Forgotten Firewall

Somehow in the midst of everything the firewall was forgotten. I am not sure why I did not just paint this when we did the rest of the car; I do not remember why. I am sure we had a reason for not painting it, but now it escapes me. I know this area was MarineCleaned and prepped when we did the inside of the car. Sara's theory is we meant to paint the firewall when we painted the engine bay, and just forgot to do it.

Here is what the firewall looked like before I started this morning:

I used rags and hot water to wipe down the firewall and get any remaining dust off it. I did not clean this area when I cleaned the interior of the car yesterday. I was too dumbfounded as to why it never got painted.

Here is a picture after the firewall was all wiped down. I decided just to paint the firewall and not the upper dash support.

This is the crack I discovered when working on the engine bay. I had drilled two holes to stop the crack and prepped this area, intending to do the repair when we did the engine bay.

I decided to start by repairing and sealing this crack.

I spread POR-Patch in a square all around the crack, making sure it was pushed into the crack itself.

Next I cut a piece of PowerMesh the same size as my POR-Patch area and pressed it into place. Then I used some more POR-Patch on top of any areas that were not already saturated and formed the PowerMesh to the shape of the firewall.

This is the only area of rust on the upper firewall. It happens to be at the seam where the upper firewall meets the lower firewall. This area still needs to get seam sealer, but I want to make sure we treat this rust first.

Here is a before picture of the passenger side firewall.

Here is the passenger side firewall with with one coat of POR-15. I decided to only do one coat on the firewall because it was already in good shape.

Here is the driver side firewall before POR-15.

This is the driver side firewall with one coat of POR-15.

Another picture of the driver side firewall with one coat of POR-15.

Here is the completed firewall.

I used POR-Patch to reinforce and resaturate the PowerMesh inside the spare tire stowage area.

I also patched a seam at the driver side corner of the cowl where it meets the engine bay.

While I was working today I decided it would be a good idea to top off KITT's battery. This was installed at the Ford dealership where I bought the car, and will probably be upgraded to a better battery at some point. I want to make sure this one is still working when we need it.

The last thing I did this afternoon was clean up the other side of the garage so Sara could park inside when she got home from work. The weather is nasty out tonight and it will be nice to have the Freestyle safe inside.