Opening the rear shock towers

 

 

 

Next, I decided to remove the sides of the rear shock towers, to allow me to remove the original epoxy from inside them. To do this, I drilled out the spotwelds along the edges of the plate, and bent the plates backwards. This gave me loads of room to work inside the shock towers, and I removed the epoxy in here using a heat gun.

 

I found the heat gun to be easier to use than the Automotive Nitromors - it didn't make any mess and the paint would bubble off the surface afer less than a minute of heating. I found it worked best to apply the heat to the outside of the shock towers, and the paint on the inside would then bubble away from the metal.

 

You can see in some of the pictures that when I opened the sides of the shock towers, I found that huge sheets of epoxy were literally sitting there, and not stuck to the metal at all. You can also see the brown stains on the metal beneath the loose epoxy - if this was left for much longer I could have had as serious a rust problem in this area as I did at the front of the frame.

 

The scary part is that if you had shone a torch into the shock towers before I started this work, the epoxy in there looked perfect. How many DeLorean frames are rusting away from the inside out, while the epoxy still looks fine?