Ivan's coupe: bodywork is done

[Ivan141]

No more than 1 cm wider I would guess. You can go slightly wider using the front arches of the same model escort, but those are more expensive.
I already testfitted a Haslbeck sideskirt, and it will need minor massaging to fit, since the arch ended up a little thicker at the bottom

[T_AE86]

Ok, aren't excessive, i like them

[Vaptor]

Just watched the hole thread, damm its long... But there has also been done a lot of work on it. All that rust work reminds me of my own project

Keep up the good work

[Ivan141]

Small update:

Patched up the last bit of the right rear sill:


Not perfect, but who will notice (and will I care?).

Then I did something I haven't seen anyone else doing so far (on the interwebs that is). I fortified the jacking points on the sill to ludicrous strength.
Just considering how many cars I have seen with deformities around the jacking points I don't care to remember, but I'm being realistic about this and will expect the car to be using them frequently enough. Wouldn't want to ruin the future paint-job that easily.




It is basically a load spreading beam construction made out of 2mm thick steel plate that protrudes just a little bit under the sill edge. I am thinking of drilling and tapping a couple of holes in there and maybe mounting a rubber of some other stuff under there to avoid scratching paint all together.

No more worries about those horrid 2-post lifts (car bridges).

Next up:
Straighten the sills on the front (restore old jacking damage).
Fortify jacking points.
Fix small ugly patch behind pedals.
Body reinforcements!

[Ivan141]

Ah, finally I can reach the forum again.

Here's the latest episode in my painstakingly slow resto:

Bashed the front sill seams back in shape and removed the factory
jack reinforcement brackets.
Turns out there was rust lingering beneath those on both sides, so I patched that up.


Penetration (yes yes):


Made me some sturdy platforms and welded them in:



All in all an easy job to weld, but about 3 hours just to clean those 2 bits
of the floorpan (very irregular shapes make for difficult scraping).

Just realised I will need to modify the on-board jack, or the jacking points to work with eachother. Otherwise I'm fooked in case of a roadside problem.

Thought this little spot could be patched up in an hour:


I was wrong. Rust had gotten into the seems apparently, and my old welding
geezer had not done a neat job of fixing it up before he welded gussets in.
Was a b*tch to get the gussets out, and I ended up with a big old exploratory incision.


Where I would least want it with the car in the rotisserie:



It'll be patched up in the next garage session I'm sure.

[Mux213]

Ivan, seeing the amount of hidden rust you've found it would almost seem worth getting it an acid bath to strip off all the paint and make sure there isn't even more.

It also is starting to look like you've welded half a car together. Looking good though!

[Ivan141]

Thanks Mux, I did weld half the car together , a year has passed since I put it in the rotisserie, and everytime I think I'm close to finished I find something new.
BTW, you warned me back in the day about Bert's work, as you may have read, I now understand what you meant perfectly

Here's something I posted last week, but got lost when the server crashed:

Last weeks holes have been patched up as best as I could.



Cleaned up a bit, could have done a better job if my powerfile hadn't worn out.



Welded a gusset back in, ended up slightly chunky. Hope it wont get in the way of original parts too much (time will tell).



Dab of paint:



Almost done then? Yes, but I keep thinking up new crap to put off the next step in this resto. These spots are not pretty from close up, so I will do something about them.



Anyhoo, what remains for me to do is to make the best of the last few rusty spots, which probably includes redoing the other chassis to firewall gusset Bert made, just to make sure there is no shit underneath, and make it look like the one I did above.
After that I will attempt to hang the entire back end by the new shock mounts on our engine hoist A-frame (you'll see what I mean later) and remove the rear rotisserie stand so I can chop off the end of the chassis beam there for rust repairs.

With that behind me I'm proclaiming her cancer-free, and will proceed to add further chassis strenghtening while I have the chance, including some seam welding. I've been doing some left and right and it is very easy. Only big shit job left before I can seam weld the whole car is to clean the rest of the undercoating off.

About acid dipping -> I'd love too, and can afford to have it done, but without a subsequent E-coating (KTL) bath it is probably not wise to get everything to bare metal (nothing is put back in place). An E-coat is something I can't afford at this point in my life. The full process costs +-3000 euro's, a lot of money to sink into a corolla when your just about to get a house.

[Mux213]

Hey Ivan,

3000 might be a bit much to just dish out and maybe with so much welding and patch work it may not be worth it in the end, might be better to get a shell in much better condition one day and give it the full treatment.

Buying a house? Cool good on you!

[Ivan141]

I'm kinda leaning toward renting now. The dutch house market bubble is imploding at the moment and property values are falling (16% since 200. A further drop is foreseable so best to wait till things get stable again.

[banpei]

A bit offtopic: I bought my house in ..... you probably guessed it already .... 2008.
On the other hand: back then I knew perfectly well the risk of buying and knew the bubble would burst. The only question back then was when...
Personally I would not buy a house now as it probably keeps dropping at least till we have some more insight what the new government is going to do.

Ontopic: nice going!
I'd wish my weldingskills would be that good one day.
BTW: shouldn't the acid dip + coating been done before even before you started welding?