[texnician01]

When I did mine, I unbolted the front crossmember, removed the rear trailing arms and axle. I then hit the heaviest spots with a wire wheel to remove any scale. Once I had some of the small things fixed, like a spring perch that was full of holes, I sand blasted the entire frame in the driveway. I then reworked the trailing arms as mine were expanding due to the rust between the halves. cleaned them inside and out with the sandblaster and welded new strips of metal down the middle on both halves. They are quite robust at this point! When I did mine I primed and painted with Rust-O-Leum and I would never use that again, it has worked ok but not all that good, chips easily and then rusts again. Did the prep work nights during the week, used wire wheel Friday night and some sat morning and then used the rented sandblaster the rest of saturday. Finished sandblasting sunday morning and prepped for paint before lunch. Painted Sunday after lunch and let dry in the summer heat the rest of the day. Monday evening started reassembly. I liked the sandblasting as I thought it did a better job removing some of the harder scaly rust. The wire brush has a tendency to just polish it and not remove it. Plus the sandblasting leaves a uniform rough finish for paint where the wire wheels could polish the metal too much and lead to adhesion problems.