297 replies to this topic

[The Otter]

Nice project so far.

I bet when you flat and polish it it'll look awesome.

Thanks, and I admire your optimism, I think I'll need a bit more of that myself

When you come to replace any other panels, just remember to spray them orange and there ya go lol. But seriously it looks good mate

Cheers buddy, hopefully the colour won't be all that different to the original, we'll see once it's all back together and polished up

[rob963]

I reckon that it will still look awesome with a bit of polishing

you are being too hard on yourself, you have done a really brilliant job! So be proud of what you have achieved

and now you need to enjoy the work you have done to it

[The Otter]

Done and dusted with the front end/arches for now, just need to try and sort the incredibly dull finish on the paint sometime.





That was a long three weeks of work...

Next job is to replace the sills for the MOT which runs out in 3 weeks, so plenty of time! I wonder if the MOT man would notice this underneath the drivers door?



Yes, the right half of that is just fibreglass/filler Dreading what I'm going to find underneath, fingers crossed it ain't too bad.

[The Otter]

I started doing the sills today, there's a bit more rust around there than I'd hoped for so it might take me a bit longer than the weekend I'd had planned for the work...

Luckily I'd bought some cheapie pattern door steps and front floor pans at MITP just in case I needed them for this, so I'm going to be welding in patches of the pattern panels to sort out whatever rust I find.

Here's the front edge of the door step



From this you can see where the car has been jacked up by some apes in the past on the floor pans and dented them in. You can also see the two massive patches that were crudely welded over the top of whatever rust there was on the sills underneath



Here's a few more general shots of what I found with my trusty screwdriver













This is where I finished for the night, with a rather large air vent to cool my feet in the summer



I'll be drudging on with this over the next few days, so expect some more rust on your screens soon

Thanks for reading.

[Roach]

You've got plenty to do man, keep it up..

I think those same apes jacked up my car too

[Steely]

You've got plenty to do man, keep it up..

I think those same apes jacked up my car too

And mine . If Im there at the time I will say where to jack it up but I also appear to have a dent in the floor pan

[The Otter]

I didn't do anything too special today, just took it steady and got the floor corner in and zinc primed.

Here's the patch, almost ready to go in



No more air vent!



I think my welding is getting better, but I do still hit a snag once in a while where I either keep blowing holes or I just can't get a decent enough weld and end up with pin prick holes all over the place. This is never going to be a concourse car though obviously, so as long as it's structurally sound then I'm happy, even if it's not pretty.

A crude mock up of the vision for the next couple of days of work



Hoping to sort out the door step by the end of tomorrow, and get the sill on by the end of Monday

[rob963]

Wow you are certainly doing awesome with all this welding!

Soon you'll have replaced the whole blooming car!

[The Otter]

Almost done with the door step, a bit more welding and finishing needed tomorrow.

All the old rotten stuff was cut away and I tried to clean up what was underneath as best I could. I won't be using that jacking point any time soon!



I unearthed yet more bits of rust that needed sorting, so cut it out and made another patch



Then began welding. I still need to add a little triangular section in here



Door step mostly welded up



I've decided to leave the passenger side sill/doorstep/floor until next summer, I was originally going to do both at the same time, but this side has taken me longer than I'd expected and the passenger side has more patches than I could count, so it's going to be a night mare just to get the old sill off. I'll take a picture tomorrow to show you how bad it is on that side! I've only got a week and a half left until I go off to uni again, and the car still needs an MOT and a few odd jobs doing to it, hence why I'm leaving the passenger side to next year. I'm getting damn tired of all this welding anyway!

[rob963]

that is some nice work you have done there!

yet more you can be proud to say you did yourself!

It's a pity you haven't got time to do both sides all at once, then you wouldn't have to worry about it for a while but I guess time tends to run away a lot

[The Otter]

I got the doorstep all welded up and mostly finished earlier today, I say mostly because the tight areas that I can't get to with the grinder are where I really need a dremel, and I don't have one... but one day!



Here's a couple of pictures of the passenger side sill and floor, just to give you an idea of what kind of a mess I'm going to have to sort out next summer. Not looking forward to it...





I also had a go at fixing an issue with my drivers door, whilst it's off the car and I had good access. Can you guess what I'm doing here? That's a bungee cord by the way.



Welding up some rusted fatigue cracks in the frame, that's what! I really need a whole new door, but I can't exactly afford that right now, so this will have to do. The frame was twisted a bit so whenever I wound my window up it wouldn't go in to the rubber channel at the front top corner without me physically moving the frame in whilst winding it up.





Not exactly pretty, but it should do the job. The frame is exactly where it should be for the window now, so hopefully it won't be whistling at me through the door gap on the motorway any more!

I'll have the sill on tomorrow, and hopefully have everything all painted up, and ready to go back together for Wednesday.

[conlad]

A lot of people won't like it, but...

I prefer projects like this when they are home grown and not perfect, concours cars get boring and its nice to see whack ideas and things that are not perfect!

Nice project mate, keep it up!

Edited by conlad, 10 September 2012 - 09:26 PM.

[rob963]

A lot of people won't like it, but...

I prefer projects like this when they are home grown and not perfect, concours cars get boring and its nice to see whack ideas and things that are not perfect!

Nice project mate, keep it up!

I have to say I agree!

and you have done a marvellous job on all of the welding, especially on your own!
Be Proud!

[The Otter]

A lot of people won't like it, but...

I prefer projects like this when they are home grown and not perfect, concours cars get boring and its nice to see whack ideas and things that are not perfect!

Nice project mate, keep it up!

Cheers buddy! I like to think that I'm doing what I sensibly can to keep my daily driver on the road and in good health, without bodging it (welding plates over holes for MOTs, etc). I like to think I'm fairly sensible with what I've done, and I'm sure some would see what I've done as slightly bodging it (like only welding in half the floor corner and doorstep), but meh, it should keep the rust at bay and I know exactly how it's been repaired and what state it's in seeing as I've done it myself! I also don't really have the patience to make it look perfect, seeing as it could easily be scratched, bumped, or even crashed in to with all these idiots on the road nowadays... testament to that is another car park ding in the drivers door from a moron in a 206 the other day

I am proud Rob, I am! My welding has definitely improved drastically in the last half of this sill replacement work, there's one bit of a seam weld that I didn't even dress with the grinder because it looked so pretty Remind me and I'll point it out to you sometime

I've gave myself a bit of a deadline earlier today by booking the MOT test for 11:30 tomorrow morning, so that made sure I cracked on with it! I'll let the pictures do the talking:







I'll be getting up especially early tomorrow to get it back together and checked over before the MOT, the only things I'm slightly worried about are the emissions (as usual ) and the wheels sticking out of the arches, which is as far as I know not an MOT failure, but is something that Mr Plod wouldn't be too happy about. If it fails on rust then I'm not gonna be best pleased after all this work I've done! I'll let you know how I get on tomorrow.

[Daviewonder]

Good luck, i'm sure it'll do fine.