Laguna Blue 75 build thread, Freshly painted Options

[Tim17]

The previous owner told us the hell hole and longs had been done and he seemed like an honest car guy. So that was dumb and naive of me. It was clear that a bunch of work had been done around the hell hole, which looked good from the engine bay. When we got it home and on the lift we were faced with a rusted out lower firewall.
Ordered a firewall repair panel.
We pulled the engine today and cut out the lower firewall and it’s pretty ugly.

[Tim17]

Made some headway on figuring out what needs to be replaced on the right inner long, and how to make the patch panels. The patch panels get bent on the brake to form the lower inboard bend radius. We made a tool to make the joggle for the floor joint and hold the part while we bend the outer flange down at a consistent 70 mm from the inner wall. By adding addition sheet metal strips we could make the deeper joggle for the front section of the long. Used the shrinker to make the curved flange for the forward end.

Once we get the whole straight length of inner long fabricated, will cut it in and butt weld it in place.

One this that's fortunate is the the floor flange is in good shape except right in the hell hole area. Rather than drilling out the spot welds, I ground the inner long down until all I had was the floor flange. I'll be able to spot weld that joint without having to do a bunch of repair and grinding, or welding upside down.

My air grinder is way too slow, so I looked for more ways to use my Dewalt angle grinder. I found grinder shaft extensions on Amazon that allow me to get in with flap disks and cutoff wheels in places I couldn't get to before. I also found an adapter on Ebay that will attach a 1/4"-20 Roloc arbor to the 5/8"-11 grinder. I don't think I be using my air grinder very much going forward. I'm using a full face shield, gloves and using the side handle on the grinder and it's pretty tame to control.

Also cut out an entire section of rotted floor, rotted and previously patched lower forward firewall and jack mount plate. Planning to keep these together while we make up the individual repair pieces.

Tim