From floor level down, not much.  Most of the LH sill is original, though.

Roof, subframe skirts, firewall, pillars, swinging panels, rear quarters from bumper level upwards.

. . . and today I zipped in the remaining weld on yesterday's repair, and found a couple of pinholes close by, which I filled in.  Then I drilled a couple of rows of spot-welds and removed the bottom of the rear box-section to gain access to some rusted-out parts of the rear boot floor pressing.



Rob

I snuck in a couple of hours late this afternoon, and here's what happened -



Rob

I guesstimated the dimensions of the repair piece, cut it to size, folded it, hammered in the drain slot (the one which got spot-welded shut at the factory) and made a first attempt at the curve up.



Because the top side was rusty, I couldn't see where the spot welds were.  I worked from the underside with a pair of outside calipers to mark the welds' locations, and drilled them.  Then made my best guess at the cut lines.  The short transverse cuts at front and rear I perforated with an 1/8" drill (yes, slow and laborious).  After some trimming, the repair sat in position, well enough form the profile of the curve and put in some tack welds.



I welded up the drain slot and curve, dressed the welds and painted the under- and inside.  Meanwhile I swept a layer of fine dust out of the box member and breathed some paint into the inside while it was open.  Then drilled the repair section for plug welds.  Final trimming, clamps to hold the section in place, and the serious action started with Mister MIG -



There's still about a 4" section not welded.  I need to cut out and replace a rusted-out section just to the left of it.

And I even beat the afternoon thunderstorm today.

Rob

Rain Stops Play.

That's just about a given.  But it held off long enough so that I could go in with a MAP gas torch, wire brush and dental pick on the front right part of the boot pan, revealing -



Confirming my suspicions really.  The car spent too long outdoors with the driver's front corner facing downhill.

But hey, it's only sheet metal, and I have a welder.

Rob

LHR inner quarter panel, second repair -



And third repair -



Strange.  No afternoon thunderstorm (yet).

Rob

This is the LH inner rear quarter panel, the one which I thought was sound.  But after scraping off body sealer, and a lot of wire-brush work, this is what it looks like:



It's cratered from this side.  So it rusted out, not because water got in from the boot, but because of layers of mud on the underneath.  Did I say "postage-stamp repairs"?  Well, they are now going to be Post-It Note repairs.



The first of (probably) three repairs.  Donor piece: an offcut of an unused part of a Rare Spares floorpan.

And now the afternoon thunderstorm with optional hail has rolled in, right on cue . . .

Rob

One step back and two forward (part LXXVII) -

I discovered rust holes in the lower part of the LHR wheel arch.  Of course, they didn't look all that big when I stuck a screwdriver through, but then as I pinged rust scale off, and chased holes, it all grew a bit.  To the point where it would have been wise to cut the return off the wheel arch, slice out the rotten bit and replace it.

I chose the way of folly.  But with persistence and a few thumbnail-size pieces -



- and it cleaned up OK with the die grinder.

Rob

. . . and the inner RHR quarter panel is repaired.



Am I relieved or what . . .

There's no substitute for fitting the parts carefully before you fit them.  Because when you fit them prior to fitting them, they fit, and only take minimal adjustment when you're welding them in place.  But the inner wheel arch repair got me.  It was too big, so I trimmed it, and then there was some form of hiccup in the spatio-temporal continuum, and the part which was too big a minute earlier fell through the hole, and had gaps a couple of mm wide.  No great problem, though.  I could bridge the gaps with weld.

Next: holes in the inner LHR quarter panel.  I am seriously considering postage-stamp repairs for these.  Fabricating the complete inner quarter panel repair was worthwhile, but time-consuming nonetheless.

Rob

December.  Either 35+ and humid, or 18 and raining.  But this afternoon Mister J. Pluvius got distracted, so I zipped in the missing part of the wheel arch return -



and primed the inside.

Rob

Blacky (from FB-EK) has reproduced them.  I think he goes by the same "handle" here.

Calling Mister Black . . . please respond . . .

Rob

Thank you gentlemen.

I'm learning that the better the replacement section fits, the more it "falls into place" when time comes to weld.

Anyway, because the whole area is open, it seemed good to put some primer on -



Rob

I'd been preoccupied for a while about the wheel arch profile in the lower outer RHR quarter panel repair.  But it's better to do than fret.  So I marked out the lip of the LHR wheel arch on the paper pattern I used for the outer quarter panel repair, and then turned the paper over, marked out the profile on the repair section, trimmed and folded.  That was easier than I thought.  Here is the repair section, shaped and ready to go, clamped in place over the old panel:



The masking tape is the guide for the fateful angle grinder cut.  Which I did.  Then cleaned up the mating edges, clamps and masking tape to hold in position, and some tack welds.  Of course, it all "wanders" when you start tack-welding, and I had a couple of spots where the edges jammed up hard against each other, causing a dimple.  But I found that "relieving" with a 1 mm cutting disc helps.  You don't need to cut right through either . . .

Align edges, tack, planish, repeat; lay in some welds, quench, planish, grind, repeat -



Not bad for a day's effort after a loong break.

Rob

Buy replacement stabiliser bar pin kit from Rare Spares.  Contains the studs, special washers, rubbers and nuts.

Rob

Craig,

Take it round to Shane at Electroplating Technology in Queanbeyan.

Rob

Craig,

The manual is lying at this point.  As far as I can tell, the pin is inserted, then staked in place with a Big F. Press.  You'll have to drill the pin from each side with a 1/8" or 9/64" drill, at least to the depth of the drive gear, possibly more, and then drive the remainder out.

Mark the shaft and drive gear for correct alignment before disassembly, on account of the gear having 13 teeth (go figure!).

When reassembling, use 3/16" diameter steel rod.  I make the pin about 1 mm longer than needed, and use a vice to peen the ends over.  You'll notice that the holes in the drive gear are closer to 3/16" diameter, but the hole in the distributor shaft is 5 mm.  Guess which parts were specified by Germans, and which by Americans . . .

General Distributor Reconditioning Hints:

There's a thin Bakelite sheet on top of the advance weight plate.  It always breaks and moves out of place.  Clean everything up properly and Super-glue the remnants onto the weight plate.

Between the drive gear and distributor body is supposed to be a Bakelite washer, about 0.015" thick from memory.  These also fall to bits, leaving the distributor shaft with too much end float.  Generally, I cheat with a steel washer, reamed and trimmed to size, then "enthinnened" to suit.

You can, if you're brave, recondition the advance weight pivot pins with a MIG welder and a file.  You need a deft touch and some bearing blue.  Similarly, you can shrink the holes in the advance weights using a centre-punch and care.  If the slot in the advance weights is flogged out, you can narrow it down by using a vice.  3/16" ID fibre washers are ideal to put between the advance weights and the shaft plate.

Check the fit of the distributor cam on the shaft for looseness (side-to-side).  If too sloppy, find another distributor to recondition.  Or change to a Pertronix module (no points).

Check the fit of the two halves of the breaker plate.  If there's side-to-side slop between the two halves, you can usually bring it back by expanding the swaged part of the upper breaker plate over something like a tapered reamer.  Or the right size Morse taper.

Vacuum advance units suck.  No, seriously.  Apply lips to the pipe union and suck.  If good, the diaphragm will retract and stay there if you block the opening.  I think there's a guy in Qld who reconditions vacuum advance units.  Check that the earth braid is present and in good condition.  If it's missing, replace it with small-size desoldering braid.

Best of luck.

Rob

Craig,

Your power rheostat setup is essentially what GM recommended.  It goes in series with the load (if I understand right).  And for the load, the manual suggested making up a lamp bank with switches.  The ammeter is needed to measure the current.

Using constant-current loads allowed me to do away with the ammeter, but at the cost of less-than-ideal behaviour when turning off the high-current loads.

Rob

Craig,

The generator test setup's three phase motor could do with more oomph, but you make do with what you can scrounge from work . . .

The other problem's got to do with switching transients in the dummy load.  I'm using low-dropout voltage regulators with booster transistors as constant-current loads.  All fine in theory, but the practice is a different matter.  The regulators can turn off way faster than the generator can react.  I had an FJ Bosch generator on full song, and turned the 20A load off.  There was a coughing sound, and the magic smoke came out.  The field current had to decay somehow, and it did so by generating a huge voltage spike, which took out the lower-current sections of the dummy load, and the cooling fan.

I've thought up a soft-start and -stop system, but it'll use a voltage reference and op-amp instead.  Still to be implemented.

And don't admit that you've had experience at rewinding DC machine armatures.  I have a couple of 6V Delco generators needing armature rewinds . . .

Rob

Craig,

I've got a Bosch generator which spat the armature windings on the way out Harv's one fine afternoon.  It's basically only good for mechanical parts, and brushes.

Rob

A couple more mouthfuls of elephant *



There were a couple of rusty parts of the rear quarter panel to repair, above the parting line.  It came together well, but it's not good to weld when it's windy.  I was waiting for the brief moments of calm before pulling the trigger.

Rob

* As the old joke goes, "Q: How do you eat an elephant?"  "A: One mouthful at a time."