Removing the driveshaft

Preparing the car to cut out the floor, the driveshaft should be removed as well. It's also a key moment because the front and rear of the drive train get officially separated... It's not a hard job, at least it wasn't in my case.

I had the rear lifted a bit because the rear wheels are on dollies now. I could slide underneath the rear axle easy and get to the U-joint. To get the driveshaft out you only need to undo the nuts on the U-joint next to the differential, push the shaft forward a bit into the tranny so you can lower the rear and then pull it out of the tranny.

So starting this procedure with getting the nuts off of the U-joint:

And if they are not rusted and stuck, you have the shaft out within minutes:

Done!

Fixing (things around) the RH quarter panel

After having seen the state of my LH quarter and its surroundings I knew I could expect the RH side to be similarly crap. Although not very visible, if you don't look you will never know and I really really really don't want to drive around later in a great looking car having doubts about the state of sheet metal here and there. So it was time to dig in!

I started at the rear drilling out the spot welds that connect the quarter to the taillight panel:

Make very sure you mark your reference spots well! I used the point above the bumper indent for the width and the side marker for the height:

 

Time to start cutting! I removed the drop off first. It had visible rust holes so it was going:

Welding in a new drop off is straightforward:

Then it gets serious. You gotta be careful when cutting around the wheel well because there is a support structure sitting on top of the wheelhouse that you may not want to cut into. So take your time, look for it and make sure you cut right. And indeed, I found a LOT of rust that needed to go:

I learned from the LH side that the bottom of the quarter in front of the wheel is best left alone if possible, simply because cutting and drilling out spot welds there from the inside is a pain in the ass. So I had a good long look at the metal in that area and concluded it did not need replacing as there was only surface rust:

So I bought this new outer wheel well a while ago and now it was time to cut out a patch to replace the crappy rusted out edge. I do not want to remove the whole outer wheel well, too much work I think plus, you have to deal with that support structure that sits on top of it again:

Patch cut out and fixed in place:

 

After a weekend of welding the wheel well has a new rust-free edge:

Next up: fixing the new quarter panel's drop-off. Like so many pieces of "new" sheet metal it's usually put together pretty poorly. I had to put some extra spot welds in and add a little to the edge that sits under the wheel well because it was too short:

The rear where the quarter wraps around was a little too rusty. I did not want to grind everything away because it would remove to much good metal as well. So I used phosphoric acid to remove the rust. It worked like a charm:

OK, after test fitting about 30 times I was confident the new quarter was good and the body was prepped and ready. I attached it to the body with 2 rivets and a few clamps:

I cut the new and old sheet along the silver lines in one go but skipped a little bit underneath the rivets. Then I removed the patch and cut loose the old sheet that could go. Cutting this way gives a 1mm gap and a very well fitting patch:

In between I also came across some holes in the wheel well that needed closing:

Then it was time to tag the patch in place. I put rivets in the same holes as before so the patch was in exactly the same position. I added these super duper welding clamps to maintain a 1mm gap (almost) everywhere:

I took real good care of keeping the gap 1mm and having the sheet aligned perfectly everywhere. It paid off with a lot less warping. When I had enough tags I cut the sheet underneath the rivets and removed them. Then you simply carry on with tagging:

My office for a weekend:

Then there are also lots of plug welds that need to be made. I don't like doing them and I'm nog great at them (which is probably why I don't like them...). The ones one the wheel well edge were the hardest and I had about 8 actually popping off which I had to re do:

And then it's done:

Thank god there are only 2 quarters to fix!

Before and after:

I'm glad this one is done now. Next up is replacing parts of the floor. Oh dear, wish me luck!

Replacing the taillight panel

Long time no updates!

After the whole thing with the hood (which has been dipped and is waiting for the future in a nice coat of primer) I set upon replacing the taillight panel since it's rusty in a lot of places. For this I had to deconstruct the whole rear. Knowing that welding was required I first removed the fuel tank and lines as I did not want my car to go up in flames.

When I was ready to drill out the spotwelds I thought were holding the panel in place, I found out I was not the first person to do this as the panel was alreay brazed... Great, I had to put a torch to my car to get it out of there.

After a few very exciting hours of setting the rear on fire and exploding fume clouds (I did this outside, obviously!) the panel came out.

The next few months I spent on removing the bumper brackets inside the trunk only to find out rot underneath. Also around the fillerneck opening it was pretty rusty so I put 3 patches in the trunk floor. This was all good welding and metal shaping practice!

Eventually it was time to start putting the new panel in. First I welded the trunk latch support back onto it:

Then I prepped all the edges that were to come in contact with the new panel. I drilled new holes and prepared old ones:

Then One more round of sanding all the spots to be plug-welded. Panel ready:

Car ready:

And voila, it's in!

Very pleased with the results and also a little bit proud of doing this all myself :-)

Cleaning up a flat hood

So... I managed to score this flat 7123 hood. These are not reproduced and good examples can cost quite a bit. I got lucky and managed to buy this one for only 200 euros (about 230 US $). Of course it's not yet up to my restoration specs so I want it to become that way.

Having recently learned about a method involving lots of vinegar and a rust solvent called Rustyco I thought I'd give that a try as it's a relatively cheap method. I was yet to find out how much work it involves....

Let's start with the beginning:

Bringing my new score home :-)

It actually looks very nice and it's completely dent-free. Also it's got no visible rust.

However, there's always rust on the inside and when this one it turned over it sounds worse than a salt shaker.

Upon closer inspection there's always some rust to be found along the edges...

Then there's also this stuff inside. Probably left overs from sand blasting it before. It should've been cleaned better...

I stuck a camera inside to see how bad the rust is.

Apart from dirt there seems to be only surface rust which makes me happy!

So, time to start building the cleaning area!

Because my garage has no drain I needed to fluids to be collected in a different way so I created this...

Almost ready to go.

Before cleaning all the loose bits need to come off. Be careful when removing these, they can fall inside.

The front trim was stuck with old paint.

It can be carefully pried off thought.

Bag everything and put it somewhere safe.

To make sure I can access everything inside I needed to drill small holes in certain areas to put the hose through and spray the inside.

I also removed some of the sealer used to glue the inner sheet to the outer sheet of metal. Those are the red spots. The silver spots are the holes I drilled for spraying the inside. This will come in handy later.

Right, the first thing to do is to hose the hood down thoroughly and get as much crap out as possible.

I bed it will already make less noise!

After the hose down it needed to be dried and then taped.

The taping was a royal PITA. It took about 3 hours to get this hood done. Apparently a nasa-style hood only takes 1 hour... Lucky me.

Here's the whole hood taped up except for the loch-hole. That will be used to pour in the vinegar and Rustyco.

So, I poured in 4 litres of vinegar and closed up. Sure enough a few leaks sprung up even before I put the last bottle down. Crap! Not surprising with this amount of tape though.

I left the hood for the night letting the vinegar do it's rust-eating. The next day I was there from 9am till 4pm and I shook the hood every 10-15 minutes from every side so I'd get the vinegar everywhere.

The day after that I removed the tape at the tip and let all the vinegar out. Then I put in 3 litres of vinegat and half a litre of Rustyco. I shook that for the whole morning. In the afternoon I rinsed quite a few times with hot soapy water to get ph levels down and dried it with a heat gun.

Please take note of the mess I created...

And there it is, a flushed and cleaned and kinda de-rusted hood.

All the bare metal got flash rust on it, it turned orange while looking at it, unreal!

I sprayed Brunox everywhere inside and also on some spots on the outside. It does seem to react with the rust turning it black.

And that's all!

I found it a lot of work (3 full days excluding prep) and although it's cleaner than before I am not convinced about the rust being gone. I could feel areas still having surface rust and being untouched by the fluids. The Brunox will still work it's magic but still...

Meanwhile I have decided that if I want this hood to be 100% rust free, I'm going to have to get it dipped (stripped of paint + de-rusted + base coat), which is what's going to happen in a few weeks. What can I say, this was a learning process.