Yep, pretty grim!   ☹️

So far the wire wheel has only discovered one area needing fresh metal - little square top centre of the above pic.
 

Edited 16 June, 20197 yr by sleag40

Still struggling to get time in on this at present. I managed to finish welding the bottom of the passenger side sill to the inner sill today.

 

Bizzarely this side took a fraction of the time the driver's side did - perhaps I'm getting better at it?

With that done, I decided to reset the spit onto the highest of its three pivot points. Its been on the lowest one, and with the adjustment wound all the way up, it wasn't high enough to roll right over.

 

As you can see, on the highest pivot point with the adjusters wound halfway up, there is now plenty of clearance to roll it right over If I want.

 

Back to cleaning the underside for paint next. 😞

Had a decent pop at this today - it was as grim a job as ever, but a pleasing amount of progress was made.

 

 

 

 

I intend to do the underside in three sections - back end to rear foot wells, then the floors, then the whole front end/engine bay. Plenty of dirty noisy tedium to look forward to!

Another couple of hours on the wheel this evening - I reckon if I can get a whole day on it over the weekend, the rear section should be close to getting a bit of paint on it. 🙂

 

Getting there with the rear section after a few more hours of noisy fun. 🙂

 

And then a couple more

 

Just a few fiddly bits left over for another day, then a good cleaning session will see it ready for Hydrate 80 + zinc rich primer.
 

Your level of work is amazing! I wish I had the time and space for something like this. There really isn’t many mk1s about now.. I’m truly shocked to how solid that mk1 actually was! I was expecting to see more holes than Tiger Woods has 😂 I can’t say I miss my mk3 Cavalier to be honest, I wonder if they were made worse over the years as your mk1 was more solid than my mk3 10 years ago aha. Keep up the good work.

On ‎02‎/‎04‎/‎2017 at 21:19, sleag40 said:

This came out of hibernation today - just took some fuel and a mild rinsing by the DVLA. 

 

 

Still puts a smile on my face. 🙂

Really love this, you did some job dude, great attention to detail fitting those numberplates, really gets me when I see an old car with Perspex plates in the modern font!

 

The Mk2 is nice looking thing too, shocking bluff up jobs on it! As nice as it would be standard it'd be lovely on a nice set of azevs 🙂 

On 06/07/2019 at 23:22, Jamie/Arosa said:

Your level of work is amazing! I wish I had the time and space for something like this. There really isn’t many mk1s about now.. I’m truly shocked to how solid that mk1 actually was! I was expecting to see more holes than Tiger Woods has 😂 I can’t say I miss my mk3 Cavalier to be honest, I wonder if they were made worse over the years as your mk1 was more solid than my mk3 10 years ago aha. Keep up the good work.

Many thanks! The mk1 had been garaged all its life - explaining the fantastic condition. The vast majority of them lasted 10 years or so,  mk2 + mk3s not much more - thankfully a few of these humdrum vehicles have avoided being fragged by being kept going by their usually elderly owners. 🙂

On 07/07/2019 at 09:12, Jim1500 said:

Really love this, you did some job dude, great attention to detail fitting those numberplates, really gets me when I see an old car with Perspex plates in the modern font!

 

The Mk2 is nice looking thing too, shocking bluff up jobs on it! As nice as it would be standard it'd be lovely on a nice set of azevs 🙂 

Thank you kindly! I have a new set of the standard wheel trims to go on when its finished, but as the wheels are a similar fitment to 4 stud VW I may run these BBS off one of my Polos from time to time.

Nice, the RA's aren't unlike the CD alloys if I remember correctly😉

All back end fiddly bits now bare metalled and cleaned, and Hydrate 80 treatment started.

Hopefully I'll get the whole back end treated and then primed over the weekend. (Spare time permitting!)  :)

Thanks to FedEx being a bit poor, I have no primer still after a week. I did get the back end of the underside treated with the Hydrate 80 though - half way through 

 

In the absence of my primer, I'll get stuck in to removing all the sealant off the floor section tomorrow now the back end is ready for primer.

 

Edited 13 July, 20197 yr by sleag40

A marathon session on the wheel of wires has provided me with this.

 

The tunnel shouldn't take too long to do as theres no rubbery sealant on it - just a layer of wax over the e-coat. The wax scrapes off pretty easily, so not much to attack with the wire wheel. 🙂

This is one serious build! I can't believe the amount of panels available for it. That car is going to be better than new!

Under floor area now stripped back.

 

Next job is to repair the frilly bit of the floor + replace one of the brake pipe tags that fell off before giving it all a good clean for the Hydrate 80. Pretty boring stuff, but I reckon that's the bulk of the horrible stuff done now! 🙂

Only managed an hour on it this afternoon. The brake pipe tag that fell off was stuck back on, then the rusty bung hole was cut out.

 

The repair is only just over an inch square, and somewhere that will not be seen, so not much finesse was necessary.

 

Job jobbed!

Hydrate 80 going on

 

Both coats on both sides done

 

Now I can crack on with the lower bulkhead repair before stripping back the front end/engine bay. 🙂
 

Bulkhead bottom repair now done, no incremental progress pics due to leaving my phone at home! 

 

Back to the noisy, fiddly and dirty joy of stripping the front end back to the metal. 🙂

Made a start on the front end this afternoon, lots of surface rust mainly, just a small area needing repair where one panel overlaps another.

 

Pretty fiddly stuff, but the end of underside strippage is in sight now. 🙂

 

You've some patience sir! Excellent work😀

On 22/07/2019 at 20:31, Jim1500 said:

You've some patience sir! Excellent work😀

Many thanks! Definitely no shortage of patience!

You can just about see some blown areas of metal in the first of the two pics above  (driver's side) - today I had a good stab at it with a hammer and screwdriver. After removing some of the sound deadening material, this was the view of the driver's footwell.

 

After removing the thin metal from around the holes in the outer layer, and the surrounding area of the inner layer.

 

View from outside.

 

Pieces let in to the outer layer.

 

Inside of outer layer zinc primed.

 

Missing metal of the inner layer replaced, then zinc primed.

 

There's a hint of more of the same on the passenger side, (a lot less of it though!) So this will be investigated another time. 🙂

Got some unexpected time on this today due to having nothing to do at work. 🙂

Passenger side lower bulkhead/floor holes.

 

When cut away, the layer above was in a good condition, (still had e-coat) so it was zinc primed then closed up.

 

Hydrate 80 applied to bare metal of surrounding areas.

 

Incredibly sweaty in the shed today. 😞

Edited 26 July, 20197 yr by sleag40

Can't wait to see this one finished! That must be all the major metalwork sorted now??

On 27/07/2019 at 09:20, Jim1500 said:

Can't wait to see this one finished! That must be all the major metalwork sorted now??

Me too! Pretty much done with metal work now, just whatever I find whilst wire wheeling the engine bay/inner wings.

Only had a couple of hours for this over the weekend - made a start on stripping the chassis legs.

After getting fed up with painfully slow progress, I switched to the inner wing for some instant gratification.

 

Found one small area needing a welded repair (on the inner wing, in line with the front of the turret ^^^) which I'll address next time.
 

Stopped off at the shed for half an hour on the way home this afternoon to sort the hole in the inner wing.

Poxy metal cut out, and a piece cut to go in.

 

Welded in and ground back.

 

Back to the wire wheel tomorrow. 🙂