Ivan's coupe: bodywork is done

[danielvanderwoude]

Must be nice having a "turning spit". I am allways laying around with all the welding drops burning holes...

[cannabolic]

going good

[Bravothreezero]

Impressive work! how far along the process are you with the weld-a-thon?

[Ivan141]

I'm about 60% done with the right rear wheel well.. There's a nasty bit of rust under the filler neck still to be dealt with. Then the whole operation must be repeated for the left side.
Also have some problems with the way my outer wheel wells have been patched up.. I'm still pondering on what to do with them, but I'll tackle welding one problem at a time.

For the rest it's mostly annoying hard to reach bits on the inside of the car (around the top of the wheel wells, and the left bumper bracket holding thing (welded to the chassis beam), that I noticed to be rusting from the inside.

There's a long way to go with the patching-up side of things, I'll combine it with some reinforcement fabrication to keep my spirits up.
Wont be doing much work this month.. SWMBO needs some attention too every so often.

[Bravothreezero]

I have the same thing with a bracket but not sure if the rust has crept inside yet. The ones that attach to the bumper look especially awful but i've been told that new ones will only take 2 years to look that bad from the outside.

I guess hachi's and women have 2 things in common; both are time vampires and cost lots to maintain by that analogy you have 3 girlfriends.. poor/lucky man ambiguity

but keep it up, every time I see this my hands itch to practice welding

[Ivan141]

Fresh update, sadly 60% of all my pictures turned out bad:

Work in progress:



Inside:


Out (not done here, but was the only surviving picture):


This about wraps up the right side shockmount and chassis beam. The spring seat is closed up now (not in the pictures), the welds are ground down, the wheelcase is cleaned back to bare metal and zinksprayed for the time being. The inner arches are going to be a separate project, still need to decide which way to go with them. The side I was working on wasnt too bad, but surface rust is present in many places, and rust has crept into the flanges about everywhere. I fear it is worse than it looks, just in the places where I cant see. The left rear wheeltub is a mess, ugly looking patches and rust damage all around. Will probably get myself some Mk3 Escort arches and chop the whole shebang out, that way I can do a better repair on the inner arches. Is a shame though, my outer arches arent bad at all, but if they need to be taken out to do repairs, I might as well refit new slightly wider arches so I can fit more tyre under there.

[Ivan141]

Another afternoons work:

Made a peeking hole in the rear pocket (where the inside had rusted out underneath the filler neck). Lo and behold, the good bit I cut out turned to be quite nasty itself, so out with the welder again:





I'm waiting with welding it back in until I get my escort fenders in.. then have to decide which route I will go (standard or ford).

Overview of work done so far:


And an hour worth of scraping undercoating (it's had an extra coat somewhere in the eighties.. damn I hate this work):

[oldskull]

Look good Ivan! I am waiting till you finish it!!!!

[cannabolic]

nice one!

for the undercoat use this:


...and



makes the job a whole lot easier.

[Ivan141]

I am using this:


It is quite effective, but the problem is there is undercoat nearly everywhere, and most of the non-oem stuff is not hardened.
The tough bits just bounce right off due to the tools vibration..
I find that when u use wire wheels right off the bat, all you are doing is slinging black poo everywhere and rubbing it around. This way I wire wheel at the end and am done without the mess.