Renault Estafette Van, Mk2 Cortina GT

So I’m continuing the welding after blasting. A couple of bubbles on the bottom of the passenger front chassis rail where the compression strut bracket is welded on


Only a couple of of pin holes. I’ll soon have that sorted.


Perhaps not. It even went up below the compression strut bracket so that had to be removed too. All grot removed.


Outer, inner strengthener replaced


Starting to rebuild the inner, inner strengthener. The half moon shape in the new bit is the top of a 3” swaged hole.


And the top of the inner, inner welded on. I don’t think these bits were welded together originally, but they are now




And ground back

Outer skin welded back in. Had too use smaller bits welded together as that’s what I had





Ground back nice.





Finally with the compression strut bracket welded back on





This really stressed me out when I saw it getting worse and worse, but in the end it was about 3 hours work and not to bad at all. Am I going to investigate the other side? No. There’s no tell tale signs so I’m going to draw a line. Even though I probably should have a look.

There was a couple of pin holes in the driver kick panel. No photo, but cut it out

And welded a bit in


And ground it back



I filled the pin hole in the middle of the roof by drilling through and plug welding.


Used the blow jet so no distortion. We’ll no more than what the was in the first place. I also filled a metric ton of other holes😁, but no photos. I might get a bit more done tomorrow.

Thanks Teaboy. There plenty more kilos to come- rear chassis rail, boot floor, rear floor under rear seat, roof, tank well. The list goes on, lots of seam welding. I’m trying to go from front to back. I believe a metric ton is a tonne. I’m sadly of the age where we were taught both.

Thanks Rascal 👍

Had an hour or so out the garage before work today. I ground down the underside of yesterday’s patch but no photo. I then ripped out all the under seal from one of the rear arches that the blaster couldn’t remove 


I don’t know what the stuff is but it doesn’t appear to have gone off completely even though it was put there in 2007. The guy who painted it worked in a Peugeot main dealer so may be something they use.

The rear arches are “semi tubbed”. Meaning instead of cutting out the complete tub and replacing with larger items to accommodate wider wheels, the outer half of the tub which is the main restriction, is removed and a sheet of steel curved (bent around a tire) is welded to the inner tub and the rear quarter panel. When I did this originally I only stitch welded the outer to the inner so I run some fat slugs of weld in the gaps


This was the rear bump stop


We’ll it’s half a rear pump stop as I cut the rest off to fit the suspension turret. The bump stops are now on the damper. It’s looking a bit bloated so I cut it off

The chassis section beneath was a bit thin so I cut that out too. The inner strengthener is good. Yay 😁


I made a bit and welded it in


And ground it back


There was no need to replace the other bit of the bump stop, as like I said, it’s not used but refitted it anyway






And that was that. A bit more done.

So how did all the panels turn out after blasting, I here you ask!

Wings





These are pretty good as they were new back in ‘97/98. I think there 1 tear in one near the front after hitting something whilst racing and a few drill holes where I’d used rivets to hold the GRP Mexico arches on.
Bonnet


Amazingly it’s like new. Not a spot of rust.👍👍👍

Passenger door




Pretty good overall. There one hole in one corner of the frame and there inner lip of the door skin at the bottom has some bits missing

Driver door




The outer skin isn’t to bad. A couple of cracks up by the window frame and some holes in one bottom corner. The frame bottom is shot. Could be some tricky repairs here, but all doable. I new this was bad as I’d asked the painter to fill it with clag back in 2007. Obviously it’s got worse

Boot



Generally not to bad but the trailing edge of the frame is shot. I think it was quite thin years ago. Most of it will be sorted with one length of folded steel though.

So all in all not to bad. This cost me another £300 to reveal another few weekends work 😩.

I managed to get a couple of hours in this morning. I new this was grotty before blasting


Made a bit. I ground a bit of 3mm steel to the profile of the swage line, clamped it in the vice with a bit of tin and used a hammer and blunt chisel to bash the shape in.


Cut out the grot and tacked in


Welded


And ground back


I also filled in a couple of trim holes and some pin holes but no photos. Hopefully more on Sunday

Probably too late now but IIRC in one of their recent videos Retropower were figuring out a way of making that area not such a rust trap, can't remember what the solution was though..

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Yes Mr Bay. Still on the rotisserie. Good idea to give it a spin to makes sure all the seam is covered