In case anyone is interested in why there was such a hiatus - or more truthfully, to justify it to myself - the rough timeline is as follows: Welder stopped working around April 09 so I spent the summer sandblasting lots of bits of the bodywork and trying to find a new welder plus using the warm weather to re-spray my motorbike parts. The saga dragged on until summer 2010 when I finally got welding again but I was on a roll with my motorbikes projects by that time and focused on them till about August/September when I could no longer put off the body repairs needed on my daily transport which had to be MOT'd by end of November so I've spent every spare day & hour outside welding that up. Its a Suzuki Swift, only 16 years old but I can honestly say I've never seen such corrosion on a car and the repairs dragged on and on until last week when I decided enough was enough and bought a new runaround. A 1981 2.8 Vauxhall Royale for £800. I was looking for something sensible, like a Swift or a Polo, but this just came up and I had the cash to buy it so.........
my new daily transport. love it and no more days will be wasted welding cars other than the Daimler
Anyway the long and short of it is that I can now go back inside the barn and work on the VDP. Till completion hopefully - woohoo : )
In older posts I showed that the rear valance was off and a new one ready to fit but, as can be expected, you normally need to do some repairs to adjoining panels. In this case the boot floor/spare wheel well rear edge and the inner faces of the exhaust tunnels. It went well apart from I ran out of welding wire with about 1/4 of the weld left to do.
vertical part of LHS rear exhaust tunnel which is also spare wheel well wall had some corrosion on part below spot welds and a little above. rot cut out
old metal. ragged edge is lower edge and should include a curved flange which has long since rusted away
another view looking into the spare wheel well. flange with spot weld remains on it is sound and original seam sealer sit above it
trailing edge of wheel well has holes in corners and along its length which need repaired before rear valance is fitted
thin metal in corner cut away
repair piece with flanges welded in. vertical part can now be repaired
I'm going out drinking with workmates tomorrow so probably won't get anything done on Saturday/Sunday but from Monday onwards should make a little progress every night.
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