Rust!

After a couple of days break due to soggy weather, I got back to the garage today. I started to carry on with the underside, specifically the drivers footwell area. I got held up straightaway, however, when I found a rust hole. :-(



Either I missed it when I cleaned up the first time around, or I just forgot it was there.
Nothing too major, but it needed sorting. So out came the scraper and blowtorch:



Followed by the angle grinder:



I decided to do this as a butt weld, as I didn't want a big patch plate on the underside, and I had a feeling if I put the plate on top I'd be able to feel the lump underfoot while driving. So a bit of careful shaping and welding later:



And some grinding:



Job done. It doesn't look wonderful, but it doesn't have to. It's a smooth even repair (from both sides), and it'll be covered over in the end anyway. So job done!

It was a bit of a landmark for me, I found the hole and just took it in my stride and got on with the work. Time taken to complete the job, including scraping off all the sound pad: Less than an hour! I guess I'm getting used to this welding thing. :-)

After that I finished prepping the underside - I didn't get time to do the spare wheel bit, that's a job for tomorrow (weather permitting).

One thing I did do was start sorting out the seatbelt mount that I cut out previously - I've welded new metal into the wheel but there's no mounting hole. The original design is a nut welded to a strip of metal, which is then welded to the underside of the wheelarch. That had all rusted away. I was going to find a new nut to weld in place, but a quick poke around at work showed it might be tricky to get hold of the proper sized (UNF) nut. So the easiest option looked to be to switch to a metric thread.

No need, however: I had a look at what I'd cut out before:



Although the wheelarch bit was rusty, the plate and the nut were fine. So I ground off all the rusty metal and cleaned it all up:



Ready to go back on now. I just need to nip out tomorrow and get a big enough drill bit, then that can be finished.

My POR stuff has also arrived, so hopefully I'll be able to get started on that next week (no work this weekend, I'm away!).

Boot and POR-15 prep

The boot area is now pretty much finished. :-)

I spent a couple of evenings over the last week prepping and painting the wheel well area, as per instructions. It came out pretty well:

After cleaning and applying Metal Ready:



(Greyish surface is from zinc treatment, part of the Metal Ready)

And after painting:



Ooh, shiny!

I'm quite impressed with the whole thing, it leaves a good coating (although a little glossy for my taste), and, while a pain to actually use, I'd say it's worth the effort. Although I might not be saying that once I've done the whole underside!
The Marine Clean (degreaser) is a good product in itself, I used it to clean up the propshaft guard as an experiment, that was covered in old oil and gunk - two minutes with a bit of wire wool and it came up spotless! The nuts and bolts were just soaked in the solution, and didn't even need scrubbing.

The wheelarches and back panel have been rubbed down and coated with primer, with a lot of help from Amy, so that leaves the boot more or less done. It's going to need another primer coat and some flatting back, plus priming the wheel well, but that can be left now until the car is ready for the respray.






I spent most of Saturday underneath the car, rubbing down and scraping off any rust and gunk still there from the first time around, plus any surface rust built up since then. I have to admit, I hadn't intended it to be so long sat in bare metal before painting, but that's the way it goes sometimes. No harm done though, there's no serious rust that wasn't there already, just a little surface rust here and there. Plus, the POR-15 instructions state that a rusty surface is preferable for better adhesion!

There is quite a bit of rust up in the fuel tank area (great moisture trap, when you think about it), and the chassis legs were quite pitted along the tops of the beams. I tried to get it off with the angle grinder, but ended up doing most of it by hand.






(pics taken before work started, BTW)

The suspension mounts were a serious pain to do as well, due to lack of access. All done now, at least as good as I can get them:



I've now got most of the underside ready (just the drivers footwell panel, plus the outside of the spare wheel well), and all I can say is I'm glad it's nearly done. It's difficult, painful and filthy work. I've just finished cleaning up in the bath, where I left some pretty industrial strength tidemarks!

I've ordered some more POR stuff, so I'll be able to start the cleaning and prepping soon. I've figured the only way to get this done properly is to use the pressure washer, and just accept that I'm going to be coming home on a few occasions soaking wet and filthy. All in a good cause!

The boot again

I've been continuing with the boot area over the last couple of days, it's good to see something coming on well. :-)

As mentioned before, I've had an attack of perfection about this, so I've been really going to town getting all the old paint and sealer off in order to get an even surface. It's been a pig of a job, but it's there now.

Primer has gone on:





There's obviously the wheel well and the arches still to do, they'll be done next week.

While I was in this area, I decided to get rid of the old deadening pads on the inside rear wings, after 33 years they were well past their best, and starting to crack and chip. I'd made an attempt before at tidying them up with a bit of filler:





But I wasn't too happy with the result, or the bodge factor! So I took them off - I'd tried in the past, but they were stuck firm and I only managed to chip off a few tiny flakes before I gave up (hence the filler effort). This time I went armed with a blowtorch - much easier! A bit of careful application with the torch and my old faithful scraper, and I had both panels off in less than half an hour. Wish I'd thought of that before!



You may have noticed the rust hole at the top of the bracket for the rear deck - however, as doing anything like a decent repair will mean taking out the rear deck (which has been rather helpfully welded in at some point), that's going to have to stay as it is. I'm pretty sure it's old rust anyway, and isn't really spreading, so a rub down and coating with POR should stop it getting any worse.

Turns out the blowtorch is pretty handy for getting rid of seam sealer as well - again, shame I hadn't discovered this before I'd already scraped half of it off...

All that's left to do in the boot now:

• finish keying the paint on the wheelarches and inner wings (I've ordered a can of compressed air to try and blow out the dust and crap from the gap between the wheelarch and inside of the wing - I can't get anything in there to get it out any other way!)
• Grind down spot welds on the N/S wing where I welded the new sill on
• Primer the wings and arches
• Paint wheel well with POR 15 (Ordered from Frosts, now arrived)
• Stick on new sound deadening pads
  
• Apply new seam sealer to all the seams - I've thrown out the stuff I bought before - it was a caulk gun type, and virtually impossible to use, it was so stiff and unworkable
• Apply second coat of primer all over
• Cover with blankets to stop any scratches and scuffs!
  

Boot area

The rear wing is continuing, but it's going to be slow work. I ground off the excess from Saturday's work, tidied it up a bit and added in some more filler:



That took me all of about 15 minutes. :s

So while I'm working on that and waiting for filler to dry, I've started prepping the boot area for painting. I got some high build primer and started on the top area - all ok in that bit, but there was a couple of spots of old paint that show up much more than I thought they would. Therefore, I'm going to need to do a lot more rubbing down of the old stuff before it's going to be good enough for my liking.
So I've started doing a small area at a time, I think this will mean I can concentrate on it a bit more and get a better result, rather than trying to do the whole thing at once. I started on the trickiest areas, the rear corners. I had previously put seam sealer on the joints, but decided to scrape all that off and start again. Also, there was some of the original sealer still hanging around, so that all had to go.
Like everything else at the moment, it's slow work, but it'll be worth it in the end. I know this whole area is going to be carpeted, but that's no excuse in my eyes!

Finally the areas were ready for priming - a quick coat of standard grey primer to check for any imperfections:





It's amazing what a difference thirty seconds with a paint can makes! Once the other areas are finished (the wheel well is going to be painted with POR-15 first) and primed, I think the boot's going to look pretty good. OK, so it'll be the wrong colour, but it beats looking at bare metal!
It's funny how these things work: several hours of hard slog, rubbing, grinding and scraping makes almost no visual difference. A few seconds waving a paint can about transforms the thing! Still, it's all the hard work doing the prep that makes the difference in the end, so I don't mind doing it so much.

Wheelarches again

I know I said before that the wheelarches were done, well I lied, it seems.

Due to a couple of little bubbles in the paintwork I decided it would be a good idea to strip the paint from the outer lips of the arches and see if anything needed work there, before I could declare the arches done. Although they turned out to be solid, there was a fair bit of filler all around. Grinding it down revealed some small areas of accident damage:



There was also a bit on the front edge - in line with the dent at the bottom of the rear edge, and also a previously filled dent in the rear sill. Looks like someone failed to spot a bollard or something! I'm not sure how that long vertical one was caused, it's a pretty odd shape...
I could see a bit of what looked like rust under that one, so to set my mind at rest I ground all the filler out to get a look at the metal underneath.



There was a bit of rust, but obviously treated when the dent was filled the first time round, so nothing to worry about. What I did find unusual was the large amount of filler going right the way back. So while I had the grinder handy, I stripped the paint all the way to the back of the panel:



The rear wing had a 1mm or so skim of filler going right to the back, for no apparent reason.
I have to admit I'm confused here: the repair was very well done (this was the first time I'd even noticed it, which I think is as good a sign as any :) ), but I can see no reason why the repairer felt the need to whack that much filler on. The only thing I could see was the dent had a small raised section; but seriously, that took me about ten seconds with a hammer to get rid of! Surely an easier option than mucking around with all that filler? The only other thing I could spot was a couple of small ripples near the bottom of the panel. No big deal though.
I'm also interested to know when that repair was done: I imagine that was before the car was resprayed, I can't imagine someone putting in that amount of work and then just masking the light unit, rather than taking it off. If that's the case, then the repair is quite old (IIRC the car was resprayed in the mid '90s, as part of a previous restoration).

Similarly, the passenger side had a skim of filler all round for no good reason. Fortunately I didn't find anything worth worrying about, save for a small (and previously filled) dent at the front. So that just got a quick spray with zinc primer and I can leave that alone.



So, once again I'm back to filling and sanding!

Power Supply

As mentioned in an earlier post, I had plans to build a bench power supply out of an old computer PSU.
After a bit of faffing about, I got it done today:











As you can see, the case is a little bit 'ghetto', but it gets the job done. I won't go into how it's done as there's plenty of instructions on the web (just google for 'atx bench power supply' or somesuch), but it's fairly simple to do, and it only cost me about a tenner, plus the PSU itself (ripped out of an old PC case). It gives a steady 12v (there's 5v and 3.3v as well, should you need) - I'm not sure on what sort of load it can handle (I'd estimate about 30A), but it should be plenty enough for pretty much anything I'll be testing on it.

I'm happy with it!

Wheelarches...

Are now done.

There's just a bit of filling and finishing to be done, all the welding was done over the last couple of days.

The N/S arch wasn't too bad, just one little patch at the bottom front, the rest is all rock solid. I'm happy with that. :-)
The O/S was a bit more flakey though - I found a couple of weak areas that needed attention, but when I started reshaping the lip with a hammer I heard what you never want to hear - rust flakes raining down! While the outer lip is more or less OK, the inner lip is pretty frilly. The work involved in fixing all that would be immense, however, so now I've got all the really rusty stuff out, and it's still structurally sound, I'll have to settle with treating it all with a rust encapsulator and making sure it's all sealed up so it doesn't rust any further.
The O/S arch needed three patches welding on in all, plus a plate on a small hole I found on the inner arch.









Now comes the fun of reshaping and sanding!

When I was doing the grinding and hammering, a bit of the wheelarch at the back cracked slightly - I dug it out, and a chunk of filler came off, revealing and old (and slightly rusted) dent:



Note the colour difference - I've noticed this shade elsewhere on the car, I'm now starting to wonder if the respray it's had in the past was also a colour change? That might make things tricky...


The rest of the afternoon was spent filling in around all the various patches and welds I've made around the rear, now they should just need a quick tidy up with the angle grinder (flap disc) and then it's done.

The last bit was in the spare wheel well, I felt I needed to tidy up my welding in there, so a bit of filler was applied:





I couldn't do much more for the day until all the filler dried, so I packed up and left it there.

Next jobs:

• Finish filling and sanding on all filled areas
• Prep and paint spare wheel well with POR-15 (to be topcoated in body colour later)
• Look right underneath car to see if any more welding/treatment needs doing before prepping for paint.
• Drill hole and weld on nut for O/S seatbelt mounting

I'm starting to feel good about the whole thing now - the major work is finally done, and now it's just the fiddly little bits to finish before the paint can go on. The end is in sight!