Next Time...A Little Less Zip And A Little More Strip

This afternoon I continued my work on the wheel wells. Here is the picture of the driver side wheel well that I forgot to take yesterday and promised I would post today. You can see the area where the fuel filler neck passes through the wheel well. I did not completely remove the undercoating in this area. There was no rust and this area is covered by the plastic shield we repaired and painted with POR-15 a while back. This driver side area needs just a little bit of wire brushing and then cleaned with MarineClean and prepped with Prep and Ready.

Here is the passenger side rear wheel well. You can see I already have a section coated with Zip-Strip. This wheel well has had absolutely nothing done to it so the undercoating is very thick. I needed to let the Zip-Strip soak in longer than I did on the driver side wheel well.

Here is another shot of the passenger side rear wheel well and all the undercoating yet to be removed.

While the Zip-Strip was penetrating the wheel well, I removed the metal mounting studs from the front nose. Here are a couple of pictures showing the nose with the safety bumper and mounting bracket.

Here is the mounting bracket once I separated it from the nose. This will go to Mario to be prepped for paint.

When Mario was here to pick up the fenders, hood and other parts, he pointed out the area on the rear driver side fender that was cracked. He said he knows there is body filler under there but was not quite sure why it cracked. He said if it was done right it should not crack. He told me if I got a chance I should use some sandpaper and sand it down to see what is under there. Today I did just that and was shocked at how much body filler I uncovered. Now knowing the damage area I can see on the inside where the repairs were made. I won't know just how bad this is until Mario gets the car down to the metal. Once again, there was nothing on the title to indicate damage of any kind to the vehicle.

Here is the passenger side wheel well after I removed the Zip-Strip with a putty knife and wire brush. I still have a little over half of the wheel well left to do.