Straight 6 rebuild

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Blackburn said:
Best loosen your front rad panel and move it back if wings sit proud of door post.
Click to expand...

That wasn't something I'd thought of doing, I'll see what happens when I replace the driver's side door pillar as to what will be best so that it all stays square.

honolulujoe said:
nice job with the pillar
Click to expand...

Cheers, it's obviously not in properly yet but I can sleep a bit more easily knowing I'm not going to come back to the workshop to find my bulkhead collapsed under it's own weight! :lol:
 
Got a couple of hours in this evening, cut and welded in a strengthening bracket for the footwell to connect it to the upper part of the door pillar as the aftermarket ones don't come with them like the originals. Also welded in the other side of the door pillar to the inside of the footwell, forgot to take a photo of that though.

 
Haven't been able to spend as much time as I would have liked at the workshop recently but here's an update on what's happened over the last couple of weeks.

I thought the passenger side top corner wasn't too badly rotted at the top but planned to wire wheel it to check, the first touch with the wheel revealed the whole lot stuffed with filler :mad: so after taking a few measurements and cutting the windscreen mount off the top corner had to come out.





I welded in a bracket to hold the top of the door pillar to the internal rib of the bulkhead, filled in the holes where I'd drilled out the spot welds holding the old top corner to the rib and then after a lot of faffing, grinding, offering up, swearing and more grinding I got the new top corner into position. It's seam welded most of the way round at present and has a few spot welds to hold it to the internal rib.



As the front face of the bulkhead is corroded I chopped out the bonnet hinge and spent a couple of hours last night drilling the spot welds that hold the drip rail to the bulkhead and gently persuading it to come away in one piece. I've got some sheet steel on order to replace the section of the front face from the door pillar to just past the hole through the bulkhead.



Once the drip rail was off it became even more obvious how **** poor the repair job by the brake servo was that a garage did for me a couple of years ago in order to get it through it's MOT, it's the only time I've paid a garage to do any welding on this and I only got them to do it as I was about to go on honeymoon with the missus. I poked this bit with a screwdriver to see if it was attached, it wasn't, the paint behind it wasn't even singed!

 
Bit more progress last night, after my chippy tea I started about cutting out the rot around the front face of the bulkhead and quickly welded in an internal brace to replace the double thickness section I cut out.





The tunnel for the washer hose etc was pretty knackered so that came out, was suprised to see that it was held in place by 5 or 6 short runs of weld rather than spot welds like the rest of the bulkhead. I also fabricated and welded in a replacement section on the edge of the vent, came out reasonably, will certainly let in less water than the old rotten bit did!



And then set about knocking up a new one, with a comparison to the old one, it's not as LR made it but it'll do the job nicely.





Here's it test fitted, needs the flages trimming a little in places and then welding into place.



Every time I go to the workshop I end up spending most of my time doing other jobs to what I'd planned due to finding unexpected things but I guess no job is a waste of time as it all needs doing at some point. Slowly making progress!
 
Good solid progress at that hardest bit will be protecting the finished job from rust , I ended up getting mine galvanised.
But plenty of waxyoyl or Shultz into the voids will help.
 
Cheers, my intention is to give the current flakey paint a wire brush and then red oxide and NATO green the outside, the inside I haven't decided exactly what to do but it'll something like a waxoyl douche, need to do some research to find out what's best.
 
i always use fertan to treat the rust/bare metal then spray the black dinitrol stuff (I order it in schutz containers) straight onto that. mind you if its an inside bit the clear wax should be ok

Home

good thing about fertan is that it is water based so you can put it on in even if the metal is wet
 
Good work going on there...keep it up,

When I did my bulkhead (not as bad as yours) I injected waxoil with a 4 foot lance I made years ago...drilled a few access holes...I sure I have got every thing inside....wish I had do that years ago.

Nick.
 
Thank you very much.

In case any one is interested my mate is also making progress on his Sprite, everything that can be removed has been removed, the tiny little engine came out with a couple of us tying it to a piece of 2X4 and then just lifting it, wouldn't fancy trying that with my straigt 6... He bought himself a roll over jig kit, welded it together and we got the Sprite up on it on Saturday, now he's got the arduous task of stripping all the underseal, paint and filler, rather him than me.

 
not a pleasant task but it will be easier on that rig than crawling around under it I should imagine.

is something that size too big to acid dip? or is there too much risk in doing that.
 
He's toying with the idea of getting it dipped, don't think he knows what's best for removing all the paint etc without damaging the steel. Any ideas?
 
I've found dipping a bit harsh on some thin stuff - though that might just be operator error. The soda blasting thing might be worth looking into. There seemed to be quite a few people doing it mobile when I looked. I bought a blast gun for my compressor from MAchine Mart - it worked well enough especially with garnet but it makes a proper mess and all the corners of our unit are now full of dust - not good if you're doing any painting.

I really need to get my bulkhead done at the blasters but our baby arrived on Saturday so it might have to wait...
 
Progress has been slow this week, been manic at work so didn't manage to get to the workshop until today, got a bit more done now though. Got the front panel fully welded on, the tunnel welded to the front panel and trimmed back to flush and then the bonnet hinge welded back on. The scribbling on the bulkhead is measurements for the length of the bonnet hinge to the other one, was the easiest place to write it down.



Just checking it all still fits.



Next up was to get the windscreen hinge welded back on:



Getting excited at the prospect of summer cruising with the screen down! Lots of work to go till that's possible though.



I had some company today, our lurcher Maynard, he spent most of the day upstairs asleep on the sofa and the rest downstairs with me snoozing on his bed, he has a hard life.



Lastly, Yolandie as she stands at the minute, also shows the small patch at the top of the bulkhead where there was some rot, there's a lot more under where the windscreen seal was, will address that soon enough.



Feels like I'm actually starting to make some progress now, putting things back together rather than forever cutting rot out :)
 
What an excellent thread and full of fantastic photos, would make a good resto manual! Inspiring.. I'll be following this one.
 
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