Rivet! Rivet! Rivet!

 Before we could paint the body, we had some things to take care of first. Both roof hatches leaked a little bit, and we had to seal them up. I tried silicone first, but that didn't quite fix them.

   I searched the interweb, and found a post from a bus garage mechanic who swore by this fiberglass resin kit.

I applied the resin and the mesh, let it set up, and then applied more resin. Once it was cured, I sprayed the area with primer, since the wire wheel I used to remove the silicone left the metal bare.

The night before my friend Scott showed up to paint, Brandyn and I worked on getting it ready. This pic was taken at 4:30 a.m.

I was busy wet sanding the roof and hood for most of the night.

It took Brandyn a couple of days with a heat gun and scraper to remove the 6" wide reflective stripe from the passenger side.

I removed all the peripherals from the front end, including mirrors, headlights, grille, etc.

Brandyn managed to get the driver's side reflective stripe off in 45 minutes

The goo left after decal removal was a nightmare. Wifey did a great job getting rid of it using a variety of scrapers, Goo Gone, and a busload of elbow grease.

I borrowed some scaffolding from work, thinking it might make painting a little bit easier.