n]

its now 3am and it took me 2 hours to read all through this thread. if the textbooks i had to read in school were this interesting I'd be a rocket scientist by now. the complete rebuild is blowing my mind

[echassin]

^^^ Insomniac or nightshift ? JK; thanks for the kudos.

Today was another scorcher, but I was able to shoot two coats of primer in the cool of morning:



We hung out at the pool during the hottest part of the day, but after dinner it cooled off again and I had at it with the DA and 220 grit:



I know you're all bored looking at the same darn panels, but imagine how mind numbing it is to sand every square inch of each panel day after day

But in the twilight, the panels are already looking pretty flat :



Tomorrow I have to work, but I think I'll clean up the inner doors like I did the inner hood.

Then, if the end of the week isn't too hot, I'll cover the outer skins in primer again, take it all down with 320 grit, fix up what needs fixing, and go from there. No sense rushing to color since I'm waiting on the sunroof panel anyways.

[Ghunt521]

Its coming along great man. I learned a lot from your restore so far.

[colodano]

^^ Agreed! When I have the time and space to get another Rocco, I will be using this thread for info and inspiration as I go through it! Car is looking amazing so far, and coming from a shop that did concours restorations, I hope that is saying something!

[echassin]

High praise, thank you The car won't be anything near show or concours quality, maybe "OEM plausible" would be a good term.

Tomorrow I'm gonna prime formally, so I'll need to gift wrap all the inner surfaces. In preparation for that, I did the insides of the doors, the parts that will show but that I am not refinishing. I had good help, the little squirt actually has a good touch (where's the emoticon for beaming Dad pride?):



We went around the door, me cleaning excess Cosmoline off with gasoline, him polishing with light rubbing compound and then touching up any scratches.

Not bad for a six year old:



And by "not bad", I mean ufcking awesome.

Not much to show again, but two doors took us all evening, especially tedious around the hinges.

[-camber]

.

what as awesome picture

[TBerk]

Hee hee.

Ha ha.

Muahaha

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAA *cough* haha.

See?, See?, I told you!

[echassin]

what an awesome picture

Yes, good memories being made right there . I was surprised how good he is with a brush, but I should have predicted it:



I think there might be an Oedipus complex thing going on around here...

I wanted to do the final priming today but details held me up.

First, I had to sand the hood slots, all 42 of them :



Then I had to protect the bottom of the driver fender repair:



The way I handled the two-layers-of-metal problem was to tape up the bottom to make a closed cavity, fill it all up with rust preventer, let the excess drain out and when dry, repeat with primer and paint. Once the fender is painted, I'll repeat with the Cosmoline and then make sure the fender bottom can still drain.

Finally I spent a surprising amount of time gift wrapping the insides of the panels:



This'll keep the insides nice during the refinishing process

Hopefully shoot gray tomorrow or Saturday.

[sciroccojim]

I really enjoy the updates, Eric.

For the brush/touch-up, do you mix paint with hardner and reducer? And are you using less reducer to make the paint thicker?

[echassin]

The paint comes already pretty thin, so I used it "straight". I'd never seen this before, but with this paint, you mix 8 parts paint and only 1 part reducer to spray.

Another scorcher today, but in the cool of the morning I got two coats of primer on the panels:



It baked in the heat all day, so I think it'll be nice and hard tomorrow so I can take it down with 320 or 400, with spot priming only as needed.

After that, and when I have the sunroof panel, I can shoot color on these last pieces of steel. The kit I'll do after the body panels are on and the car is weather proof.

[TBerk]

re: the afore mentioned Complex:

Pops used to work on his own cars- they where Citroen DS Wagons.

One day, as the story goes, our step-brother came home and found Pop's legs sticking out from under the car, the jack and stand had toppled over.

Reseating the floor jack got the car raised up and Dad was extracted, w/ a sheepish grin and a crushed 3-in-1 oil can that apparently saved him from major injury or worse.

'Course, had this really been an Oedipal moment, the story would have gone much more like: "I got home and you wont believe what happened!, such a shame too...".

Truth is, while I fully retain being Officially Taught on how to apply a patch to a bicycle tube, there are many other osmosis events that were very 'unOfficial', stuff that I retain to this day and have spread around.

My vicarious enjoyment of your resto/refresh thread is indeed multi-layered and sublime.

[echassin]

Such similarity!

My Dad also had DS's (and a few SM's), I too learned by osmosis, but I too recall the bicycle patch lesson .

He and I are very different though: he likes his cars Road Warriors style, as in, he has no beef against Duct Tape and coat hanger, and he doesn't mind dull paint, rivetted sheetmetal patches, non-structural rust, etc...

To his credit, the Citroens are far more complex and his always run like a top .

[OorsciroccO]

Such similarity!

My Dad also had DS's (and a few SM's), I too learned by osmosis, but I too recall the bicycle patch lesson .

He and I are very different though: he likes his cars Road Warriors style, as in, he has no beef against Duct Tape and coat hanger, and he doesn't mind dull paint, rivetted sheetmetal patches, non-structural rust, etc...

To his credit, the Citroens are far more complex and his always run like a top .

Only on the Scirocco list would two Citroen brothers meet.

I love this list.

Definitely says a ton about how unique our cars are.

[sciroccojim]

And Eric's father wrote a book on Citroen purchasing and care back in the day that was very important to that community. I made reference to it on here a couple of years ago, not realizing this was his dad!

[echassin]

Yup, and I've lived in the shadow of celebrity ever since . The book is "Why Citroen", and it has since been scanned to the Web. It's all about how to own a DS or SM, kind of blog style but long before the Internet, and it's chock full of the same irreverance that, er, um, well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree .

Today I did all the block sanding I could stand, until I could stand no more. I did it dry using a shop vac to keep the paper and the work site clean, and all I can say is I'll never wet sand again . Walt gave me the idea to do it when color sanding, and it's great: no muddy mess, the tape job stays neat, clear view of the work, and little scars that need to be fixed stay dry and can easily be marked with a bit of tape.

First rule of sanding, don't ever sand with your hand, only a block, and only in an "X" pattern, no matter how tight the spot (I break the rule on occasion ):



Here's a spot that needs more work:



The low spot persists in spite of surrounding bare metal. I should have stopped sanding when the black guide coat left a central gray spot, but I got mentally lazy .

Sanded hood, almost ready for paint:



Guide coat on the fenders:



Fender in progress:



The guide coat really helps get the body lines arrow-straight. This one still had small bows in the middle, and a very light touch with the block above or below the line is all that is needed to correct things.

Sanded fenders:





Tomorrow I'll do the same to the doors, <--Seagrams Escape.

[echassin]

Alrighty then,

Block sanding is largely complete minus a few scars to attend to.

Doors:



I'm on hold for color until the sunroof panel arrives, which is fine cuz I need a break from this POS.

I suppose I could start sanding the kit if the urge hits, but since it'll need flex agent, the kit'll need to be sprayed separately, and I'd kinda figured I'd leave all that for last.

[crazyaboutrocs]

How do you find the time??? Amazing job on all of it.

[TheTimob]

How do you find the time??? Amazing job on all of it.

He doesn't need time. He just does it anyway!

[Paul@VWvortex]

How do you find the time??? Amazing job on all of it.

He doesn't need time. He just does it anyway!

I think that you are wrong Timbo; I think that he secretly has an 8v-powered red-colored time machine!!!

[echassin]

The secret is to omit half of the parts

[TBerk]

He doesn't need time. He just does it anyway!

Short step from HERE:



To HERE:




(disclaimer; This Post is Gender Non-Specific...)

[echassin]

I'm pretty sure I don't look that good in my masks

Today my trusty right hand man inquired "what're we gonna do on the car today" when I got home from work.

If you don't have kids yet, trust me: such inquiries are unpredictable, and you never wanna pass one up...

...but we're low on things that a kid could work on. What to do, what to do...?

Door cards? Sure, why not?

They consist of three major parts: a fiberboard frame trimmed in vinyl, a plastic inset covered in gray cloth, and a foam insulation backing.

Now, astute followers can already predict the outcome: foam and cloth in the garbage (perfect for a little kid because it involves tearing, ripping, and general destruction), fix the loose fiberboard vinyl and the cracked plastic inserts (I did that because I used contact cement and Superglue with hardener), and assemble. Boom. Done.

Fiberboard stripped of insulation, and vinyl edges reglued with contact cement:



Plastic insert stripped of cloth, glue cleaned off, cracks superglued, fiberglass cloth superglued to back up the cracks (after roughing with sandpaper):



Insert ShoeGoo'd to the fiberboard:



Keith is proud because he applied the Shoe Goo, some of which ended up on the mating surfaces .

Final result:



The mirror switch hole and window crank holes will get patches using extra seat vinyl, which is actually a pretty good match and will give the same "delete" look that is a running theme all over the car.

[scirocco*joe]

Excellent use of slave lab......(ahem) indentured....(uhhhh), I mean, helpful hands.

[MattRabbit]

We need updates, man!!

[echassin]

Sorry

The sunroof panel arrived today, a beautiful piece. Even the seal is perfect, so one less thing to source or make .

I have to 400 sand it and do some minor tweaking on the hood lip, at which point all the sheetmetal panels are ready for paint, maybe Wednesday or Friday.

[d-bot]

This is going to be ready just in time for the mid-west salt fest

[MattRabbit]

Sorry

The sunroof panel arrived today, a beautiful piece. Even the seal is perfect, so one less thing to source or make .

I have to 400 sand it and do some minor tweaking on the hood lip, at which point all the sheetmetal panels are ready for paint, maybe Wednesday or Friday.

Whew! I was going through withdrawals.

I can't wait to see the results!

[echassin]

This is going to be ready just in time for the mid-west salt fest

I hope so, and I'm anxious to see if my work is impervious to salt