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July 27, 2003
Alan
It seems you're following in my footsteps or viceversa, having done/doing
this exact same job myself.
Perhaps you can benefit from my experience.
First off, forget using any kind of power tool on the underseal its a waste of
time.
The technique that I found works reasonably well on removing the underseal
is as follows, I'm afraid however you tackle this job, it's not pleasant, will take
ages is boring and messy as hell.
I found using a heat gun and scraper worked really well getting off the bulk of
the underseal. Just heat it up enough for it to begin melting and getting soft,
then scrape it off. Don't use a naked flame burner because it just ignites the
underseal and you get awful smoke.
I had bad experiences with heat guns. Maybe it's me! The first one I bought
from Homebase was their own brand 1200w gun and this one gave up same
day - just stopped working. I took this back and replaced it with another -
giving them the benefit of the doubt and this one gave up within days - it
worked intermittently (lose connection?) then finally gave up like the first
one. I took this one back, and said I don't wan't another one of those they're
useless, and replace it with 1200w Black and Decker unit. This one worked
great, had 3 heat settings and was hot enough to shift stubborn nuts as well -
loved this one. Then 5 months later the fan motor packed in, so I took this one
back to replace it with another but they didnt have any in stock so I got my
money back - handy really because I'd pretty much finished removing the
underseal!
I did buy a reasonably good scraper to do this job, a Stanley one, nice
ergonomic handle - blade about two inches wide, I used this in conjuction
with a small 1/2 inch cold chisel, to get into areas I couldn't reach with the
wide scraper - the pair of them worked well.
Once you've got the bulk of the underseal off using the heatgun/scraper
routine you will still have some remnants of it in corners, and smears as well.
I then found that by brushing on Turps (pretty much Kerosene) and then more
scraping and finally wiping off with Kitchen towel removed most of the
remanants. I actually switched over to using Cellulose Thinners half way
through and found this was even more effective than the turps in dissolving
the remants enough too be able to wipe them off.
The turps/cellulose thinners is also excellent for cleaning up the scraper.
As you can imagine this is a pretty messy job! Just make sure you don't get
any of the scrapings on your shoes and walk it into the house - best to clear
up as you go or youll get into an awful mess.
You'll be surprised at how clean everything comes up using this method.
As far as the cream coloured bit's you're finding, I found them as well, It's
seam sealer. You can get tubes or brushable tins of this. I was in Halfords
today and was surprised to see they did a 1L can of brushable seam sealer.
Use this on top of primer - before top coats. Forget cellulose putty, this is
mainly used as stopper/filler for minor scratches/blemishes, certainly not
suitable for sealing seams. The benefit of brushable seam sealer is that it
stays flexible and can be overpainted with cellulose.
Nigel
"amukdigiphoto" < amukdigiphoto@... > 23802
Posted on July 27, 2003 08:11 PM
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