Ready for the move..

I'm going to be moving the car to a new garage in a couple of weeks or so - going on holiday to France until then - hoorah!.

I thought it might be interesting to see the whole car as it is now in my in-laws' garage. Won't be in there for much longer..much to my Father-I-L's great relief...and I think my Mother-I-L is looking forward to having the swallows back, nesting in the rafters. The Swallows originally moved out when I moved in!

I'm constantly thinking about final colour for this car even though, realistically, I probably won't be painting it for at least another two years!!.. I've always thought it would definitely be Viper Green (911 top) or possibly Conda Green like the Max Moritz 914 (upper middle). But then I saw this lovely white one on A J Serrano's site (lower middle). Decisions decisions...still, plenty of time to decide. The bottom pic is of my old genuine six cylinder in Iridian or Iridescent Blue(at least I think it was something like that?).

Door Frame Stiffening

In preparation of getting this car finally onto the Rotisserie(!!) I needed to make some door frame stiffeners. These are just bars of hollow section steel bolted to the top door hinge point and the shoulder fixing point of the seat belt.

The idea is that when the body-shell is lifted up, these stiffeners prevent it from flexing and warping - especially if the main longitudinals (chassis members) are compromised by rust.

I painted the stiffeners in Red Zinc Primer to keep the rust off. (You can also see the flared wheel arches in the pic..can't wait to get these babies on soon!)

Here are detail pics at the fixing points..

Trunk - First coat of Epoxy Primer

Once the Trunk and Rear panel were fully cleaned (or at least as best as humanly possible!), I sprayed on the first coat of Epoxy Primer.

This was my first adventure with the SprayGun  - who knows if my water trap setup made the slightest bit of difference???

I've got to say it took a bit of time to get the hang of the SprayGun and still needs more practice. It's tricky to get the right pressure so the spray goes on smoothly and doesn't 'orange peel'. I think ideally for thicker Epoxy paint a 2.0mm or 2.2mm nozzle would be best - I only have a 1.8mm and the spray was a little 'weak'.

The other trick I learned the hard way is to make sure the hole into the paint reservoir is clear so as the paint empties, it quickly replaces the void with air - otherwise it doesn't vapourise smoothly and efficiently..I am a proper 'anorak' now!

Anyway, here are the results...not the best and plenty of orange peel. But as it's a base layer it's not significant as it will be sanded out later.

And the rear panel too...

Trunk Floor - Final Strip & Clean Up

OK, more pictures of nudity...nude metal that is; sorry to get your hopes up. Here's the trunk/boot area with all the paint stripped. I cleaned off the surface with thinners and then thoroughly with degreaser. I believe the Epoxy paint won't stick well to metal cleaned with thinners alone as it leaves a residue.. I also Kurusted the pitted areas in the metal - I'll find out if that's affected the Epoxy bond when I come to sanding.

Detail shots..I decided to remove all of the factory sealer. I could have left it but it gives me peace of mind as to the state of the metal under it. I will re-seal critical areas before the next coat of Epoxy.

Did the rear panel at the same time..

Trunk Floor - Final Fit and Weld

The Legend of the Trunk Floor continues...I hear you all catching your breath in anticipation!!

Here's the replacement floor to fill that almighty hole. You can see I've drilled the holes in the floor for the plug-welds and cleaned up the metal where the welds will be (around the holes and along the top edge of the pan). This is a view of the bottom of the floor. As part of it will be inaccessible once welded in, it needs to be rust-proofed now. So I've used epoxy primer which doesn't need a top coat to make it waterproof and hence, rustproof (whatever that means!).

 Here's a pic of the top of the pan, which I can paint later. You can see more holes for plug welding to the main car body.

 More holes!!!..and the areas that will fit against the car body are coated with weld-through primer. (Basically this is a spray metal primer with copper particles in it. These allow the electric arc to pass through the primer when welding - but it also helps prevent rust in areas that are inaccessible after welding in place).

 Now, despite being as precise and careful as I could, I made a bit of a mistake when fitting the floor the first time and had to back-track to correct. Basically, at one point, I'd made the gap between the new floor pan and the car too large, so I had to fill-in with sheet - cut and curved to fit. Here's what I mean..

Below you can see the new pan fits much better now..nice and snug. I was looking for no more than a 1.0mm gap. Mostly the pan sits tightly against the car..see later pics!!

For whatever reason I couldn't get the floor to sit flat at these corners so I had to weld-in small spacers. I wonder if the pressing of the pan at these points is difficult to do at manufacture, as it's less crisp and precise than other folds in the pan. Generally the fit is really good. Here's a weld-primed spacer at one end anyway..

The floor is dropped in and carefully and accurately positioned. To get a really precise fit, you need to hammer here and there to get things flat and to line-up but it's simple enough. Here's some pics of the plug and tack welds to hold the floor in place...

Now the final welds to connect the tack welds. I moved from one side to the next along the top seam and did lengths of roughly 40mm at a time so I didn't create too much heat..

Here it is fully welded in place...

Next it needed to be ground smooth and primed. I stupidly forgot to take a pic of the plug welds along the back edge before I painted with primer. At this stage I ground down the welds and cleaned with a wire-brush on the angle grinder. Then I brushed-on Epoxy Primer nice and thickly onto and into the rear seam...

Here's a pic showing the main seam weld once it was ground smooth. It will ultimately be hidden under a re-inforcement plate so I intentionally didn't grind too far, so as not to thin-out the metal too much. It's already quite thin on the 'car side' from previous rust..

For now, I have just Epoxy primed the rear seam both on the top of the pan and beneath. Ultimately, I will apply plenty of seam sealer over this primer to protect from rust more fully. This is how the floor was finished at the factory.. I hope it lasts longer than it did originally! Here are more pics of the finished, primed seam on top of and under the pan.

I temporarily sprayed any other exposed metal with cheapo primer until I get to spraying it properly with the good stuff!..out.

Trunk Floor - Spacing Strip

You might remember this big hole in the rear boot/trunk of the car...it gave me nightmares!

I have a replacement floor to put in. It's largely cut to fit already and nearly ready to install. But because I have made repairs to the rear-most panel of the car the fit of the floor along the back edge is inconsistent - at worst, there's about a 2mm gap.

So I decided to make a strip to fill this gap and weld the floor to that... I used a strip 2mm thick (made sense!)

I cut a strip to size and drilled the holes for the plug-welds every 30mm...

I haven't done plug-welding before..so had a practice to avoid ruining the rear panel. Basically you clamp the drilled piece tightly to the base piece, aim the welder at the middle of the hole and "fire"! Making sure the heat and wire-feed are just right to get a strong 'bond'..

Once I'd got the hang of it..on to fitting the spacer to the rear panel in the car. First though, I dropped in the floor, lined it up and marked the position with a Sharpie. I knew the height of the floor thanks to Kev at DDK. It's 80mm deep if you must know!! You should be able to make out the line in the pic below..

The strip was clamped in place and plug welded in..

Here's the what the back of the panel looked liked as I went along with the plug welds. If you can see the back of the weld you can check you're getting enough 'penetration'! ooer missus..

Here's the strip welded in fully..(at each end of the strip, you can also see the 2mm re-inforcing plates - roughly 40mm x 120mm - that I welded in. These are where the original bumper re-inforcements were and are especially important if I'm going to put the shell on a rotisserie later).

I need the strip flat and smooth ofcourse, so I can weld the lip of the floor onto it. So I ground it down and sprayed it with weld primer; ready for the floor to go in. Done!

OK, I'll come clean! From this post, you may think all went smoothly and was fairly straight-forward. Well no...I achieved the finished result on my second attempt and actually had to weld the strip in 3 separate sections so I could follow the curvature of the rerar panel; each section was roughly 360mm long. The first time I did it, I welded one long piece of about 1080mm. I wasn't watching where I was going and hadn't positioned it properly. In short, I spent the best part of a day grinding out the 30 odd plug welds to remove the first attempt. It is a mistake I will NOT be making again..oh the shame!! Still, onwards and upwards....