My 1973 Cadillac, Huggy Bear

[eddyramrod]

Tell you what, I'll stop work now and in the morning, hand the keys to a local banger racer.  This town is full of them.

[Tamworthbay]

Just now, eddyramrod said:

Tell you what, I'll stop work now and in the morning, hand the keys to a local banger racer.  This town is full of them.

Don’t let a few people piss you off mate. Whatever anyone thinks you have had a hard time recently and this has been a positive for you, don’t let it get to you.

[strangeangel]

1 hour ago, Ghosty said:

The 16 is in for new sills at the moment...

 

That's good (albeit surprising) to hear.

 

[captain_70s]

I struggle to see how entire missing panels wouldn't be considered "body or cab security is significantly reduced", especially given how all the material that supports the roof is P38. I know there is a beam of sorts bolted in to stop it from flexing but really? While the boot floor panel probably isn't structural it's fairly obvious water has been pissing in and sitting in there long enough to turn it all to cornflakes and the panels below will be structural and are holding in the fuel tank. How shagged are they?

Has anybody actually gone underneath and given it a prod?

In much the same way the huge amount of filler stuck into the car when it was initially "restored" has only caused water to get trapped and make a mess the current generation of repairs are going to do the same. I struggle to see why this is being carried out when the potential of welding it was open and offered free of charge. The amount of time/effort/money that is being put into this is all in being put into repairs that are going to start cracking and bubbling in 12 months....

[Supernaut]

[strangeangel]

30 minutes ago, GingerNuttz said:

I never said i knew everything about the MOT rules

 

 

I think that's fairly obvious. It's rare I ever agree with anything DodgeRover says, but he's bang on here. How about you do as he suggests - read the regs and then come back and tell us precisely which of them the Caddy would fail on?

 

[antony denman]

eddie its easy fix,find van in the scrappy with ribbed floor,cut out to size weiled it in,its only flat and boot floor,cant wield if its sitting in it wont take that much to wield in,if had mig i have a go,but havent weiled in years,dont throw towel in m8,wont be the same not see the caddie flying about,could get away with flat steel cut up old roof off scrapper,

[Dick Cheeseburger]

I didn't release this place was full of Facebook experts*. I thought it was all about keeping quirky cars on the road and learning as you go.

Shame really. 

[junkyarddog]

48 minutes ago, eddyramrod said:

Tell you what, I'll stop work now and in the morning, hand the keys to a local banger racer.  This town is full of them.

Patch it and enjoy it.

I've driven some really rotten old shite over the years and enjoyed them all.

 

[eddyramrod]

23 hours ago, captain_70s said:

Has anybody actually gone underneath and given it a prod?

the potential of welding it was open and offered free of charge.

Yes they have; not just me, but also experienced and even enthusiastic mechanics.  Trust me, I wouldn't be putting effort like this into a car with a duff chassis!

As mentioned in PM, the welding offer was extremely generous and very much appreciated.  It wasn't and isn't a practical proposition as things are at present, but that doesn't stop me being insanely thankful for it.

[rickvw72]

I will add “Facebook expert” to my CV.

My take on its simple. Original author is documenting work he is carrying out on a public forum. Other members are posting their opinions.

My opinions come from a 20 year career restoring and repairing cars, and the last five spent teaching motor vehicle engineering and MoT testing, and the ongoing refresher training  for the IMI. 
 

I won’t further add to this post past reiterating it should get checked over by someone in the flesh. From the pics given I don’t beleive it to have structural areas repaired to a solid enough standard. 

By the way, I love old Caddy’s so I’d love to see it fixed and on the road. 
 

 

[PhilA]

I need to point out that once it's made a hole, the water can no longer pool up and sit. It falls out the hole. Gravity, see?

[captain_70s]

Just now, PhilA said:

I need to point out that once it's made a hole, the water can no longer pool up and sit. It falls out the hole. Gravity, see?

If done on purpose it's called a drain, as I recall.

 

[SiC]

4 minutes ago, PhilA said:

I need to point out that once it's made a hole, the water can no longer pool up and sit. It falls out the hole. Gravity, see?

Is that why cars last longer in Australia? As water doesn't fall in and through the hole, it falls out the top ... because everything is upside down.

[PhilA]

2 minutes ago, captain_70s said:

If done on purpose it's called a drain, as I recall.

 

It's just the car's way of expeditiously providing you with one. Clever design.

[captain_70s]

19 minutes ago, PhilA said:

It's just the car's way of expeditiously providing you with one. Clever design.

The Dolly has a drain hole under the fuel tank, it's rotted it's own hole about an inch to the side. Charming.

[Dead_E23]

55 minutes ago, rickvw72 said:

If rot to this extent is not failable, things like discovery mk1s would never die. I’ve never seen one rot it’s chassis but the bodies are usually fucked.

The main problem with rot in Discos and RRCs is that when you measure up, a surprising amount of the floor comes within 30cm of a seat belt mount.  I initially welded my Range Rover's floor and sills up to pass, then when the rear arches went I binned the rear seats and belts and it went through at least another couple of MOTs like that.  Body mounts only become a problem MOT-wise when the body becomes unstable, i.e likely to shift about or part company with the chassis.  My rear body mounts eventually collapsed entirely due to off-road use causing the car to adopt a broken-backed appearance; I think it would probably have passed another test like that, but I didn't present it for another MOT because by that time it had worse problems elsewhere and I wanted to use it's no claims bonus on a different car.   Some of the other body mounts were decidedly ropey, but there were lots of them and only one the tester ever asked me to weld up was under the front footwell and iirc that was due to its proximity to where something important was attached - can't remember what exactly because this was about 10 years ago.

From what I can see in the pics, the vast majority of Eddy's bodywork is non-structural and you could satisfy an MOT man by repairing everything with gaffer tape, or in many areas like the boot, not at all.  (By coincidence, gaffer taped bodywork is the exact repair my 2008 Mondeo requires before I present it for its MOT!)

[Mr Laurence]

Christ, what a shitshow. Part of what keeps me coming back to this site is the way that everyone stays civil, even if they don’t agree with each other. Even if this isn’t nearly as bad as the arguments you’d see breaking out on Facebook et al, I can see that’s it’s spiralling wildly off topic and none of this is going to benefit anyone. 
 

My view is this: yes, the repairs are miles from perfect, but then what is? To do this ‘properly’ you’d probably need to strip it down to a bare shell, buy a second car to chop up for replacement panels, to then ship them to the UK from America to be welded on. That just isn’t realistic. You have to draw the line somewhere. And anyway, what’s the alternative? If Eddy hadn’t started poking at filler and making these repairs, the rust would still be there, and Huggy would still be roadworthy. Regardless of the quality of repairs, you have to agree that they are far better than doing nothing and ignoring the problem entirely.

[Split_Pin]

Slowing up less bad rust while you correctly repair the worse areas is, in my opinion an absolutely credible way of going about things but covering it up is no different to ignoring it.

Eddy you are one of the most smashing blokes I've met and I hope you get the car to a point where you are happy with it. This was always going to be controversial.

 

[Tickman]

12 hours ago, Mr Pastry said:

Mr Nuttz, with due respect if you read the last paragraph of the guidelines that you have posted,  particularly the last sentence,  it states that riveted repairs are acceptable if they are done properly. 

Nowhere in what @GingerNuttz posted did it say that riveted repairs are acceptable. It did say that a combination of bonded and riveted repairs could be.

Many manufacturers use bonded techniques for structural integrity with rivets used to hold the surfaces together sufficiently until the bonding cures. This can be much stronger than more common mechanical joints due to the larger contact surface.

 

[paulplom]

On the plus side @eddyramrod, you can't make it any worse. Anything you do can only improve it. Just keep on keeping on.

[JeeExEll]

Period correct repairs. I'm sure much much worse exists on the streets of New York.

[JeeExEll]

"Who put the wob in the Cadillac?".

-   "It was him. It was Eddie Ramrod".

[outlaw118]

Just my two-penneth...

 

Huggy is MoT exempt, thus theoretically negating the need for all the MoT fanboyz to be getting their y-fronts in a bunch. Yeah, using wob and old shelves isn't ideal, but that's what Lord Eddie of Ramrod has to work with. It's never going to be OMG PEBL BEECH material it just needs to look a bit less like it's been fished out of a scrapyard. (or a KLF video). My only concern is that wob is heavier that rusty tin, so if I ever have to push Huggy again, I'll need more than 4 helpers......

A lot of these negative comments are misplaced, Ed has been playing with cars since before some of you were swimming in you dad's balls - he's not an idiot, and will be fully aware of the risks involved. 

 

Personally, if I lived a bit less than a 600 mile round trip away, I'd be getting covered in Isopon dust and eating Eddies biscuits rather than typing this.

 

TL:DR Fuck 'em Edd, do what you want.

 

[chaseracer]

Looking forward to the weather cooling off a bit... ?

[eddyramrod]

There are three flavours in my biscuit jar at the moment, including milk chocolate Leibniz.  Just saying...

[Fumbler]

6 minutes ago, eddyramrod said:

milk chocolate Leibniz. 

I hear the orange milk chocolate Leibniz is quite nice.

[eddyramrod]

It may well be, our Asda carries them; but I'm not a big fan of orange flavour in my chocolate.  Now if they did a Mint one............

[outlaw118]

35 minutes ago, eddyramrod said:

There are three flavours in my biscuit jar at the moment, including milk chocolate Leibniz.  Just saying...

(Jumps in Megamoose.....)

[sdkrc]

21 hours ago, Mr Pastry said:

Mr Nuttz, with due respect

I feel we missed out on this gem of an opener due to all the disagreeing. Would have loved to have seen this said out loud in court.