Cheers buddy!
But believe you me, there's nothing lowly about this car!
:thumbsup:
So back to the pics of the work in progress on Matt's 33.
We started the messy and long job of stripping back the front arches back to bare metal, removing all surface rust and helping to reveal any more
serious issues corrosion wise.
Looks super clean back to bright metal.
This process helps to reveal clearly the areas that need attention, as said previously it's usually
between panels where the seam sealer traps the water and expands the gaps between the panels.
A more indepth clean up of these area, taking all of the seam sealer out from between the joints to be able to assess
the damage and what needs replacing with new metal.
Cutting out the bad stuff is only way to make it good!
There's no other way of clearing out all of the rust that hides between these adjoining panels.
The badly rusted metal sections were cut out, then new panels fabricated and then welded in their place.
Other sections where the rust had set in were cut out to be repaired, (being careful to maintain the structural strength of the arch and for good measure brace the strut towers too.
Cleaning up even the lightest of surface rust that gets revealed as we go along.
Here you can see we now have full access to the interior of the rusted panels.
Matt's car is very solid but when were done it will be 100% solid:wavey:
Ready for clean up!:clap:
Much better!
More fabrication work to replace sections as we work our way through the passenger side strut tower.
And now with all of these panels allowing us full access, it was time to remove the strut top itself.
We could tell by looking at the rust on the surface that had started to swell and break though on the strut top, that it would be rusty inside.
It's so easy to patch up or ignore this sort of corrosion and hope it won't get worse but when you see how bad it can be between the two layers
the only course of action is to get in and fix it once and for all!:wavey:
All of the spot weld drilled out and the panel cut either side to allow it to be removed.
And this is what you get inside.
Fossilised metal.:runaway:
So we first remove the heavy stuff. It actually chips off quite easily.
Then spend a few hours and various methods getting what you saw back to bright shiny metal. Then leave over night with a deep rust treatment.
To then be cleaned back to shiny bright metal again to make sure the metal is totally rust free and clean to make a perfect repair.
Another new panel fabricated and welded in.
You can see in the top of the panel above on the side of the strut tower there is a rusty hole that has started to appear,
again another area where the panels are joined and the rust has just sat and developed.
So we cut this rusty section out.
You can see the panel the other side of which has rusted through to the previous panal. So repair to both panels will make them good as gold.
(no point just covering up this stuff, do it once do it right! :thumbsup
Meanwhile Matt had provided us with donor strut towers from another 33 to help with the repairs.
They were in much better condition than his own strut towers but we could see they wouldn't be perfect inside.
Jay going about drilling out the spot welds and removing the donor strut top and thankfully it looked better than the one that had come off Matt's car.
Meanwhile......
The rust treatment on the car was doing a lovely job.
Back to the donor struts and this is what we revealed.
They look bad but were a lot, lot better than the ones we would be replacing.
A deep clean up of the donor strut to back to shiny bare metal, was defo worth replacing with.:wavey:
These will. once cleaned up make the strut top repairs perfect!:clap:
:thumbsup:
To be continued....much more to come.....
:thumbsup:
bob
