STRIPTEASE

Driving in Stella this summer has been uneventful, not unexciting you understand, just uneventful, with nothing to spoil our enjoyment of top down driving. No misfires ( new coil and ignitor) or unexplained rumbles and bumps ( new front wheel bearings and steering rack) all very smooth. The only surprise, when I did a fluid check, was that the power steering reservoir was nearly empty, there was no leakage on my garage floor and the level didn't drop once I had topped it up, obviously my local garage had not refilled it after they had fitted and bled the new steering rack.

We haven't been able to go to any of the local car shows this year, just to much else going on in our lives, but we have gone out in Stella on every available opportunity, often with Jacquie saying "Are we going in the Stag" Jacquie, it would seem prefers going out in Stella rather than our new daily driver.

Now that summer has come to an end and an Indian summer looks unlikely I decided I would start preparing Stella for a  full respray. Back in the spring it was decided that our 8 year old daily driver would last another year and why didn't I spend some money in getting Stella looking as good as she was going. As seen in previous blogs I have made some real improvements to the way Stella looked especially underneath the rear bumper and sills, but there was rot in the front wing and all the chrome trim had been stuck on with some kind of black mastic. This mastic had dried out and was coming away exposing untidy paint beneath and many other areas weren't up to scratch.

After a visit to a recommended body work shop, a date (October) and cost ( lots of money) were agreed. In the meantime whilst Jacquie was driving home from visiting a friend in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, the Astra completely cut out three times, once in the fast lane of the A1M, not a good situation. Understandably Jacquie lost confidence and eventually we did agreed to buy a new car, a firey red Renault Kadjur and very pleased with it we are. However I decided to still go ahead with the respray.

I started at the back and much quicker than expected the rear lights, side lights, number plate, fog lights and new rear bumper were quickly removed. This strip tease exposed rust behing the right hand lamp cluster, but everthing unbolted very easily.

The chrome trim, on the boot lid and underneath the light panel plus the horse shoe shaped pieces either side, needed a stanley blade to cut through the aforementioned black mastic to allow them to be removed and then plenty of white spirit to clean up the inside of the trim and the body seams that the trims cover. Enough for one day it went very well.