Monday 2 June 2014

Front Bulkhead and A-post’s bare all!

During the past week I have stripped back the foot-well and bulkhead area of the shell with the drill-mounted wire wheel:





My drill died about halfway through this task (the 3rd drill casualty so far in this resto), so off I went to the large DIY chain store where I originally purchased it and exchanged it for a brand new one ….ahh, the system works ;-)


It should be noted that the doors have never been particularly well aligned on this car, especially the driver’s side. So, once the wire wheel had made short work of the thick filler layers, I was able to see what was truly going on with those feeble A-posts. The passenger’s side had been repaired in the past using a standard off-the-shelf repair panel, but it looks awkward and somewhat crooked: 

The driver’s side was just patched in a half-arsed way and completely lacks strength, which explains why the door would always drop a couple inches when opened! 


Luckily Hooky’s panel shop make top quality replacements, so I now have some on order along with a handy ‘Door Alignment Tool’, which will allow me to weld the lower door mounting brackets in perfect position. 


I then removed the remnants of the rotten heater channel that was attached to the front bulkhead using a mini grinding disc attached to the Draper Multi-tool: 



I then ground off the hideous repair patches from the other side of the bulkhead: 







I am not sure how much of this metal work will be kept or how much I will eventually cut out, so I may well be taking the long route by spending valuable time carefully removing these old repairs. However, I find it hard to visualise what needs doing and how things should fit back together with these rusty distractions in the way – so for me it feels like a necessary task...

2 comments:

  1. Excellent photos! You've got quite a lot of rust all the way around where the body and pan meet. It sounds like you have a good source for replacement panels, so keep grinding away at it and it will all come together.

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    1. Yeah, basically the whole lower 25% of the shell is rotten to varying degrees! Fortunately the UK is very well catered for when it comes to aftermarket panels (although it should be noted that the quality/fit can be dubious at best for a majority of them). I would like to make my own homemade patches as and when I can, but only time will tell how good my fabrication skills are ;-)

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