Big update today, spend the best part of 4 days and made some good progress, lower bulkhead repairs complete (just those pesky brackets to re-fit), toe board replaced, off side doorstep and A post replaced, off side A post boxing plate replaced.
Oh and my Dad bought me this for my 40th....
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KAD Quickshift
So I also started refurbing the gear linkage, all cleaned up, some parts de-rusted and primed, just waiting on some paints from Frosts to arrive before I finish it off and re-assemble, here it was as it came out of the car....
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Anyway, back to bodywork, previous dodgy repairs cust out and Deox Gel getting to work....
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New pieces cut to size and drilled for plug welds at the top where it meets the cross member inside and at the bottom for the toe board....
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Welded up
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Cleaned up
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Toe board out!
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New one all clamped up (I went back and forth with the old toe board marking up where it went in order to make sure that I was 100% sure it was back in the same position the old one came out), I did start offering up the front subframe to use as a reference point before removing the old toe board but it quickly became clear that this was a pointless exercise! I also removed all the e-coat from the edge to be welded and gave it a coat of weld through, and the same along the inside of the bulkhead, no pics of this though...
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And the welds in place, only a couple of holes blown in this which is nice and although you can't see from any of the photo's I got good penetration in the plug welds so I'm happy it's nice and secure! for some reason I only seem to have taken a picture at this stage from inside :-/
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Welds cleaned up and then primed, it's now looking a whole lot neater than it was before hand and the rust is all cut out along with the plates covering it up! You may also spot a couple of bolts holding it to the tunnel, I have done this as a temporary measure to keep it in exactly the position the old one came out without resorting to welding it in place as the floor pan is being replaced anyway so this seemed prudent to me.
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Next, doorstep removal, didn't take long to get it out, much fettling required though at either end to make sure I didn't cut out too much so the new one would fit nice and snug, had to do a bit of a repair to the frame inside the B post and it looks like the outer part of the B post on this side is going to need replacing as the rot as well and truly set in along the seam with the rear wing (rear wing to be replaced anyway so no big deal)....
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And the new one in, welded up and cleaned up, bit of a tricky and drawn out job but that is more to do with my inexperience in welding than anything, although I am getting better, you'll also notice I've put a bolt in here too to keep the floor in place for the time being.
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And finally the A post boxing plate, removed the old one that I left in to do the doorstep repair, I've now got the hang of plug welds and the need to make sure the two pieces are tightly clamped together to avoid blowing holes (seems unavoidable sometimes though), and my seam welds are also getting neater as you might be able to see from the top of the inside of the new A post boxing plate.
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All in all not bad progress, a couple more sessions and I'll have this corner done, I have cut out the angle that I welded in along the edge of the upper bulkhead on this side as it turns out the inner wing isn't a straight line (check in on Ben O's build and I can see that he confirms this also to be the case) so I'll be re-creating this edge and I also have a new lower dash tray but I may just replace each end of it as it's only the extremes of the old one that are in a poor state and it looks like it might be easier to do this than try and replace the whole thing (lots of very tricky plug welds to attempt in order to replace it entirely!).