Well, it's been a little time since I actually did some work on the Ghia, recovering the interior doesn't really count as it wasn't me doing the work. So spurned by an invitation to the Victoria day of the Volkswagen in November (Cheers Grey54) I've decided that I will try and get to the event - especially as I was also invited last year, and truth be told the Ghia is pretty much int he same state as it was back then.

If you've been following the build of the Ghia you may recall that I previously blogged about narrowing the IRS arms to help fix a tyre clearance issue that I have with the Ghia. Well having sourced another set of IRS A-arms some time back, this weekend I finally set about getting started.

I spent this weekend finishing off painting the IRS for the Ghia. I stripped the paint from it last weekend using a combination of paint stripper and a zip wheel in my grinder. There was only some minor surface rust, so I sanded this back ready for painting.

I decided to paint the suspension myself, rather than getting it powder coated, this was mostly due to the shiny finish that powder coating normally gives, I wanted a low gloss almost satin finish to be more like the original.

I had some paint left over from painting the pan and roll cage on the oval so decided to use this. It comprises of an etch primer and enamel based topcoat. I generally favour this paint for chassis stuff as I can thin it with normal meths and don’t need to buy a special thinners as I do with other brands.

I had a bit of an issue with the primer separating out from the thinners, which I put down to it being old paint, this meant going out to buy some more paint and spending a fair bit of time cleaning the sludge out my spray gun.