Undercarriage Restoration!

Hi everyone, all the while I was working on the engine/engine bay detailing and cleanup, I was ALSO working on the undercarriage! Everything from the exhaust pipe/muffler, to the rear axle. The actual cleaning of the undercarriage (the floor pans, sheet metal, wheel houses, etc) were done in a 4-month period. They were very filthy with grime/dirt/undercoating and that wasn't quite my style.

I DON'T have a before picture of the entire undercarriage (regretfully) but I think you can have an idea of how dirty it was by just looking at the rear axle:

Some cool discover I made, these markings that were made from the factory! I really wonder what they mean. 14-72 written twice, by two different people. Hmm.

I cleaned up the rear axle with a combination of a wire brush, wire wheel, and some sandpaper! not bad I think! The pumpkin in the front, though, was very hard because of the little concave square, very hard to get a brush or even sandpaper in there.

The exhaust/muffler setup I used a combination of wire wheel and a little siphon media blaster (with aluminum oxide as the media) that I picked up front Harbor Freight. It was VERY rusty and I did not get all of it, but it looks pretty good! An interesting thing about my exhaust system is that someone actually WELDED the pipes together with the muffler, so its now essentially an exhaust assembly, it comes off and is installed as one piece! The inlet pipe was painted with Eastwood High-Temp Cast Iron Coating, and the Muffler and muffler outlet, I used an Eastwood Aluminum Colored High-Temp Spray!

The drive shaft I was careful of, and I used a combo of wire wheel (for the large grime stuck onto the top) and sandpaper for the rest of the process.


And here's some pictures of the final results!

I personally think it came out very nice! Not bad for a budget restoration! Some of the paint, namely on the axle, was scratched off, but thats just inherent to the cheap paint (the paint for the axle I got at Harbor Freight, not a great idea!) The undercarriage sheet metal itself was painted with Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer with a generic rattlecan clear coat, the red oxide color was unique to the San Jose plant where the car was built, and it looks very nice!