I finally decided to tackle the dented front fender…
Project Reliant
Breathing new life into an old car
I finally decided to tackle the dented front fender…
I decided that the chrome on the headlights has to go. I want it to be MORE BLACK.
This post is just a roundup of how the project is going and how the Reliant looks as of September 18th, 2015.
Managed to get a small break from the rainy weather today to do some paint, so I got the bumpers and passenger door done.
I wanted to get the front fascia back together so I spent a bit of time masking and painting the front grille.
Really digging the flat black… makes the car have a completely different feel.
Because of the rainy weather and other commitments, it’s been difficult to get much time to work on the car. I did manage to continue with the sanding and painting though.
I really want this car to be black. Blacker than black. This means that all of the trim, panels, and accents are going to be flat black.
It’s been a while since the last update, mostly because I was dealing with my daily driver Mazda3 getting fixed as well as being on vacation.
So it’s been pretty much raining every day, and I can’t get anything done to the car because I don’t have a garage. When we did have a break in the rain, I was able to do some small things to at least push the project forward.
I got a chance to do some sanding today, and then some more sanding!
I wasn’t satisfied with the dent repair as it was, so I bit the bullet and decided to drill some holes to see if I could do a better job. And it worked!
This week I bought a small detail sander at Canadian Tire and put it to good use. I needed to scuff up the paint and get some smoothness in the areas where I attacked the Reliant with the angle grinder and “Orange Beast” power sander.
The engine bay is very grimy. Very, very grimy. I figured I’d spend a bit of time scrubbing what I could reach. It came out pretty nice for the amount of effort I put in, and only doing one pass at it. Degreasing is pretty slow going, but it looks awesome.
My car kinda looks like it’s wearing a bandit mask. 🙂
I’m prepping the front for some paint, but first I had to get all the gross built-up crud out from behind those headlights!
You know what sucks? Sanding Bondo. Well, actually it’s not difficult but it takes forever.
Work must be done on the front fascia, so the bezels and headlights needed to come out!
The one thing about the 1980s that is common on almost everything? Plastic. Lots and lots of it.