Ivan's coupe: bodywork is done

[Ivan141]

Have a B21ET for it.. just need to rebuild the damn thing.

[Ivan141]

A little update of progress of the past month or so:

Welded some gussets to the rear reinforcement, then fixed the A-beam @ the front right of the car (typical ae86 rust area this). Took some shit pictures to prove it.



Welding in the boot area with the car in a rotisserie is a bitch, its the only thing that's easier with the car on the floor. Hence the ugly welding.. But that will be worked over and covered up anyway.


-Cut out the right rear wheelarch. It looked fine, but had to go in favor of escort arch to match the other side of the car. In the end I'm glad I cut it off because it was going to rust through within 3 years for sure.



-Rebuilt an inner pocket from scratch since there was nearly nothing left of the original.


The outer skin looked prettyer before welding, the ae86 steel I used to fabricate repairs did not respond as well to clamping as the usual 1mm zincor plate I use.

Needs some grinding, a few spotwelds on top and removal of the excess lip I left on top.

The sill on this end had been welded before (by old welding demon Bert). I thought it looked shit and found out there was plenty of filler applied so I decided to clean it up and redo it. The Doctor said I could write my name in that layer of filler so I did:

I cleaned all the filler off after that (and ended up looking like there had been an explosion in a flour factory).

Here's the sill with the patches cut out. There where 2 of 'em.


Surprise! True to Bert's style he had left 2cm's of overlap on mildly rusted material, which has developed into a lot of really rusty material.
Admittedly, the last storage facility the car was in was very damp, so it wont have been that bad when he did this repair, but the overlap and the fact that the inner sill reinforcements where rusted away completely are unforgivable IMHO.



Cut out the cancer:



I spy with my little eye: a new arrival on my shitlist:


Ye olde fashioned restoration business:





Then I was back to 3 layers of sill on the seam (there should be 4 including the outer skin).


After that I got a little pedantic about the sill repair and decided to redo it like it came from the factory: with an overlap seam at the end where it joins the bottom of the quarter panel. This might be more rust sensitive and I'll probably filler over it anyway, but it's just the neater way to do things.

I bashed the little step in the skin a bit crooked so had to redo half of it, but this should look nice with just a slight skim of filler.


Then I spotted another bit of misery out of the corner of my eye!



Fixed it up quick so it wont bother me when I'm back from vacation:



Next time I'm cutting out the old repairs to the front of this wheel well which looked fine to me up till yesterday. Turns out the rust from the inside lip was not removed neatly or completely, creating a nasty source of rust where I really dont want it. After that I need to make an inner lip to match the escort arch and weld everything back together. The last bit of sill will follow when the arch is in.

This all proves to me the age old saying:
Want something done right: do it yourself.

[Aram]

Hopefully Bert was a bit tidier on my car......

But it's looking good Ivan. :-)

[The Doctor]

looking at the consistacy of the crap work, i wouldn't trust on it

[Apolan]

ivan, youre still going, wow!

[Aram]

The Doctor Wrote:looking at the consistacy of the crap work, i wouldn't trust on it

The only difference is that I was present most of the time, therefore the chance for him to fuck up is a bit less, so I'm reasonably confident.

[Ivan141]

Took care of some hidden rust I found lurking underneath one of Bert's earler repairs today.

Made a little hole:



Made it a little bigger after seeing the state of the center seam of the wheelwell.



First repair ( folded and then curved manually with a stretching hammer):




Second part, same story:



Bit of zinkspray on it to keep rust at bay for the time being:



Last bits of rust to tackle:
-A weird spot behind the pedals.. must have something to do with something Bert did there, since it's right behind the reinforcement gussets he welded in.

-Right rear chassis beam is bulging a bit from rust that cannot be seen. Will fix that once the car comes out of the rotisserie.

Getting there...

[banpei]

I think you missed a career change here: you could have been a surgeon looking at the way you keep finding rust!

[Ivan141]

Chopped the inner wheel arch and built a new one to fit the escort arch:




Welded in the outer arch, with the escort mk3 rear arches, the bottom of the front side has a bulge where you dont want one, so I usually cut a slot to flatten the top edge of that bulge, and chop out the bottom bit entirely where the escort arch is curved and the corolla one mostly flat.



Sorry about the ass quality phone pics.

Next time I'm welding up the rear of the sill, grinding the welds down a bit better, and fixing up the last rusty bit on the firewall. After that it's mostly tidbits and fun stuff (reinforcements). Only potentially nasty bits left are the doors, and the left rear chassis beam, where there is rust lurking between the bumper mount bracket and the beam which can only be fixed with the car on the ground again (because is is hanging of that support at the moment).

[T_AE86]

Rear arches seems original, nice job, how much cms are widen?