Somewhere over the Rainbow.

[Blackpopracing]

I've been asked by a lot of people why I have not put this thread on the NSRA forum (as it's on another forum) as I'm an NSRA member & should post on this site.

Fair comment, so here we go

This all started back in Early February, My mate Phil wanted a quick respray on his car so I offered to do it. When it arrived I said my terms for payment would be .....free as long as I could do it how I wanted to.
Phil quickly agreed before I could change my mind!!!

Ther text in the thread will seem a little off as I will copy it over so the timeframes may seem a bit weird until it gets up to date.

It rolled up looking like this, having been at a rodshop for a lot of metalwork & wiring repairs.





And tucked up in its new home for the next few weeks.........errr.....months!!



Phil will bring over the wings, bonnet and a few other items in the next few days.

We had a poke around and found a few extra holes that will need welding up but in general it's fairly sound.

I'm off out to spend the first chunk of his money on sandpaper and other items now.

[Happydaze]

Subscribed! Please do include full details of all materials used! Will be watching that closely!!

Chris

[Blackpopracing]

Cheers Chris, will try to.

Next installment.

Soooooo, went out to local paint factors to get a load of supplies and they are closed for the forseeable due to Covid curse word.

Looks like I'll have to search for mail order supplies then.

I do have some supplies so I made a start, first 3 hours on it produced these results.

The bodyline around the bootlid hump on Phil's car had been blended in when it was first built back in the 80's but Phil wanted it restored. Its all covered in filler here;





So, out with the hammer and a blunt chisel and start to chisel the filler off, top done here;



And then the sides;







A LOT of sanding later got the top of the hump looking like this. I'm not sure what it was painted with back in the day, but the basecoat is like concrete!! I'd be tempted to leave it but there is surface rust under it so I want to treat the metal before I put any paint on it.



I then applied a coat of Hydrate 80 to kill the rust, this will be sanded back prior to primer.



And we have a body seam again



And the amount of filler removed just from that area;



One of the unexpected areas of rust is here - I can get to play with my new welder at least

[Blackpopracing]

Not such a lot of progress today, did my stint at the vaccine centre then did shopping on way home.
Mid afternoon Phip came over with the 4 wings and the bonnet. All the wings are fibreglass so in general they will not need too much work. Fronts need a bit of reinforcing under the light fitting area as this is thin and has cracks around them. Some minor work on the front edges where the gelcoat has chipped but hopefully that is it for those.

Rear wings are in good shape - except I will be chopping them up so they fit over the tyres properly - detailed coverage of this in future updates.

The bonnet appears to be perfect! no rot at all along the central hinge (they all rot there normally) and no cracks on the curved edges where they normally split. There might be one tiny crack, or it might just be a crack in the paint as it does not appear to be on the inside of the metal. Excellent news as these should only need taking back to bare steel & painting hopefully.

I continued to work on the rear hump while Phil swept the inside of the car out and removed the front sheet metal. All Covid safe as we had the door open and the extractor fan running and were at opposite ends of the car. We have also both had our first vaccine jabs.

Further investigation of the rotten A post reveals its a little worse than we thought - when the car was first rodded it had fibreglass covered on the inside of the scallops - sadly the water collected in the scallop and was trapped behind the glass, so it rotted through.

You can see the fibreglass on the passenger side in this photo;



With a bit of heat from the heat gun the glass went soft and popped off fairly easily - this is the offending piece. You can see where all the rust is from the stains.



and the A post where it was stuck to;



Chopped most of the rust out here - but more metal will have to go to get rid of all of the rot.



Interior is pretty sound but the floor needs rust treatment;



And it has suffered a bit over the years from many seat changes and placements, so a multitude of holes to weld up.



There are many more holes in the bulkhead and other areas that will need either welding or some stainless bolts put in to make a feature of the hole if access to weld is not practical.

Car looking a bit naked with front metal removed now



The front grill shell is also in very good shape, needing only a little panel beating to dress a couple of dings out of it.



I really need more supplies to do much more work on it so work may have to wait a few days for those to arrive.

In the meantime I'll try to photo & document more of the car and panels so you can all see what work will be required over the next few weeks.

Progress on the rear hump for today was this section, no nasty surprises thank goodness. It has has a new rear valence under the bootlid a few years ago - this appears to have been done very neatly with very flat welds - so that's good to see.

[jaymin]

nice updates, keep them coming

[Blackpopracing]

You all might wonder about the thread title, but it will become clear soon. This car was in Custom car a couple of months ago in the letters section as Phil has owned it for over 30 years.
When I told Phil I wanted to do it how I wanted I had bigger plans then he ever dreamed of

The reason is I've been bored without a car to build but I dont have space for a second car, nor the desire to own 2 rods. So if I can build another that I can give back (and it won't cost me anything) then it's a win for both of us.

I will start documenting the hours later in the thread as it will be interesting to see how much work is involved in a restoration.

[martin]

Great read, following this with interest.

Sent from my SM-G770F using NSRA mobile app

[Captain Scarlet]

I didn't know it was being restored and there had been so much restoration needed on this Pop,well done Mark and thanks for posting it up on here

[v8pop]

Wikid thread Mark, cracking tea-break read mate. ~ Can't wait for lunch-break.

Cheers. Tim W.

[Blackpopracing]

Yes, there was/is (more to come) a bit of mission creep

[Blackpopracing]

Next bit

Cleaned it up as best I could on the inside, but access is pretty restricted If it was not for the grey rubber 5hit sprayed all over it it would be basic finger sanding.

Passenger side not quite as bad, but its not too good.



Drivers side cleaned a bit;



as was passenger side;



Passenger side outside;





To console myself I stripped the whole of the passenger side of the car;





That's the whole car stripped now apart from door returns, door inner edges, bootlid gutters & roof gutters.

Then had another look at the roof. I pondered drilling out the spotwelds and removing the gutter, but I've heard that this often destroys the gutters.

Then I though about maybe spotwelding a shaped bit of steel behind it after chopping out the worst of the rust. This still would be really difficult to weld though and there is a lot of lead loading right by it.

I think I'm going to take the easy route and do a modern 'bodge' on it. I think with a lot of cleaning up and very careful removal of the top layers of rotten metal and a intensive dose of Hydrate 80 that using modern epoxy panel bonding adhesive I can bond new steel inside the roof to make it solid again. This avoids the welding and lack of access to grind welds back - not to mention any distortion and the fact that the metal is paper thin.

The gutters themselves are in really good condition, its the bodywork behind them that has rotted so although it's not a perfect solution it should be good enough to last another 20 years if I do it properly.

45.5 hours

[Fegsta]

Another grate thread


Sent from my iPhone using NSRA mobile app

[Blackpopracing]

Thanks Fegsta,

So another update dump in my lunch hour for you all

I got a few more hours in today, I stripped the bonnet, it looked perfect but when stripping a lot of filler got removed. I'm not sure why there was so much on it as it looks pretty straight underneath. There are some bad areas though.

I got the gaps pretty good in the end, though its stll a bit tight in this area. I might need to grind the edge back & weld it up again.




All looking good here, inner wing is partially stripped.




This is the worst part that was hidden by the filler, not quite sure how it got damaged like this in the past? note the rusted corner,





The corner was split & rusted out, so it's built up with weld here;




And cleaned back with a little radius on the corner now.




I'm happy with these gaps;



The rear lamp edge was rotted away, so I very carefully built it up with weld - the new welder makes this possible, my old welder would have just punched holes in it as its really thin. It looks messy because I could only literally weld for a fraction of a second or it would melt the metal away.




but it all ground down nicely so I'm pretty pleased with that.




Bonnet open shot;



There is nothing fixing the inner wings at the top apart from the outer wings, I will be making some tabs that will be welded to the bulkhead so the wings can bolt to these.




The bonnet is generally very good, but has split in the usual areas around the central hinge points, someone has already been here before with the welder but had not ground the welds down (lack of access) and had just covered them with filler. I got in as best I could with the Dremel but I'll need to use a finger sander to do the rest. It needs welding again so I'll need to be careful doing that. This is one of the rear splits/welds that needs work.




And the other one.




and one of the front joints that was previously repaired & filled over;



Where the top sections join to the sides is a common place to split, and this bonnet is no exception, more careful repairs needed here;




The next job involves one of my favourite tools the air powered 6mm steel Rivnut tool;




Rivnuts fitted to chassis so inner wings now bolt up nicely;



More tomorrow.

135.5 hours

[Blackpopracing]

More progress today, though not much to show for the time.

I made some brackets and welded them into the A posts so the inner wings now bolt up at the top. Does not look much but this took a fair time as these things often do. The inner wings are nice and solid now.





Then the rest of the afternoon was spent designing and making the front grill brace. Some flat bar and some old steel curtain rail got turned into a nice stiffener. It took a fair time as I had to crawl in under the car to get inside the nose area to measure/fit/weld as I cant move any of the sheet metal until all the fixings are completed. I have drilled small locator holes in the panels so I can use those to align it all again once its removed. The idea with the brace - apart from the stiffness it has added to the sheet metal is it also locates the front end.



141 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Tonights work was taking the front metalwork back off and finishing off the welding on the tabs on the A posts. Then it was on to welding in captive nuts on the passenger A post. This was one of the better ones, I wont show the top one as I ended up chasing holes in the metal as its tin foil thin. I must admit though - that R-Tech welder is brilliant - you can just dial the power right down so it welds the thinnest of metals.


To give myself a break from welding I put on some filler in the 3 areas on the rear that need it;




And a good amount on the front bulkhead. I also put some over the recessed door push metal that I added in the A posts. I did this before welding the captive nuts, so I managed to rub most of this back down and get a second coat on before I packed up for the night.




Another small job was making some spacers to lower the fuel tank slightly as its a bit tight to the boot floor, these are 3mm thick polyproplyene sheet (1 or 2 per side - depending on what is needed) so wont rust out.



143.5 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Quick 1/2 hour before dinner tonight, Phil has modern LED teardrop rear lamps, and while they work well they look pretty aneamic.



I managed to convince Phil that we could do better, so some red light tint was bought. Applied here I think it looks far better, a little polish to smooth the finish and they should look really good. They actually look better in real life as the camera can't capture the transparency of the red.



The lights shine through without any issue - so bright in fact the camera cannot tell its red sidelights and orange indicators that are lit up.



Another coat of filler was applied as well so I can rub that down later and hopefully get another guide coat of primer on top to assess progress.

144 hours.

[martin]

This thread is very informative, I've learn't a few tricks.

Sent from my SM-G770F using NSRA mobile app

[choppedblownpop]

I’m following this on the other channel, but still found myself reading it all again !
Love your enthusiasm and energy, great read, and keep the updates coming


Sent from my iPad using NSRA mobile app

[jsf55]

Been here all along mate, and been through it all several times

[Fegsta]

So what's your background? A man of many tallants that's for sure.

Sent from my KOB-L09 using NSRA mobile app