1986 Porsche 911 - with added E46 M3

Here you go...

Yes, I am still alive and kicking.

I've been away for a few days, 'darn sarf'.

The Doc was landing at Heathrow last Friday, now that her secret mission is completed so I met her in Wembley.

I had booked B&B which offered free on street parking but apparently that doesn't include days when there are events at the stadium.

I had managed to coincide with both football and rugby matches on consecutive days so it cost me sixty quid in parking permits.

As I found myself in London on a Saturday morning it meant that I was a long way from Ten Acres Cafe but the Doc found this place, which was half decent and didn't have a menu consisting only of variations on smashed avocado.




By lucky coincidence, there was a band playing at the arena in Wembley on Saturday night.




It was cheaper to see them in France last year than it was to see them in London.

Sunday we called in to see my daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law and the very soon to be launched massive bulge that will be my grandson.

Anyway, there has been nothing exciting happening in the tent.

The job at hand is cleaning the driver's side floor to prep for paint.

I did the large areas with the wire wheely thing on the grinder but now I'm into all the fiddly bits where you can't get the grinder in.

I tried a drill with a wire brush in it but it was too difficult to use.

I ended up with these tiny brushes.




In the Dremel with a flexible shaft thing.




Where I am working, in the picture above, there is the chassis rail on the left and the outer floor on the right drops down to the same depth as the chassis.

This leaves a trough the length of the floor where you can't get the grinder in to remove the underbody coating.

As you might imagine, cleaning all that off with a Dremel has taken ages and it doesn't leave any photogenic results.

One part that is definitely not photogenic is this flange on the chassis rail.




It is quite pitted with rust and I am concerned as to what might be going on in the seam with the floor.

It is going to have to come out and be replaced.


Cheers.

You live in the country with the best contemporary music of allsorts, but go to a concerts of some german copycats??? ;-)

Cheers, Phil.

The thread is full of German cars, it seems like the right thing to have some German Rock music to go with it.  



I'll bet that was a good show.



Yesterday's exciting discovery...




Was that there might be some rust on this car.

I couldn't ignore it, I started cutting it out.




When I lifted it away, it was a bit scabby in there.




It doesn't look too bad, what is the piece of chassis like?




It is a good job that I'm replacing that bit.

I gave the area of floor a good clean up.




I think I will just treat the floor, it doesn't need replacing.

That hole that is in the picture above is from the spot weld drill.

I used some of that phos clean stuff on it, you can see where it has gone black straight away in the pitted area.




That was shiny when I cleaned it up with no sign of any rust remaining but it must have been hiding in those pits.

I didn't bother making the replacement piece for the chassis because it had started raining whilst I was in the tent and I didn't fancy walking up to the shed and getting soaked, might make it next time.



Cheers

At the moment I'm not really enjoying this, it is starting to feel like a chore.

I am doing little bits and pieces just to keep going until I regain my motivation.

Last night I got some more spooge into the bottom of the chassis leg, just in case.




I had my roughed out chassis repair section.




This needed trimming to size and drilling for plug welding, so I did that.




Tonight I wanted to get some epoxy inside the chassis so I masked off where I will need to weld.




I also masked the edges of the repair section.




I mixed up a drop of paint and daubed it on.




And inside the chassis.




That's it.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get it unmasked and get some weld through primer on those bits then it will be ready to weld in.


Cheers.

There is a bit of work to put it back together.

It will need new brake pipes, fuel system back on, rear axle back on (not looking forward to that, it's a big lump), prop shaft, exhaust (which has been repaired), all the heat shields and underside plastics and the interior to re-fit.

When all that is done I do want to whip the front wings off to sort out the inner wings which, hopefully, will not involve any welding.

There's still a bit to do, isn't there?


Tonight I unmasked the bits I painted yesterday.




I painted on some weld through primer which soon dried because it is like summer at the moment.

I got it tacked in to place.




Because this is 2mm thick I had the power turned up higher than it has been for months.

I didn't want to weld the full run along the bottom edge in one go in case the heat made it go wiggly, so I did it a bit at a time.




I was in a horribly uncomfortable position doing that but luckily I only had one big spark get me.

It cleaned up ok.




I gave it a drop of spooge because I'm not quite ready to paint the floor yet.




After that I was under there just having a quick look around to see what I had left to do.

Once I realised that I wasn't going to be painting it for a while, I gave it a second coat of spooge, just in case.




Cheers.

Thanks, Dan.

My work rate has slowed down somewhat, I have done that specifically to help you keep up.

It has absolutely nothing to do with me being bone idle...



I can't remember when I was last here, might have been last Thursday.

There was nothing to report on Friday because I was totally done in after work due to the heat and the fact that my left-hand man phoned in sick which really made it a hard day.

I was still feeling lethargic at the weekend so I just pretended that I didn't have an old banger in a tent on the drive.

Back to the grindstone today and my man is back at work so I survived the day and still had a bit of energy left when I got home so I remembered about the tent.

I have been working on the driver's side floor and it is almost ready to clean up and paint.

The only thing left to sort out is this.




You might be wondering what 'this' is.




It is, or rather it was, a stud for securing the exhaust heat shield.

As you might see,




There aren't many threads left on there so it might be a little bit awkward screwing anything on to it.

Normally, I would drill a hole, screw a stud through there and weld it from the inside but I can't get to the inside because of the plastic heater ducting.

Removing the ducting is a total no go because of the amount of dismantling it would involve so I had to come up with another plan.

What I came up with was this.




There are two different sized washers with a stud brazed to them.




The plan is to make a hole the size of the smaller washer then I can drop it in from above and the large washer will stop it falling through.

It will also give me something to go at when I'm welding it in.

I got another one of the small washers and dropped it over the old stud.




This gave me something to draw around.




I also marked up a target for where the stud needed to land.




Then it got cut out and the hole was opened up to size with a die grinder.




That rusty thing inside the hole is a lump of 2mm plate that I put in there to protect the plastic trunking.

This was what I was aiming for.




It was quite hot in the tent and I fancied a cup of tea so I painted my stud thingmy with weld through primer to give me an excuse to go for a break whilst it dried.




I'm pretty sure that the primer is a waste of time because the thing is so small that it will all burn off, but at least I got a nice cup of tea out of the process.

So paint dried, tea drunk, it was time to tack it in.




That looked ok so I welded it in.




It cleaned up ok.




So it got the old faithful spooge treatment.




I should have a bit more of a chance of screwing something to it now.




All that took me two and a half hours, if I owned a stud welder it would have taken about two and a half seconds...

I think the floor is ready to clean up and start sanding ready for paint now, assuming the clean up doesn't spring any surprises.


Cheers.

As I mentioned in the last report, it was quiz night last night.

Our football expert showed up after being AWOL for several weeks so naturally, there were no football questions...

The Doc is still half a world away in Asia on a secret mission and as I might have said before, she is the brains and I am the looks in our marriage.

Despite all these setbacks, we were triumphant in the quiz but it was by the skin of our teeth.

Still, it doesn't matter how far ahead of the opposition you are, a win is a win.

It has been quite warm again today and I was expecting the tent to be unbearable again but when I got home there was a bit of a breeze and it was actually quite reasonable in there.

I am prepping the driver's side floorpan for paint which means removing the rest of the textured underbody coating before I can start sanding.

Most of the large and accessible areas are already done with the wire wheely thing on the grinder but tonight I spent an hour and a half laid under the car doing all the fiddly awkward bits with the Dremel and one of (several, actually) these tiny wire brushes.




It isn't something which is very photogenic but I did end up covered in this stuff.




I have not done it all yet because my arms were hanging off and the Dremel got very hot and I didn't want to blow it up.

As there are no car pictures to show, you can have this bonus picture.




That is Alfie Wolfgang, my brand new, still under warranty, grandson.


Cheers.