Onto the First stage of restoration!
Basically the story goes like this; I had bought a Powercoated Red Cam Cover, and Red Calliper paint upon deciding the colour coding I was going for under the engine bay.
So the callipers now red, and the bay with a little bit of colour I pondered on the rust, the rear arches were fecked to put it blunt, both of them. The petrol cap was rusted, although not badly (or so it seemed...), the battery tray had a lot of surface rust, but was solid (for now) and the sills were completely fudged lol.
The rear of the sill lips had totally folded over obviously from where it had been jacked up, and they had not been strong enough to support the car. The whole sill lip was rusted badly...and this worried me, the bottom of the car also shared its share of spots, thankfully they were all nothing major as I had caught them just as they had emerged so to speak.
The Rear Chassis Rails looked ok, although there was a piercing into the underseal in the common spot. So certainly not the worst thats ever been seen - but not the best either, and for me - thats not good enough. I have always though why bother modding a car thats rusty, its just let down. So I decided to get the rust SORTED!
Unfortunately I did not have the funds to pay for a complete restoration, and I was certainly not competant to weld myself. So I was stuck at the time, all my mates were driving around - and I had a rusty car, totally standard compared to their modded masterpieces. Although mine was the fastest, it was ugly to put it blunt.
One day I was sat down with my mate, and he was talking to me about knocking out rust on the arches of cars...he had done it to his old Escort and a few other cars, and said it wouldn't be that worst of jobs to do.
I remember I had some unopened Body Filler, Primer, Hammerite Kurust, and Lacquer from where I had mended my mums old Volvo 360's rusty door at the time, so we thought feck it. My mum had earlier left to go on holiday for 2 weeks (much prefered to stay at home with me mates lol) so we started.
It was a strange feeling, days before I had been jumping on the nearest bird to my car - now I was chisseling the passenger arch away lol, soon we had decided to do both sides...and away I was hammering both sides of my car!
Unfortunately for us it looked like it had been proffesionally repaired at least once before, as we found traces of filler...lots of it lol. Infact the whole arch lip on both sides came totally out, and about an inch up the bodywork as well
it was quite a bit worse than it had initially looked, as you will see in the following pictures!
After we took the Rear Bumper off we discovered even more rust, where the very bottom of the arch meets the flat part of the floor, was a hole in the corner, probably the worst of places for a novice "fillerer" lol, and yup both sides were the same lol. The rear panel was in pretty mint nick, just two small spots at either side in the corners, which were soon ground off.
Soon after we decided it would be best to jack the car up, so off came the rear wheels - and the whole rear end was put on stands. It remained like that for 2 weeks of solid hard graft last summer, in the blistering heat..and occasional summer storm.
We used wire mesh and filler to build up the arches, cost me £75 in filler and paint in the end..we got threw 3 Kingsize tins lol, we found out afterwards that we had used P38 filler...which was the softer stuff used on dents, and we should have used P40 for the rebuilding. Good job I had used about ten times more hardener that usual then lol, the filler was pink LOL.
After it had all been sanded down, we came to the problem of the petrol cap. We knocked it out and it literally fell to pieces, now we knew filler could not rebuild it as the filler neck had to clip into place and needed a strong steel lip, so we came up with an idea...
We went down the local scrapyard and amongst the 30 cars there, (about 25 of them scorts
) we found a trusty white orion, we got a chisel and in 5 mins we got the petrol cap out...all without any regard to the half tank of petrol pmsl!
As you will see from the pics, we ground down this petrol cap - and it was solid. We gave it ten coats of Hammerite on the inside, and 5 coats of primer to stop any water settling, and we set around fitting it. We hammered the old filler cap inwards, after we had derusted it the best we could and sealed it. We them riveted the new cap ontop of it, ground it down with a dremel (yes sparks and petrol are bad lol) and then fillered it. It wasn't perfect, but a darn site better - and to be honest, it would at least stop the car rusting anymore until I could afford to get it done by a proffesional!
So we then set the task of painting it, lots of primer and masking later and we had the finished result. Was a pig to do as it kept raining and the car was on my drive, so we kept having to primer it and tape some binbags over it to stop it rusting lol...
Anyways, here are the pics of those crazy 2 weeks.
Will post the pics of the finished work at that time, in the next post
