Thanks, guys!
I have a little more time now than I did this morning. There are a few possible items of interest regarding the Hoopty that I forgot to mention.
I've never had anything powdercoated before, so I'm a rookie at knowing what to ask the guy. I learned a few things:
The frame head won't come off anymore because everything's welded solid; luckily, he noticed I had left the front axle bearings inside the beams. He asked if I wanted the tubes capped or if there was a replacement set of bearings waiting to be installed. He's going to cap them off and seal up the bungs for the grub screws at the center of the beams.
Second, he can't get the high-pressure hose he uses inside the box tubing I used for all of my lateral connecting pieces or the three-quarter-inch small stuff in the supporting members. The box tubing is open across the footwell, dash, fuel cell box, under the front end, across the back of the seats and in the engine support beam, so he's going to do his best to treat them as 'detail areas' and use some other method. The lesson there is I should have capped and welded those openings.
He'll be able to shoot the high-pressure stuff to about 18 inches in from each side; the widest piece of box is 46 inches, so there's going to be some 10 inches of barely-treated metal in there.
He did say that his process is dry and will adhere across areas of surface oxidation unless it's surface rust; if he can scrub the rusty surface smooth and nothing is actively flaking off, he'll be able to shoot and heat everything.
Third thing; the CMC chassis parts had rubber sealant in the cracks. I had to get rid of all that rubber before this thing goes in for the big bakery treatment. I was told that a few days ago, and hadn't realized that until then. Apparently -- and it stands to reason -- the rubber would melt and streak the orange coating as it liquidated itself. I heated it with a Harry Homeowner blowtorch to crumble it, and scraped it with a hook-knofe and a putty scraper. It almost all came off easily using that method.
Points of interest were the metal under the door sills (underneath where the tube steel meets the flat sheet under the door 'glass), across the front arch in the footwell and underneath the crossmember above the back of the tunnel.
Finally, there was a blackened epoxy with the consistency of Bakelite along most of the weld seams in the general area of the frame head. Those had to be chipped off with a hammer and a cold chisel or they would likely have done the same thing.
With two people on the project, it got done in about three hours.
Overall inspection time, start to finish including the welds, was six hours over two days. Total chassis weight is about 500 lbs.; three of us carried it easily.
Thought I'd pass that along.
