4/22/2004: Subframe 5
I’ve decided it’s about time to paint and reassemble the replacement subframe for the car. Yesterday I had Danny show me how to get the bushings out of the control arms and then I removed the spider trunnions.
Today I started cleaning up the upper control arms and cross bars. The blue paint that’s on them is rather thick, and a pain in the neck to remove. It’s slow to blast off, at least with my sandblaster, and in some corners it’s quite thick.
I used a wire wheel on the angle grinder to remove a bunch of the paint from the more accessable surfaces of the upper arms, and then followed up with the blasting cabinet to get the rest off. I didn’t even finish one side tonight. Part of the problem is that my air compressor is really not up to the job- it runs constantly while I use the blasting cabinet, which isn’t good for it.. This is going to take a while at this rate.
I’m thinking about just sending these out to be blasted instead, as I did with the rest of the subframe. I can probably get a collection of other things together to do a larger batch of parts, which is probably more economical.