Right. Since the last exciting update I got hold of a cheap grinda, selected because of its long warranty and sturdy construction. And absolutely not because it has the word EXTREME in huge letters on the box. Not at all. My clinical procrastination took hold directly I had bought it, so it took over a month for me to get some knot wheels and actually give it a waz. My whole life can more or less be summed up by the 'rolls eyes' emoticon so I won't actually use one here. You get the idea.
Along with the grinder I had managed to assemble a DIY Bond kit in the garage. The bulkhead was an ebay buy ages ago, the red door I scored for under £30 and is almost mint. The yellow one is from Seth's pile of Herald bits and needs some repairs to the bottom of the skin but is essentially sound. So far I've resisted arranging these bits into the shape of a car and sitting in it for an amusing photo op, but it's only a matter of time
Last Saturday I finally decided to start cleaning the bulkhead up a bit and investigating the extent of the repairs it'll need. I chose the passenger floorpan as my starting point
After the initial nervousness wore off I started to get a feel for the grinder. It does have quite a kick to it and I can see how you could easily lose control and do something quite nasty to yourself. Luckily I'm paranoid about that sort of thing at the best of times so hopefully I'll escape with all my fingers/legs intact. Here's a totally set-up 'action shot' of me. I'd just slipped out of my steel toe-caps and asbestos overalls for a second, honest
POWERFUL. Anyway, after a while I had this. Deeply pitted and full of small holes. hmmm.
Hopefully those are small enough to glue together without cutting bits out and making repair sections. I'm sure I'll find out when I start welding (lol). After the floor pan I moved on to the base of the A pillar, which looked like the worst bit of the whole unit with some very suspicious filler repairs. Here's what it looked like after a quick going over
Lovely! That wob was just the tip of the iceberg
For some reason I didn't take a photo of it all cleaned up with the last dregs of filler removed, but here's a terrible shot from the 'other side' which gives an idea of the extent of rottage.
This was the 'bad side' so I was sort of expecting this, and now it is all in bare metal I can make sense of the double-skinned construction a little better and it doesn't look like it'll be too much of a job to put right. The hardest thing will be getting the curve of the door aperture right. I need to check the condition of the one in the car as I might be able to get away with chopping that bit out and chucking it in here. Mr. Hardcore of the blue forum has offered to teach me how to weld, and Bickle has a mig I can borrow, so that's the next step. It's a little frustrating that every time I want to do something to the car I essentially need to be taught a new skill first, but that is sort of the entire point of the whole endeavour I suppose. It just makes things go very slowly.... When I get some proper ear protection I'm going to crack on with the other ('good') side of the floor and hopefully find zero holes (apart from the one I already know about) and get that side primed and protected and ready to go. I'm just ignoring the A-pillar screen rot at the moment.
