Fairly busy week and haven't made much progress. I did get some work done though - fitted a replacement section to the wishbone mount support. I'd had to chop this off to fit the repair panel on the chassis rail. Then rather than start on the inner wing repairs I decided that I would repair... Continue Reading →
Finally managed to track down a Vauxhall Corsa electronic power assisted steering rack for the car. This EPAS is a 'c-type' and I'll be following the example set by James Ball aka Kiwi in getting it setup and installed. The use of the Corsa units has been popularised by the Mk1&2 Escort rally community and... Continue Reading →
After a little more prep work yesterday, the chassis rail top is now welded in place. Took my time carefully clamping it all in place and getting good contact for the plug welds and as a result I'm very happy with how it's turned out. Needed to get the dolly hammers out for one or... Continue Reading →
Following on from yesterday, I made the patch panel for the upper part of the bulkhead seam repair panel. Then prepared both faces of the joint with zinc etch primer. Once it was dry, marked the sections for the spotwelds and ground off the primer in the appropriate areas: Cleaned up the surrounding metal work... Continue Reading →
Managed to grind down the welds on the repair patch that I'd fittedm but not finished off on the last bit of work. Then the next tassk was making good the lower bulkhead lip that had been distorted by drilling the spotwelds and removing the rotten sections. Then the next sections to tackle were the... Continue Reading →
Really unproductive weekend. Probably managed 3 hours on the project... Chopped out some more rotten bits. I'm happy I've got to the bottom of the problem areas now, so started making up repair sections. When it's all put back together this section creates a water trap on top of the chassis rail. There was really... Continue Reading →
Little update as work slowly progresses. This is a rather complex shaped gusset that sits within the chassis rail acting as a support. It curves in all three axis. Mine was so rotten it had to come out and I fabricated this replacement out of sheet steel, it just needs finishing off and prepping for... Continue Reading →
Finally managed to get back to this. Having managed to get my hands on a sheet metal folder, I set about making the reinforcement gusset to sit inside the chassis rail. Starting point was a cardboard template which was transferred onto steel and shaped to give the initial shape. The chassis rail curves in the... Continue Reading →
Worked out what that row of spot welds were for... ... the internal chassis rail reinforcing gusset was very rotten though so chopped it out... Pretty much all of the roof of the rail which is thinner SWG20 is badly rotten - it actually went to holes as I cleaned it up with a twisted... Continue Reading →
I bought an 8mm spot weld drill bit through Frost not so long ago, but it's always been fairly poor at removing any of the spot welds on the car I've tried, so in the end I've given up and sourced this Wieländer and Schill 10mm bit... what a difference in terms of cutting power... Continue Reading →
Repair panel welded in: Ground down and seam welds added in: Definitely a big learning curve ahead on this welding in repairs business! Next section for repair: The drawn cut lines were a bit freehand! Chopped: I'm not surprised it was rusty there was about 1mm of seam sealer between the panels in places so... Continue Reading →
So last back in 2008 when I first had the car I did some tidying up of the inner wing and essentially buried some pretty ropey metal work in filler. Today it was time to reveal the true extent of the rot! On a positive note the repair job had held up pretty well in... Continue Reading →
Rallye Project 