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<\/a>If not for the rebound strap this shot could be anywhere under the car.\u00a0 I took this picture so I could refer to it later when putting the restored rebound strap assemblies on the car.<\/strong><\/p>\nI started in the most accessible flat areas and worked my way into\u00a0the corners employing the various\u00a0tools as needed.\u00a0\u00a0The crud scrapes off pretty\u00a0easily and the undercoating usually\u00a0goes with it, revealing bare shiny metal.\u00a0\u00a0 Laying on your back and scraping above your head while wearing all the necessary safety equipment is very hard work.\u00a0 I frequently stop and let my hands and arms rest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I probably spent 20 hours under the car before it was acceptably clean.\u00a0 A lot of the seams and corners in\u00a0the under body had thick black putty pressed into them, probably applied by Bertone to protect from moisture, deaden road noise and make my life hell 47 years later.\u00a0 I didn’t weigh the debris removed from the car but it was probably\u00a0two 5-gallon buckets worth and I will guess 50 pounds.<\/p>\n The next step is a trip to a serious professional sand blasters shop to get the whole car striped down to bare metal.\u00a0 I know, why did I do all this work that presumably the sand blaster could have done much easier before getting the car blasted?\u00a0 I wanted to see what I was up against rust-wise before I spent $800 on blasting and I was told that the stuff on the underside is very time consuming and difficult to remove by blasting and that my scraping would save the blasters a lot of time and media, and thereby save me a lot of money.\u00a0 I’m glad I did it at any rate because now I know the underside of the car very well.<\/p>\n<\/a>Another shot of what I am up against.\u00a0 The little bracket seen right in the middle of this picture didn’t have anything going through it.\u00a0 Good thing I have a few SS’s in my neighborhood I can look at to find out what it is for.\u00a0 If I didn’t know what I was looking at I would say this was surface rust.\u00a0 It’s\u00a0rust colored dirt.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Like an archaeologist on a dig I am excited\u00a0by this find.\u00a0 Look at how well preserved and clean the body is under all this crap.\u00a0 The hole in the upper left hand corner is where the rear suspension spring lives.\u00a0 The shock goes through its center and there is a big rubber bellows that keeps under-car stink from getting in the cabin while driving.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>An observant\u00a0reader will point out that the rear axle is present in this picture but absent earlier.\u00a0 This was my test area to see how hard it would be to remove all the crud.\u00a0 Right after this I began removing the parts mentioned in the first sentence of this post.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>This is inside the passenger side rear wheel well looking toward the front of the car at the weld seam where the rocker panels tie into this part of the body.\u00a0 No rust other than surface rust in this area is a pleasant surprise.<\/strong><\/p>\n