The 205 fights back

I spent the day working on the 205, mostly wire wheeling paint off of the letterboard and posts at the ends of the car and doing the old Bondo, Sand, Bondo, Sand, Repeat thing. I made a lot of progress but not much that was particularly photogenic. The most exciting thing was that our trusty old Craftsman pad sander gave up and abruptly tried to disassemble itself while in use on the 205. I guess the car isn't going to be fixed up without a fight!

This photo, taken of the west end of the car, shows a lot of the wire-wheeling work that was accomplished, which includes the upper half of the northwest corner post, most of the letterboard at this end of the car (a bit of needle chipping will still need to be done), and the right-center window post. The left-center post is still mostly in its pre-wire-wheeling state and looks orange/yellow because the paint that the needle chipper didn't take off is IPS or IR orange. The white paint around the windows is a vestige of the car's Portland years.And here we see one of the problems that this car has - and hopefully the solution. Several of the window posts are badly rusted just above the belt rail, as shown in the left side of this image. The current plan is to "fix" (or, more accurately, "cover over") this problem by installing caps, as shown on the right side.Also, a third coat of primer was put on the new door leaves in the wood shop. The next step with these will be to sand them smooth, put on a final coat of primer and then start with the orange finish paint... when we figure out what shade of orange to use. Stay tuned!

As an aside, I created a photo page in the IRM Member's Gallery for the new CTA steeplecab S-105.