OK, so now it's time to take the chassis to be blasted and powder coated. I had gone up to the Lake house to replace a leaky water heater. Since I don't have garbage pick up there, I brought along my trailer to take the water heater back to Des Plaines. My ex-neighbor the plumber friend came over and helped me (actually I helped him) replace the water heater. I dragged the crusty old heater out to my trailer and strapped it down. I then went out to the garage and carried out the Europa chassis. One determined person can lift and move the chassis by oneself but it is a bit heavy and bulky. I found that if I put my 2 wheeled dolly under one end, I could pick up the other end and just drag it. I strapped the chassis on the trailer across from the water heater. After a clean up and a quick boat ride around the lake with a couple cold cans of suds, I headed back to Des Plaines. The water heater and chassis don't weigh much so the trailer did a lot of bouncing over the continuing series of bumps and pot holes that make up our wonderful Chicago-land road system. The worst roads that money can buy. And you do have to pay for the privilege of driving on those crumbling lanes. I noticed that nobody tailgated me on 1-294. Maybe they were smart enough to see that they might get sprayed with water or rust bits from the water heater. Or maybe grease from the chassis.
Back in Des Plaines I pulled up out front of our house and tossed the water heater out by the front curb. Now this could be a problem because in Des Plaines you need a permit to replace a water heater. So if the water heater police showed up, they could write me a ticket for not having a permit. But Des Plaines is also a culturally diverse melting pot and I suspected that someone would want the water heater for scrap metal value. Sure enough, I hadn't even yet backed the trailer under the back porch when I saw the junk truck out front leaving with my old water heater already on it. Bye-Bye.
I took a few days off the next week to relax and work on car stuff. Because I sit on my butt in front of a computer terminal all day at work, when I take a day off, I hardly sit. I took the chassis over to Astro-Blast - a big industrial sand blasting shop out near Bill Truesdale's "Apex" engine shop in Bensenville. As I unstrapped the chassis I noticed a 65/66' Mustang on a trailer along with several tons of metal bits waiting to be blasted. They blast everything here. I had already placed old heater hose pieces over the metal heater hoses that are braised onto the chassis. Didn't want anyone bending them or blasting them away. Jose and Hose B took the chassis over to the holding area. I would pick it up in a few days.
I headed over to Paul Quiniff s shop with a station wagon load of Europa parts to be sandblasted. I had all the big suspension parts like the trailing arms, sway bar and springs/shocks, along with many, many bits and pieces. 53 parts all together. I forgot how time consuming sandblasting is. Paul has a nice big sandblasting cabinet that was donated from John Zorns former employer. Johns company was going to just throw it out. Paul was at the right place and the right time and got himself a nice blaster. Along with the 53 parts I unloaded, I unloaded 3 - 30 packs of Old Style as partial payment for letting me blast away for about 4 hours. Very satisfying work. You put a couple crusty rusty parts in the blaster, stick your arms in there and have at it. 20 minutes later you are blowing the dust off a couple of very clean old parts, ready for paint. In between parts you walk over to the fridge and grab a cold one. So you kind of get blasted while you are blasting. On a dry day with all the dry fiberglass dust (Paul says what dust?) around there tends to be quite a bit of static electricity in the air. As you are blasting away, if you stand a bit off of the blaster, every so often the static electricity will discharge through whatever body part happens to touch the blaster. Your forehead, nose, stomach and sometimes certain lower extremities of your body - yow. The other choice is to just stay plastered against the blasting cabinet so you stomach is continuously grounded, thus eliminating the zzzaaaps. But what that does do for me is it creates an electric light show. Yes, as you are staring inside the big box, working the parts through the big rubber arms, the static electricity causes you to see colors usually green. Wow man, psychedelic! Far out!
The next day I gave the Astro Blast guy $150 bucks and picked up my spotless chassis. No rust holes. No rust. No paint. Just a very rough patina. From there I picked up Paul at his shop and we went down the street to his buddy that owns an industrial powder coating company. The Plastisol building covers about a square block and has assembly lines moving raw metal products through the powder coat booths and into the ovens. Business appears to be very good as he is running 3 shifts. We dropped off the chassis and a few of the larger attaching components like the trailing arms, rear cross piece and front sway-bar. Paul's buddy sends the chassis through the powder coating process during a lull in production in the early morning and he gets some spending cash ($300) for his efforts. Spend a little money. save a lot of work. Get great results. That's powder coating.
I've told you before, but I'll tell you again, I hate painting in my garage because it makes such a freaking mess. So I got up early one Saturday morning and set up a production spray paint line in my back yard. I had a big long table with a bunch of parts spread out all over, and two step ladders with dozens of parts hanging from bent up pieces of coat hangers. I had gone to my favorite paint supply house and picked up a gallon of red oxide primer. I mixed up a batch, dragged out the hose, put a latex glove on my left hand, put on a mask and started spraying primer in my backyard. Started at about 8:30 am and went through two and a half guns worth of mixed primer. It only took 2 hours, but it's a lot of work. Pick up a hanging part by the coat hanger with the gloved left hand, holding it up, spraying up and down, twisting, spraying, twisting, spraying. Hang that part back up, pick up another. Repeat 53 times for the first coat, and then paint everything again for the second coat this time using different angles and spray patterns to ensure complete coverage. Whew! Worked up a good sweat while most people in the neighborhood were just thinking about what they were going to go get at the grocery store. I threw a little paint thinner in the gun and went over and sat on the porch with a Hawaiian punch. No I don't ALWAYS drink beer; it was after all only 10 am.
