Another NA ***RESTORATION***

[Natehd9]

That's looking very tidy. What are you planning to use for undersealing?

Cheers Tom, going with tigerseal for the seams then a coat of POR15 (still got 5 of the little tins so should be plenty to cover the underside!) Before dinitrol, bought a full underseal kit from Rejel in Schultz cannisters so will be my first experience setting up for a spray gun, looking forward to doing something that feels like putting it back together rather than pulling it apart!

[Natehd9]

Few more hours today, probably not the best day to be welding and grinding, but nevermind!

Started the day by keying the front arches for primer taking them from this:

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To this:

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Then spent a couple of hours having a good clean up before moving on to one of the final suspect patches on the shell, in the driver's footwell where the main floorpan meets the front firewall section, a patch about 5 square cm had rusted through, so out came the grinder! Replacement piece made up and welded in:

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Wasn't sure what to do next and I've been thinking about getting the shell fully clean before moving on to anything else so the next step was smoothing out the boot

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Got another session of wire wheel and chisel to get the rest cleaned up then I've got to decide what to do about under the battery, thinking of chopping out all the crusty stuff and going with a flat plate, can't think why not so unless anyone can make a suggestion?

The plan is ultimately to seam seal the boot and interior with tigerseal and then use raptor bedliner to give a nice hard-wearing finish, seen it a couple of times on Facebook and the like and it looks pretty decent, although it'll mostly be hidden by carpet!

[Natehd9]

Unbelievably I managed to get a second day in on the car this weekend, what a result!

Decided to bite the bullet with the battery compartment, lots of time spent chopping small bits out at a time which ultimately left it looking like this:

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It's an awkward shape in there so a bit of firkling was required, but ultimately it ended up looking fairly decent:

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Spent a bit more time removing the sound deadening from the boot well which ends up looking something like this:

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I've got a couple of bottles of Raptor bedliner paint on order, need to strip the rest of the seam sealer from the interior and boot before that can be done though, hopefully get a good chunk done one evening this week!

[John&Luke]

I've got a couple of bottles of Raptor bedliner paint on order, need to strip the rest of the seam sealer from the interior and boot before that can be done though, hopefully get a good chunk done one evening this week!

Firstly, great work IMO.

Re using Raptor, are you going for colour tinted? I would advise letting any mastic go rock hard before applying the raptor. The raptor paint will set rock hard and if the mastic is soft under it the raptor may crack.

Mask up any holes so you limit overspray. In fact mask everything you don’t want raptor on. It can be a bit messy, and is a bugger to get off. Clean you applicator gun straight afterward, well otherwise kiss good bye to it it the raptor sets.

Keep the updates coming.

J

[Natehd9]

Thanks John, some good advice there!

Staying black I think, still not sure what colour I'm painting the car and black goes with everything!

[Natehd9]

Not much of an update, got a couple of hours in last night to do the last pass over the boot and the voids that pass under the rear shelf before primer, this will be the last time the roll bar comes out so worth doing it well!

I'd put a coat of rust converter on any questionable patches so was presented with this:

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A couple more passes with so 80 grit to give a nice key before primer:

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Next stop - masking and tigerseal, hopefully all the silicone work I've done around the house will come in handy!

[Natehd9]

A bit more time yesterday evening (lucky me!), the plan was to strip any final bits from the interior and then remove all the remaining dodgy seam sealer in preparation for the raptor respray.

I worked my way round the remainder of the driver's side and it was pretty uneventful, I'd already dealt with a crusty bit in the driver's footwell (as can be seen in an earlier post) so that was fine.

I was expecting the passengers side to be more of the same, there was some staining in the passengers footwell that looked like water had been sat near the ECU for a while (seems a common issue, anyone care to explain?), but having gone over it with a wire wheel it didn't uncover any nasties, result!

My luck ran out as I worked my way to the rear bulkhead of the passengers side, right in the last corner (sod's law!) I found this:

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Nothing for it but to cut the crust out and weld in some new metal. It's a tricky bit of the body as you have three skins all meeting at this point, of course it's always the multi-skinned parts that rust!

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By this point it was pretty late so I made a measurement for a replacement piece and marked up some steel. This will have to wait as I'm off next week for a campervan holiday to the Peak District!

Hopefully that'll be the last of the rust... Pretty sure I've said that before!

[Ron_Tomo]

Really useful this to me. Just about to tackle the boot. looks tip top