Redoing What Has Already Been Done

The plan for yesterday was to MarineClean, power wash, and treat the underbody with Prep and Ready. First I needed to clean up the paint dust from the interior. It seems that none of it was masked off and the dust settled everywhere. Just as a note for anyone who is having someone paint their car: Make sure to specify everything you want masked off, even if it seems blatantly obvious to you. And if the painter is not willing to do what you want, find a different painter.

I used the shop vac to vacuum out the entire interior. This removed most of the dust, and for now I think it will be good enough. We will have to wipe out the interior with a damp cloth before we do any actual work to the inside.

You can see in this picture just how dusty the foam Ensolite on the firewall was. The area over the drive tunnel had not yet been vacuumed off. 

Before I started vacuuming the passenger side, I removed both fenders. I did not want to accidentally knock them off with the hose. We will need them off when we roll the car outside anyway.

KITT's new robin friend left behind a little surprise... I hate to think what KITT would have to say about this if he was talking right now!

I want to point out the meticulous work Sara put into piecing and fitting each and every scrap of BXT II RAAMmat sound deadening into place. She constantly amazes me with how creative and resourceful she is. This is just one example area...she did this throughout the interior!

All vacuumed! There is very definite overspray in the interior trunk area. It feels like sandpaper to the touch. :(

I then masked off all of the access holes into the interior from the engine bay. I used 3M Exterior Painter's Tape.

I did the same thing for all the seat belt mounting points that are exposed to the underbody.

You can see the grey overspray on the gloss black in this picture. Is is a big deal? Not to most people, but then most people would not have gone to the extent that we have with this either. First taking the interior down to the metal and then coating it in POR-15 until we achieve a factory looking finish throughout the entire interior. We wanted it done right and were rewarded with a awesome looking finish only to have it marred by carelessness. So stupid.

KITT is ready to be lowered to the ground and pushed out of the garage. 

The car is extremely light without an engine and transmission, so I can easily push it out myself. Thanks to Sara for taking all the pictures and then running to steer as needed! 

Sara applied MarineClean while I got the pressure washer set up. Dad stopped over to see if he could help while I power washed the engine bay. 

It looked something like this...

The engine bay is clean once again!

We decided to do one side of the car at a time instead of putting the whole car up on jack stands.

We used two jack stands, one on the A-arm and one on the rear axle. Then I placed another jack stand under the subframe connector as a safety precaution in case it would slip.

I tried scrubbing the primer with a scuff pad to see if I could get any more to come off.

I was not all that successful, so we decided to just hit it with MarineClean and then power wash it off.

We did not want to chance rinsing any of the Prep and Ready's zinc phosphate coating away when we MarineCleaned and power washed the passenger side, so we decided to clean the whole underbody first. We lowered the driver side back to the ground and then raised up the passenger side.

Not quite high enough for Ski Mode...good try though KITT! :)

We applied MarineClean to the passenger side.

Sara spotted some dirt we missed....it won't be there for long!

The dirt was no match for Sara and the shop vac.

I power washed the MarineClean off the passenger side.

Sara found more dirt in the frame rail and proceeded to flush it out.

The whole process was quite fun to watch! :)

After Sara rinsed the dirt out of the frame rail on both sides, I gave the whole underbody one final wash and rinse.

The next step was to apply Prep and Ready. We decided to start with the passenger side underbody since it was already up on jack stands. When I opened my newest bottle of Prep and Ready, I discovered it was purple instead of the blue it has always been. Apparently they changed the color.

Here I am applying the Prep and Ready to the passenger side underbody.

I realized I had forgotten the Panhard/track bar. I washed it with MarineClean.

And then power washed it and treated it with Prep and Ready.

After 20 minutes or so, we rinsed the Prep and Ready off the passenger side. Then I repeated the entire process on the driver side. Here I am raising the driver side up again.

After another 20 minutes I rinsed the Prep and Ready off the driver side. Then I lowered KITT to the ground and we pushed him back inside the garage.