Refurbishing of Vintage Cars
Refurbish jobs for vintage cars are very time consuming and only people who are passionate about doing it will be able to deliver a good refurbishment job. Last month we was assigned to do a refurbish job for an old vintage Bentley, belong to a collector. This car looks like a nice well maintained car, except for some small bubbles in the paintwork. So we gladly took the job as we tot why not it’s a Bentley, how many Bentley do comes by right?
So our first task was scraping off the defective areas and we surprised by what we found. RUST and it was bad, the rust had gotten internally, and thus we need to rescrape all those parts where bubbles are seen. They are the first sign of rusts.
Just the scrapping took us a week of hard job, no fun scrapping off rusts. The next step was WELDING..Gosh we practically need to weld and patch back a lot of places and parts with new metal sheets. Look at the huge hole on the running board (below the doors), the whole piece needs to be remade out from metal sheets. This happens when people do not clean the rust properly before painting, instead they workshop just applies fibers or cement/putty to cover up the problem areas, it’s like you cement your filling tooth before cleaning it properly, the pain will come back right?
After welding defective parts and welding on new metal sheets, their next step now is to clean the new welded areas nicely and clean so that the rust will not come back in future. An electric metal brush was used to clean it till the metal surface shines and cement/putty is applied. Usually this process takes weeks, the first layer of yellow cement which is the base filling up the areas and workers needs to wash and even the place up and left a few days for the cement to dry and harden. Sometimes you see paintworks in cars like a shadow that occurs because the cement is not dry and harden enough thus when painted it “sinks” in resulting to shadows. So then the car will be painted with quality paint and lacquer. This is important to ensure the shine and finishing.
Refurbishing of vintage cars, we feel that most workshops are not keen on doing is because of the work it involves, especially on the welding. Like I say, only someone who have the passion are able to do it, people like us that all we want is a big warm smile when a proud owner comes and collects his car. LHCG Auto Services – you car healthcare provider.