1st January 2022

Well a new year so start out as I intend to continue....again 😀 
Pulled half of the spare wheel well out, widen the space 35mm and see how it looks.

First picture marked and made first cut

Second picture leaving this space.

The piece removed

Showing tin worm holes.

New wheel in place...test fit should be OK. Will need to sit  vertically while the original spare was on a lean to the right hand side. Will require a slight modification to the wheel retaining piece. 

Simple task,

The new space.

I will cut the rusted bottom out a weld in a new shaped piece  replacing the rust coloured portion.

This should be a simple metal shaping exercise to get it nicely curved like it was always there. then two short low curvature pieces to fill the 35mm gap.
A coat of paint and nobody would know it wasn't factory original.
This was the GT model that had wider wheels.... trust me :-) 

Tomorrow's task to cut, shape and weld it all back together

2nd January 2022

Half way through the second day Modified to fit, marked and cut out rusted part.

Not immediately apparent is the reshaping of the lip to fit around the existing fuel tank captive nut which sits in a slight depression next to the wheel well.
Attached the left part back in with some temporary screws to check fit. The 30mm file handles holding the two parts in correct alignment,
The patch panels will be a 240 x 300 piece with single curvature to fill the big hole and a couple of 30mm wide strips to give the correct width.
Hammer weld it in place, file off any lumps and squirt on some primer ready for painting.

Some light relief  :-)

December 30th 2021 Clear out boot and fuel tank area

 We tend to forget when trying to do a time line of a restoration job of all the little tedious steps and dead ends. I recall my friend Clay Mileson finally getting a shiny stainless steel firewall installed in his 40 Ford sedan. He had spent weeks shaping trial fitting, reshaping trial fitting again until it was finally in place. A thing of real beauty. But as I commented to him at the time, the write up will just say "A stainless steel firewall was installed".  with no metion of the blood sweat and tears it took to make it happen, like it was an simple afternoons work.

Restoring any old car is a journey. You first have to fix all the damage caused by age, wear and tear and rust. Then comes the tricky part, that is "unrepairing" all the bodgy stuff that went before.

Now my intention was to simply spray some bargain bright yellow paint on my Minx. But it seemed silly not to fix all the things that would annoy me for evermore if I left them. These defects would be more obvious without all the patina of age and mistreatment hiding them.

So today we (the royal "We" :-) ) pulled out the fuel tank and rear wiring loom. Just as well as wherre I was intending to repair some dodgy welding had the LH tail light wiring hiodden behind the panel.....

and fuel tanks and naked flames, we will not even go there :-)

Spare wheel well, what can I say water ingress, rust, perforated panel.

Not all bad as my new wheels are about 30mm wider than the space so I will cut it out and replace with a slightly wider well. With luck I ay find a modern vehicle with one 200mm wide that can donate the part,

Cleaned up around the wheel arch on right side, ground down some lumps and will sand back and prime.

These two pictures show previous quick tack weld repair so I could mount the new fuel tank.

These welds will be tidied up and ground flush, the second one will have an original style nut retainer added as I still have the original square captive nut.

Left side of boot area just needs cleaning up and priming.

Not apparent in these pictures but the tail light mount has been straightened so that when the tail light assembly is refitted with a new rubber it will actually seal without all the BS  ( see previous post) that I had already removed. If it is the right shape the seals will work.

One dent to coax out

That is another afternoons progress.

28th December 2021 The pull down continues

 It was apparent that the DPO had put some time and effort into adding sealer of some sort around the inside of the boot and the front and rear glazing. I was a little confused as to why he would have sealed inside the boot thus preventing any water getting out???

As I mentioned previously it was very difficult to extract the rear screen.

I had to carefully cut away the "black stuff" which must have been windscreen sealer in a previous life to release the rubber. Strangely the rubber seals both front and back were soft and pliable, good enough to reuse after a wash. I worked around the boot removing as much of the BS (Black Stuff) as I could, then got to work on the rear window aperture. The BS was 5mm thick in some places and didn't want to let go. However I persevered using special tool KJ 285 (otherwise known as an old 1/2" wood chisel :-)  ) 

Now I could see what was going on  I finished the job off with a rotary wire brush and there before was the reason the seal was leaking,

Pictures of driver's side . First doesn't reveal the problem but with a light behind the panel all becomes clear in the second picture. The third being a closer view..

 The next few pictures shot show the rough finish on the seal lip.

This picture shows the left side of the rear seal. There had been a repair done in this area as well. The silver piece is the back of a 12' steel rule showing the 5 or 6 mm dip in this area. Again it prevents the seal doing the job it is there to do. This area will be reshaped and repaired to follow the bottom of the seal. This probably would not let water inside initially, but water pooling under the outside of the seal lip would cause a rust hole eventually.

The pointer shows the lumpy repair to the lip the boot seal fits over. This causes it to sit incorrectly and allows water inside.

It would seem that repairs had been made around the rear window at some point and the finish on those repairs was the primary cause of failure to seal. The welding was left very rough and the hole I discovered on the drivers side may have been full of welding slag and not noticed.
The seal would have not sealed correctly because the  lumpy welding would have spread it "open" in a few places. A little water ingress to unpainted welding and rust happened. Water runs inside boot and car.
Owner then applies seal around the rubber to stop this, but by now it is too late the damage is done. I am guessing after  the lack of success  in stopping it leaking a new seal was installed, but without removing all the old sealer. The problem continues until  the car gets disposed of as too hard.

This guesswork perhaps shows that when fixing problems with windscreen seals you first check that where it goes is clean and straight. It would seem that there were a few areas around the rear screen and the boot lid seal that had been welded up but left lumpy, thus preventing both seals doing the job they were designed for. A seal in good order correctly installed should keep water out without needing to apply several tubes of windscreen seal compound.

In the case of the obvious hole, it would never has sealed under the rubber.

I will tidy up the lip around the rear screen before trying to reinstall the rubber and glass.

Just because you can't see any of this when everything is in place does not mean it doesn't matter.

Also several areas where the boot lid seal fits need the same treatment.

Having done this I would suggest that both seals will work as intended keeping water outside without any additional sealer needed.

Much more work needed to get everything the correct shape

Silly Season work

 Well a few weeks have slipped by. The Silly season is here and as usual everyone in head office seems to want projects they should have started in June completed yesterday.
Then they all dash off on leave having successfully disrupted everyone elses plans.

So Christmas day and back out to my shed.
It seems strange that the incidence of urgent faults seems to cease over the holiday break, almost as if removing staff fiddling with the equipment and suddenly it all just keeps on works correctly :-)
The world could be a better place if we  just removed all the annoying people :-)  
Politicians, telemarketers, people sending you scam emails and such like 

A string of pictures.
A DPO (Dumb Previous Owner) decided that squirting some sort of black "poop" into every place he could see around the boot and engine bay would be a rust prevention measure.
Now it is rock hard, cracked and would be harbouring moisture if I didn't live in Longreach.
Getting it out without causing further damage is a challenge.
Whatever this stuff is it does/did not prevent rust. In fact there is fresh rust  under the gunk or at least rust after it was inserted.

It will be impossible to get it all out so I will extract as much as possible, then pressure clean the entire area, sand blast and paint.
After this I will introduce the ultimate rust stopper into all those impossible to get access to places to prevent any future rusting.

There are some folk out there who should never be allowed tools.

The best rust preventative in the world.
A clue made in Australia and involves Fish :-)

Minx adjusts the priorities....again December 2021

 The 66 series VI Minx has pushed to the front of the work priority list again.

What can I say she is a pushy little Minx and is or was currently running and road legal
Just went over the brakes with all new seals to master and slaves.
Found a blocked hose to the rear brakes which may have explained the poor braking.

Jim Withers to the rescue and new hose to complete the job.

Some pictures of it as work progressed

The self adjusting rear slave cylinders had been played with by a previous owner and were non functional so a little re-engineering to make them work as they should. The design of the little ratchet adjusters seems strange to be with parts that look like they should be assembled differently.
Some creative work was also needed with the handbrake  as it had also been "improved" by a previous repair. I think I slipped in a new inner to the handbrake cable ten years ago when I first got the car which seems to be about 15mm too long to get the adjustments right as the handle is fully up before the handbrake operates. My bad :-)

So there she was back on her wheels.

Decided to clean around the master cylinder area while doing the work and decide it looked terrible as did the paintwork and interior. It was after all purchased sight unseen as a parts car for my Rapier project. Obviously required more than a cut and polish so referring back to pictures of 10 years past where she got a yellow nose I decided that I may as well repaint..
And it seemed that if I was doing that some orthodontic work to straighten her smale would be needed.

When I brought it home the front bumper had a serious bend it it which I did a quick straighten of but didn't bother with the grille. As with all these little jobs they grow. So we do a better job of caressing the bumper back into shape and straighten the grille. before squirting some new paint on,

Of course if I paint the body all the tatty trim parts will look even worse. With the body looking like a barn find it didn't matter. 

This is the shiny trim part that lives across the top of the grille....should be able to straighten it :-) 

Was thinking of leaving the front and rear screens in but decided it would forever annoy me so out they came as well. Windscreen was easy but someone had run a full tube of black sealer right around the rear rubber which made getting it out a bit of a chore. The rubbers both look like they had been replaced at some stage and both are soft and pliable so I will give them a wash and reuse.

I just want it looking tidy not a back to factory original restoration.

Removed the bonnet and boot lid as well so I can repaint them properly.

As can be seen from the pictures the rubber gaskets, draught rubbers, furflex and all interior trim is in a poor state. I actually was considering just parting the car out. The shell is relatively rust free. The floor pans have a few pin holes but I will clean, rust rinse and paint them with thick paint to keep any further moisture out.

Add note:  The button popped out and kept going.
There is a little lip on the soft metal casing that had snapped off.
No suitable replacement in my cache of parts so I re-engineered it better.

Additional pictures

Broken bit

New metal retaining piece

Finished item

May need to modify the spare wheel well to allow my spare to fit where it is supposed to go.

Retiring from full time work next year so will be able to push ahead with some of my projects instead of  working.