A quick update on the Anglia, I've been performing some surgery on the back of the car. This has been a pig of a job and I'm properly curse word off with the thing, covered in little burns and I'm sitting here slathered in Savlon to ease the pain.
So I started on the rear passenger side which was the worse of the two, basically the metal was like tin foil and just came away with the wire wheel on the grinder. The filler was as thick as my thumb and took about an hour to get it all off. Underneath it was clear the car was rear ended quite a long time ago and repaired well but heavily filled and it's just rotted through the metal over the years. So this is what I cut out...
...leaving me with this big hole to fill!
However all is not bad because I have some shiny stuff to weld to for once. There was literally nothing to work with so I had to make it up as I went along, but I made up a couple of little sections for the ends and then was going to follow the curve round by the shape of the bodywork above. So these are the end bits:
As you can see one has a curve and the other has a fold, so the bit in the middle has to blend from one to another with a slight curve along its length. Gah!
I wasn't too concerned how pretty this looks because it is all covered but a thin panel on top, a pathetic attempt from Ford which really should have been the back of the car but instead is a thin pre-rusted piece of junk that just rots the car from the back forward and it's rivetted on from what I can work out. However, because I have it off the car I can paint and wax the back which will stop that happening and it also has the added bonus of hiding my duff handywork.
I should have really taken more photos as I went but I was getting in a right grump under the car, covered in curse word, covered in little burns and unable to see what I was doing. So this is the result of a whole day's work:
It actually doesn't look that bad now I look back on it and once it's filled and painted it will be hidden forever. The back panel doesn't fit particularly well as I could have pulled the bumper mount out a bit further but I'll deal with that with a hammer if I have to...
So I started on the rear passenger side which was the worse of the two, basically the metal was like tin foil and just came away with the wire wheel on the grinder. The filler was as thick as my thumb and took about an hour to get it all off. Underneath it was clear the car was rear ended quite a long time ago and repaired well but heavily filled and it's just rotted through the metal over the years. So this is what I cut out...
...leaving me with this big hole to fill!
However all is not bad because I have some shiny stuff to weld to for once. There was literally nothing to work with so I had to make it up as I went along, but I made up a couple of little sections for the ends and then was going to follow the curve round by the shape of the bodywork above. So these are the end bits:
As you can see one has a curve and the other has a fold, so the bit in the middle has to blend from one to another with a slight curve along its length. Gah!
I wasn't too concerned how pretty this looks because it is all covered but a thin panel on top, a pathetic attempt from Ford which really should have been the back of the car but instead is a thin pre-rusted piece of junk that just rots the car from the back forward and it's rivetted on from what I can work out. However, because I have it off the car I can paint and wax the back which will stop that happening and it also has the added bonus of hiding my duff handywork.
I should have really taken more photos as I went but I was getting in a right grump under the car, covered in curse word, covered in little burns and unable to see what I was doing. So this is the result of a whole day's work:
It actually doesn't look that bad now I look back on it and once it's filled and painted it will be hidden forever. The back panel doesn't fit particularly well as I could have pulled the bumper mount out a bit further but I'll deal with that with a hammer if I have to...