These photos were shot in November 2000. As the weather deteriorated due to Winter's approach, fewer and fewer sandblasting opportunities arose, but work pressed on.

It's a wonderful sight, getting all that rust and gunga off. This is a surface that the Zero Rust will chemically adhere to when it's ready to be painted, and it should last at least another quarter century!

Like a great deal of the other parts that were taken down to bare metal, it starts with sanding with the 3M abrasive wheel. This removes a lot more material faster than sandblasting. But it can only reach certain places, notice where it can not get into the engine mount.

I started at the rear, where it was the worst, and worked my way slowly toward the front sections. As mentioned at the top, by now the weather was becoming as much the determining factor of when I could sand and sandblast as my "free" time was. But still I pressed on.

That rear frame crossmember looks a LOT better now! The sandblasting revealed the stubs of the broken bolts with the embedded broken extractors still resided.

A closer look, you can see that I was doing the axle housings as I went. This proved to be fairly time consuming, and by the time I got to the front I decided that the number one priority was to get the frame done, and the housings could come later.

A couple other angles, you can start to get a feel for the incredible amount of angles, surfaces, nooks and crannies that must be blasted. This did take a LONG time!