Rusty drop-off and wheelhouse edge

OK, another little upgrade on the progress.

The LH drop-off was showing some rust and also the LH quarter showed a bit of accident damage so I figured I should replace the drop off and lower quarter.

Rust in the drop off

Accident damage

I knew I was going to need a custom drop-off insert as the one that came with the lower quarter patch I bought was total shit. So I got a chance to work on my fabrication skills!

A custom made drop-off insert.

But then when I cut out the lower quarter I discovered more rust (surprise!) along the edge of the wheelhouse. It didn't look good...

To keep a little bit of progress I did weld in the drop-off panel to get that out of the way:

Now it was time for a bigger approach and I cut around the edge of the wheelhouse. And indeed, the whole edge was rotting away. Of course this is never cool to see but as I intend to end up with a rust-free car I am happy to tackle this now and now later.

Rusted edge.

Replacing the edge was a shit job due to misaligned pieces of metal, mainly the factory outer wheelhouse. It required a lot of welding, a lot more then anticipated.

Fixed wheenhouse edge.

Now I was read to replace the quarter panel completely. I sanded where I was gonna cut and made pre-cuts to be able to fix the new panel to the car before welding. This way when cutting along the sides of the panel, the old sheetmetal will drop out by itself.

Leaving 2 places to temporarily rivet the panel to the body.

Riveted.

I used these awesome welding clamps to keep the sheet metal flush on both sides and also to keep a 1mm gap. Also when you put uour first welds close next to a clamp, you get less shrinking in your weld thus maintaining the gap:

Welding of the spots in the wheelhouse edge. There were quite a few, I think over 30:

At the rear more accident damage showed itself. It was badly repaired and I used my little hammer and anvil to make it flatter. Filler will do the rest.

And then it was time for welding around the sheet. Lots and lots of spots, very time consuming:

My custom drop-off insert fits beautiful:

All done with one area that will need attention in the future. The welding heat was too much here and the tension pulls a dent in the sheet metal in the circled area. I am yet to determine the best way to fix this. For now though, I am very pleased with having this job done!

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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.

The compressor

I finally got myself an air compressor! It's not an expensive one but it's not too loud and specs are good. For a first I reckon it's a good investment.

It fits in right under the stairs. Great!

The water

I finally got around connecting water in my garage.

Yay!