[car_overhaul] What's This? A Road Car!?

[Cameron 16]

Woo! Well after being lazy for the past week I've been back at it tonight and managed to finish stripping the front end down ready for some serious cleaning! I'd become quite demotivated with the car recently because of the sheer (no pun intended) amount of bolts that have snapped, rounded off, captive nuts coming loose, basically all the s*it you have to put up with when you take one of these cars apart for the first time! The most irritating thing is one of the subframe rear bolts sheared off, so that's created a whole load more work down the line!

 

Anywho I have the engine out now, this was interesting as I don't have the crane up here, so there was some cunning use of paint tins, blocks of wood and hammers to prop the engine in place until me and my housemate lifted it out. I'm so glad to see the back of it tbh, for a start it's painted red and I loathe red engines, but also it means I can give the engine bay a really good going over now that it's out.

 

 

YUCK!

 

The engine bay doesn't actually look that bad! There are some patches of surface rust on the chassis legs, particularly under the battery tray, but nothing that needs major attention. I'm going to carry on stripping everything back then give the bay a really good wash down.

 

 

Here's some images of the chassis legs, which aren't too bad. You can see the dodgy rust repairs behind the headlights, and the amount or metalwork I'm going to have to replace!

 

 

This side pisses me off the most.. that grey s*it has just been slapped about all over the place and looks a right bloody mess! It's also near impossible to remove the stuff!

 

 

On that note I've run into a dead end with getting replacement panels as everywhere seems to be out of stock, so I've reverted to my original plan which is to find a shell and chop the bits I need off it! Also, since my strut top mounts and bearings are shot to pieces I'm going to invest in some GTi6 front dampers and Eibach 30mm lowering springs because, while I was intending to keep it completely standard, I really love the look of a lowered 205! I think it's a nice subtle mod and 30mm shouldn't be too obvious.

 

I've started hoarding the parts to get it back together again, so far I have:

 

90k engine off eBay, which is surprisingly clean!

Gearbox in GWO (mine was crunching very badly in 3rd and 4th)

Brand new offside front wing painted in Miami Blue

Set of black GTI trim & red inserts in good condition (replaces the scratched trims)

 

There's a whole load more bits I need though! I won't make a list as it's about a side and a half of A4!

Edited June 29, 2011 by Cameron

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

The first lesson according to Saint Fenton

 

Thou shalt not bloody paint alloy block engines.

 

 

Here endeth the first lesson.

 

 

Rearmost subframe bolts are easy to sort, pop the carpet up and you can get to the cage nuts in the footwell. It is the front ones that are a c*nt to sort out.

[Cameron 16]

Yep!

 

Thanks Tom, I was hoping it would be as simple as that!

[Cameron 16]

Been scrubbing away at my engine bay tonight.. I decided not to paint it as A - I really can't be bothered and B - it's pretty good under all the grot.

 

[Miles 331 1 Cars]

Red one's are faster thou

[Cameron 16]

I didn't give the car much (any) attention this weekend, so decided to have a quick blast at it tonight and tackle the nearside bodges repairs. The wing has clearly been off at some point as it was much easier to remove than the offside, and also had some fresh sealant along the seams. There's some grey sealant slapped about behind the headlight in the engine bay as there's been a little rust along the seam. Whatever it is it's horrible stuff, but I set at it with a mallet and chisel and got the worst of it off.

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

The crap came off to reveal a pretty half-arsed repair that hadn't even been fully welded in place, there was also a fairly large hole towards the front that had just been covered over with sealant. This patch is going to be removed and I'll try and match the new repair a little better to the original metalwork as I don't want it to stand out like a sore thumb. I figured out that the grey stuff had been put on because whoever repaired it didn't have any paint, so just covered the lot up.

 

The wheelarch side reveals some pretty nasty welds that weren't painted so have already rusted out, what's more is the paint has been burned off the surrounding area so that has also started to rust. It's only surface at the moment so I can just sand it back and paint over it.

 

 

I'm going to be buying a MIG welder in the next week or so, so I can get started on the repairs soon then get it put back together.

[SurGie 54]

That looks like it was originally done the lazy way but at least they thought of protecting it with the sealant, half arsed job tbh, maybe it was for a previous MOT. Im not sure if that would have been done to a 1.9 though

[Cameron 16]

Yeah it looks like it was done for the last MOT or possibly the one before that if it hasn't been driven much.. just a quick bare minimum to pass repair by the looks of it. You're probably right about the 1.9 thing!

[Cameron 16]

Hokay a little more work tonight.. I'm just nibbling bits and pieces at the moment tbh while I'm without a welder or any sheet metal, trying not to get carried away and cut off anything that I won't be able to put back!

 

I started out by removing the bitumen / underseal gunk that had been plastered all over the place in lieu of paint, similar story to the nearside but a different "product" used to "seal" the metalwork. This patch is really quite big so I'm going to have my work cut out (no pun intended) replacing it! Thankfully the majority of the black crap chipped off, no doubt thanks to the lack of any primer / paint / any sort of prep at all, just leaving the area that will be cut out anyway covered in sticky gunk.

 

Before:

 

 

Then I decided to take a different approach to drilling out all the spot-welds and taking the whole headlamp panel off, and instead made some carefully placed cuts so I could separate it and patch up the worst of the holes. This was necessary as the patch had been welded (I say welded.. more glued with a welder) to the headlamp panel as well as the inner wing, making separating them very difficult. This gives me a good visualisation of how to repair the inner wing..

 

Cut here..

 

 

And remove!

 

 

 

I'll be replacing the rusty flange (heh..) of that curved part too as it's pretty dead! I made the next incision vertically to remove the rest of the panel.

 

 

Spot the dodgy repair..

 

 

 

So the car is now looking a bit sorry for itself!

 

 

I've pretty much done all I can now until I can start putting metal back in.. I can probably cut the offending metalwork off the nearside too, but that's just a couple of hours work. I think in the meantime I'll doing a crapload of cleaning parts ready to be re-fitted.

[swordfish210 20]

I'm interested in this build. The front end of mine is beginning to suffer from the old tin worm so i've got to replace the front panel and inner wings at some point...when i can afford it. FYI there is a panel place local to me that can get hold of just about anything if you're looking for complete panels.

[Cameron 16]

More nibbling tonight.. I managed to find a place that has the headlamp panels in stock and have ordered some, so my entire panels can now be removed and replaced rather than trying to get by with patching them up. With this in mind I drilled out all the spot welds and removed the nearside panel. It's pretty obvious that 2 people put this car together, I guess one on each side of the production line, as the spot welding on the nearside is FAR better than the offside! The welds are nicely done, easy to find and drill out, and are much more evenly spaced; whereas the offside are completely random, thousands in one area and none in others.. bloody Frenchmen!

 

Anywho.. progress is as follows - drilly drilly:

 

 

Tuggy tuggy:

 

 

Done! Like I said, far easier than the other side was!

The inner wing behind the headlamp panel is in really good nick so I can keep all of that in place, just need to cut the repair patch out and replace that bit.

 

Car now looking very sorry for itself!

 

 

In other news my OSF wing arrived today, which I bought off a guy on eBay and was supplied painted for £168. I'm really happy with the finish and the paint match seems to be pretty good from what I can see in the garage. The downside is it's a pattern part and doesn't quite fit to the A-pillar, there's a little too much material in the lip if you get what I mean, so the wing sits a bit too proud at the moment. I can gently take this edge down with my grinder though so it's not a massive deal, I'll post pics of that work when I come to put the car back together.

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

Get hold of a spot welder if you can. Makes a very quick and neat job of putting back the headlight panels.

 

Heres some I did earlier

[stu8v 68 1 Cars]

I cant belive the amount of rot.................

 

I must have struck massively lucky with mine barely more than a couple of 1" holes!

 

Keep the motivation it will be worth it in the end. Thats what I keep telling myself LOL

[Cameron 16]

Looks like a really good job there Tom, are those genuine Peugeot panels? The sticker looks vaguely Peugeot-like.

 

I don't think I'll be lucky enough to get hold of a spot welder, I'm going to do the next best thing which is to drill holes in the new panel and plug weld it on. If I grind them back carefully enough I might be able to make them look like spot welds.

 

I've got the really crap job of trying to re-shape that circular depression on the inner wing and reinstating the jack boss that seems to have gone awol. I really want to make the repairs as invisible as possible, obviously getting these plans out of my head and into metal is going to be another thing altogether.. will have to see how I get on!

 

Tom - what paint did you use btw?

[Cameron 16]

MOAR!

 

I went and got some offcuts of 0.9mm sheet from a local fabricators for some pocket change, and decided to start making patches.

Started with the nearside to get my eye in as it's much less severe, so got busy with my angle grinder and soon had a hole..

 

 

..and a nasty looking piece of.. metal.

 

 

So then I got to work on the patch, and since I hadn't done any metalwork for about a year decided to take it nice and slow and go for the make it a little to big and trim it down approach. I had to fold the 90deg seams over using the edge of my tool cabinet and a dead blow mallet and it actually came out really nice! I then used my flap disc on the grinder to get the butt joint as near to perfect as I could to make welding nice and easy and that came out real nice too, to be honest I could quite happily TIG it!

 

 

 

I'm still going to use a MIG to weld everything up, and I'm pretty sure I have my strategy sorted too. I want the joint to be invisible, or as close to that as possible, so that nobody but me (and anybody reading this) would be able to tell it's been patched up. This may be a tall order, but I'm pretty confident! I'm going to make all my welds from the reverse side as A - there's better access, and B - I can leave the weld bead on there rather than grind it back as it'll all be covered with underseal / sealant, which should make the seams nice and strong. Then it's just a case of going over any excess penetration with my flap-disc.

 

Obviously this is all theory and dreaming at the moment, so we'll have to see how it goes!

[welshpug 1,622]

http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=usetharch&action=display&thread=70135&page=1

 

good thread there on making panels and welding into panels etc, worth going to make a cup of tea whilst waiting for the first page to load mind .....

[Cameron 16]

Nice find! I'm gonna sit down and read through that at the weekend, some good work there!

[Cameron 16]

Woop! Got myself a set of 306 GTi6 dampers front & rear, and will be getting some Eibach -30mm springs to match.

 

Now the decision is.. 21mm torsion bars or not?

Edited July 8, 2011 by Cameron

[swordfish210 20]

http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=usetharch&action=display&thread=70135&page=1

 

good thread there on making panels and welding into panels etc, worth going to make a cup of tea whilst waiting for the first page to load mind .....

 

TonyBMW's panel thread is legendary, i was reading it for about the 15th time today at work

[Cameron 16]

Ok so those that read my "Waiting for Parcels" thread will know that I'm not having much luck with the delivery of my new MIG welder. I'm getting impatient to finish the metalwork so I've decided to do as many bits as I can with my TIG.

 

Started off tonight with a nice easy bit - the upright part next to the radiator, and got to use my new spot weld drill. I have to say, its a lot quicker than using my ground down 8mm drill bit as I don't need to drill any pilot holes first! I started by removing the rest of the headlamp panel to expose a very corroded bit behind.. thankfully it's relatively thick so I've decided to make do by grinding off the corrosion, then I'll treat it with some anti-corrosive paint.

 

 

You can see the state of the piece I removed below, it's not likely to survive more than another year so I may as well tackle it now! I cut off the corroded section then used it to create a new piece that I could weld in it's place.

 

 

I don't have a folder so I used the edge of my tool box and a hammer to form the folds..

 

 

It actually came out pretty well!

 

 

All that was left to do was to TIG it in place, then smooth the welds down to try and make the joint invisible.

 

 

 

I put the top plate back on and clamped everything in place to check that it all fits, and reset any bits I may have bent slightly when drilling / hammering etc while taking it apart. Everything still lines up ok, which is reassuring!

[Cameron 16]

So, today was a mixed bag.. Good in that my MIG welder arrived, bad in that I only found out when I got a phone call at work saying the courier was outside, which meant I had to cane it home and meet him! To make things worse I decided to open the box to check everything was there and found I had no torch or regulator. I called SPA again and the courier company had forgotten to send it, so SPA would send me another one, but in my frustration I went and bought another torch on my way home from work so I may well end up with 3!

 

Anywho.. got the welder all set up and checked that it works - it does.

 

 

Took a bit of re-arranging to get it in my garage but finally got it all so I'm happy with it, my TIG sits right behind it too so I can switch to that whenever I need to.

 

I'm pretty keen to get welding now! There's nothing stopping me from getting the front end back together anymore so tomorrow should see a lot of progress.

Edited July 15, 2011 by Cameron

[Cameron 16]

Ok so brace yourselves as there's a lot of pics coming..

 

I've had a really brilliant day today, despite the horrific weather! I woke up early and was really keen to get going to after trying to have a leisurely breakfast I got started. I had already tacked a patch on the nearside inner wing with my TIG, so got my eye in with the new MIG by welding that up fully. I decided to chop the upper part of the inner wing off completely first; as it would make prep, welding and cleaning up the welds afterwards so much easier.

 

 

The welder is soooooo nice to use!

I then ground down the weld so it was nice and smooth, this is going to be the most visible part so it's important that it looks tidy!

 

 

The next thing I had to do was repair the upper part of the inner wing, which was a difficult one as there's a compound curve behind the indicator, and also a double folded ridge that I wanted to blend into. The first thing to do was to clean up all the edges so they were nice and straight, then start making a large patch for the big area I had to remove. This bit wasn't so difficult, just a bit of careful cutting and shaping. The double fold was more difficult as don't have a folder of any sort, so I had to use the rail on the edge of my toolbox and a hammer.

 

 

 

This is the fold I tried to replicate, turned out nice!

 

 

So before I could weld these bits together I needed to make the compound curve patch, which was a bit tricky.. I opted to use my welding gloves as a makeshift deformable support (for want of better words..?) and used a ball-pein to form the curve. It worked pretty well, not amazing but it'll certainly do! I then welded it in place so I could shape the large patch to meet it properly, blended the weld in then tacked the large patch in place.

 

 

It fits right about here..

 

 

Once I was happy with that I welded it up..

 

 

Then smoothed down the inside.

 

 

So then before welding everything in place I assembled it all with a whole bunch of clamps and fitted the headlamp panel to make sure it was all aligned right. I used the holes from drilling out the spot welds to align everything so it should all be exactly how it was before it came apart.

 

[Cameron 16]

Once I was happy with that I welded the whole inner wing up!

 

 

 

I ran a weld along the seam between the two patches as well, rather than just rely on sealant. This should hopefully keep the weather out!

 

 

I gave all the new metal and welds a good coat of anti-corrosive primer, then cleaned all the surface rust off the headlamp panel and did the same for that. I used a hair drier to get the paint to dry nice and quick so I could carry on working; once the paint was dry enough I fitted the headlamp panel back in place, cleaned off the paint where I needed to and plugged all the holes with weld. I re-fitted the top panel as well to complete the corner.

 

 

Then gave the whole thing another good coat of anti-corrosive primer inside and out.

 

 

 

So there we go, I managed to get the whole front corner done in the end! I'm so happy with the progress, and so glad I took my time thinking through the best way to take it apart, where to make the cuts etc so it would be easy to work on and simple to put back together. This is certainly the biggest bit of bodywork I've ever done and I'm so happy with how it's come out!

 

Started the day like this..

 

 

Finished up like this!

 

 

 

I'm going to let the primer harden overnight, then I'll go round all the seams with some grey Tiger Seal to make sure it stays watertight and no crap gets in while I work on the next side. Speaking of which, this corner is probably only 30% of the work.. the offside is a much bigger job!

[Anthony 1,000]

Nice job!

[Cameron 16]

Thanks!

 

Can't wait to get started on the other side now, I'm fed up of looking at that mess!