Mark's (914Rubber) Project Car Options

[cary]

I've been asked by Mark to do some sheet metal/body work on his 75 2.0 Liter project car. The car arrived last Monday. But I needed to finish up a couple things on my project car and in my shop first. But I dove in this afternoon.

First task is to tidy things up after the paint stripping. Which included dropping the engine in order remove any residual media in the nooks and crannies. I was concerned with the rust prevention product that Dustless Blaster mixes with the glass media being left on and in the electrical connections. I'm a firm believer of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I dribbled some OSPHO on a couple connectors in my white car. Not good. It ate the crap out the plating.

Here's Super In Law working on loosening up the media in order to blow it off. It will need to be steam cleaned.






Project List : So Far

Replace rear panel
Replace rear trunk floor pan
Replace back half of floor pan ............... Mark I'll send you pictures
Misc. hammer and dolly work
A few misc. patch panels
R&R both jack points and posts
This is like a new car compared to my project ...............

Observations :

Suspension Consoles look great and seem to be virgin.
Same with the motor mounts
Battery tray was changed at some time in its life
Back engine tray is bent to hell .............pushed up
Hell hole is filled with caked in blast media. Stopping at Sears on the way home for a new filter for my vacuum. I'll look closely for prior repairs.
Both the lower longs look great at first glance

Needing more research :

A few rust pits on the upper right outer wheelhouse long


But we also a have fairly good sized rust spot a little further up the upper long. Right next to the suspension console.


These are both in the double walled section of the upper long.

[cary]

Got a late start, had to stop and set up an appointment for the kids Audi. The REVO chip needs to be reflashed. Check Sum Error. I love driving that car. It's like driving a monster V8, but no wheel spin.

Super In Law was doing the AARP tax prep thing today.

Started with another 3 hours of cleaning out blasting media. By no means am I getting it all. Just enough so that I can examine all the surfaces, seams and welds.
I have to keep my eye on the ball, this is a body work and paint job project. Not a restoration.

As long as I'm in the engine compartment I decided that I'll start with rear portion of the engine tray. Don't know exactly how it got that way. Someone must have set the car down on the engine somehow.

This piece is something that needs to be treated with kids gloves. The three cars I've worked on have a lot of metal degradation on the bottom. I used multiple weapons in order to bend it back into place. But primarily I used a wooden block and a hammer.
After bending it back into place I see that combination of the water sitting in the crease and me bending it back into place tore a hall in the fire wall. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

So a patch is in order. Bigger is better. Make it big enough so that your welding on thicker metal. I'd like to say good metal, but thats not always a possibility.



Welds are a little proud (tall) but I'm giving it just enough heat to get a good weld. Anymore and we're looking at the engine compartment.

Backside was a little tough to clean up. The shelf is just long enough that you have a tough time getting a grinder in there. Even with my vast assortment

I decide the engine seal needs to come off so I can get to the bottom weld and clean up the tray for a shot of primer. Surprise, surprise I find that the seal channel is bent to hell and all rusted up.

Sorry the shot had poor definition of the channel
So thats going to have to be replaced. If I don't have enough left over in the scap pile. I'll cut it off the parts car. Knowing how soft the shelf is I decided to used Rick's screwdriver method on the spot welds. Basically you thin the top surface with the grinder and pop the weld off.

Peeled it off like using a p38 can opener. Used lineman's pliers as the roller.




It's 5:10 and I decide to roll the dice and weld the remainder of the seam over to the top of the hell hole. I'm thinking, am I getting to cocky? Its pretty rusty.
Took about 20 minutes but I got it with out much fuss. A couple spots kicked up a bit, but all in all went ok.