Restoring chassis on my 71 GS 455 wondering if I have to take off all the original undercoating.Seems to be basically under entire car some flaky spots but mostly solid. chipped off small flake and looks like brand new black paint which I guess is good. Dreading the thought of stripping it all off,any suggestions would be helpful!
It's your call as to what you want to do. On my '66's, the east coast plants (Baltimore) undercoated the floors whereas the west coast plants (Fremont) didn't. Fremont just did the rear wheelhouses and behind the rear wheels. I used a Harbor Freight needle scaler to remove the undercoating from my rear wheel wells. I'm doing a rotisserie resto so I'm going down to bare metal everywhere. Your car may not need that.
I hate the undercoating on the floors and inner fenders. I removed it from all my cars. One car I even removed it from the rear inners / outers.
Easiest way to remove that undercoating is with some heat. The trick is to heat the metal up that it's attached to, not the undercoating itself. What I've found that works great is a halogen work light (the ones contractors use to use). Place that halogen light (heater) directly on the metal opposite of the undercoating (inside) and wait a minute or two and your undercoating will be nice and soft and scrape off so easily you'll be amazed. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to ask. This is a trick that was discovered by a board member here a few years ago. He posted how he accidentally laid his halogen work light in the trunk and it heated the metal up and softened the 50-60 year old undercoating. Keith
Keith that sounds like a great plan so when I get it all off I should re-do it with some type of undercoating right?
It really all depends on what you want. But yeah after it's all removed and cleaned up your going to want to put a coat of something on it. Undercoating, paint or whatever. Keith
After you've removed the majority with heat and a scraper you'll have residue to remove. You can do that using heat again and spray "goo gone" on it and then scrub with a scotch bright pad. Boom! It's gone. Then of course you'll need to remove the goo gone with a degreaser, ect.
What's nice about the needle scaler is that what is removed is dry, No gooey mess and not much residue left behind. This method is ideal when the undercoating is old, dried out, brittle, and chips off. If it newer and still gooey a needle scaler doesn't work as well. Doing it when it's cold helps too, undercoating is more brittle. I've even heard of guys freezing it with a CO2 fire extinguisher to freeze and chip it off.
