Cavalier mk2 - another blue giffermobile.

[Tickman]

That spit looks quite decent quality too.

Ace work going on.

[4wheeledstool]

Cheers! Well pleased with the spit - should make stripping the underside slightly less unpleasant!

[4wheeledstool]

Been fishing + done a bit of gardening instead of toiling away in the shed this week. The arrival of these

Y tho?

convinced me that it was time to get back on it. The piece made at the weekend was tacked in

Then fully welded, and zinc primed.

Got half way through making the outer chassis leg piece before I had to vacate. I'm making this out of 2mm sheet, and its obviously a lot more difficult to form into shape 

but should have it ready to mount the new spring plate at the weekend.  

[4wheeledstool]

Not really my day today - first up, my big "working under cars" lighting rig has stopped working. Not the worst thing that could have occurred, but still a PITA (It's been on its last legs for a couple of weeks now). The outer chassis leg repair piece was finished, then welded in.

I was just about to reach for one of the new spring plates, when I noticed that further up the chassis leg, near where it is spot welded to the floor, the metal looked a little dodgy. After hitting it with the knotted wire wheel, a couple of tiny holes appeared about an inch below the joint with the floor. I had to cut it out, and it was pretty awkward to do that due to its position being partially obscured by the inboard wheel tub. 

No big light means no decent pictures, (I'll hopefully get it sorted tomorrow) but the rest of the day was spent cutting out the poxy section of chassis leg, then making up this piece to replace that which has been removed.

Hopefully I'll get that welded in tomorrow, then the spring plate can go on - completing this side of the car.  

[Dick Cheeseburger]

This resto thread gets better and better. Great to see the car generally seems to have an underside as well. 

[4wheeledstool]

8 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

This resto thread gets better and better. Great to see the car generally seems to have an underside as well. 

Cheers! Whilst most of the underside is all there, I'm gonna need to use a lot of Hydrate 80 before it sees any paint!

Chassis leg repair piece now in, and then zinc primed.

Spring plate drilled for plug welding, bare metalled, then zinc primed.

Boshed on with the positioning jig.

Started to cut out the poxy bits on the driver's side - it's a bit worse than the passenger side was - I'll need to cut this back a bit further!

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Looks like a standard mk3! I can only assume that part of the rear legs are an internal moisture trap? Certainly looks like it's rotted from the inside out. 

[stuboy]

miss my mk2 cavaliers espcially the 2.0 glsi auto

[4wheeledstool]

On 6/9/2019 at 8:11 PM, Dick Longbridge said:

Looks like a standard mk3! I can only assume that part of the rear legs are an internal moisture trap? Certainly looks like it's rotted from the inside out. 

I think you're right chief - these cars seem to rot in many random places, but the chassis legs are a common rot spot.

Not had a lot of time for this recently, but have managed to get a bit done this week. The chassis leg pox was cut out, and a piece was knocked up and stuck in to replace the inner section.

A template was made for the outer section, then copied into 2mm sheet and trimmed to fit nicely into the gap that requires filling.

The outer piece is ready to weld in now, and should be going in on Saturday (closely followed by the spring plate!) 

[paulscavalier]

The mark 3 has the same problem with the chassis legs on the back , it’s killed off many a decent car

[4wheeledstool]

Finished early today, so got stuck in! Outer chassis leg became complete again.

Spring plate added using the piece of scrap fashioned into a makeshift jig.

Measuring from the centre of the spring plate to the inboard hole of the rear beam mounting points on both sides revealed that one side is within a millimetre of the other. Similar results were measured when the outboard holes were used - I'm chalking that up as a win!

Next up, attention was turned to removing the tailgate. Locking stuff was removed, as was the wiper mech + washer jet. The washer hose was withdrawn from the tailgate, followed by the wiring on the other side.

Just need to remove the struts and hinge pin clips and it can come off. (a second pair of hands will then be required)

[richardthestag]

awesome stuff. loved my mk2 cavalier.

some of the detail in these images brings back happy memories.

not the rust though 

[4wheeledstool]

I managed to find someone to help me lift off the tail gate - theres usually plenty of people around, but not when you need there to be.!

I can't keep putting off cleaning back the underside to the metal - I let myself in gently by finishing off the cleaning of the nearside rear tub.

Grim times ahead.

[4wheeledstool]

Yep, pretty grim!   ☹️

So far the wire wheel has only discovered one area needing fresh metal - little square top centre of the above pic.

[4wheeledstool]

Sadly theres been next to no time available for this heap recently. My wire wheel is pretty much spent, so while I wait for some more to arrive, today I've been welding the bottom of the outer sills to the inners. The plug welds seem to have worked fine, but I didn't like the gap that was left between the bottom edge of the inner sill and the bottom edge of the outer when viewed from underneath. Most likely totally unnecessary, as seam sealer could have been used to  bridge the small gap, but I felt welding it would not only look better, but also stop the possibility of distorting the bottoms of the sills when using a four post ramp.

Driver's side is all done bar finishing cleaning back the weld - I'll have to use the finger sander as access for the flap disc is restricted by my huge grinder. 

[4wheeledstool]

Still struggling to get time in on this at present. I managed to finish welding the bottom of the passenger side sill to the inner sill today.

Bizzarely this side took a fraction of the time the driver's side did - perhaps I'm getting better at it?

With that done, I decided to reset the spit onto the highest of its three pivot points. Its been on the lowest one, and with the adjustment wound all the way up, it wasn't high enough to roll right over.

As you can see, on the highest pivot point with the adjusters wound halfway up, there is now plenty of clearance to roll it right over If I want.

Back to cleaning the underside for paint next.

[4wheeledstool]

Had a decent pop at this today - it was as grim a job as ever, but a pleasing amount of progress was made.

I intend to do the underside in three sections - back end to rear foot wells, then the floors, then the whole front end/engine bay. Plenty of dirty noisy tedium to look forward to!

[Burnside]

Just caught up with this again. Impressive work as ever !

[spartacus]

Yeah, it's great to see what was generally regarded as a humdrum car getting so much love. These used to be everywhere, it's a shame there are so few now. I'd happily have one as a daily driver, this looks like it might be too good for that though!

[4wheeledstool]

Another couple of hours on the wheel this evening - I reckon if I can get a whole day on it over the weekend, the rear section should be close to getting a bit of paint on it.

[4wheeledstool]

Getting there with the rear section after a few more hours of noisy fun.

And then a couple more

Just a few fiddly bits left over for another day, then a good cleaning session will see it ready for Hydrate 80 + zinc rich primer.

[4wheeledstool]

All back end fiddly bits now bare metalled and cleaned, and Hydrate 80 treatment started.

Hopefully I'll get the whole back end treated and then primed over the weekend. (Spare time permitting!)  

[4wheeledstool]

Thanks to FedEx being a bit poor, I have no primer still after a week. I did get the back end of the underside treated with the Hydrate 80 though - half way through 

In the absence of my primer, I'll get stuck in to removing all the sealant off the floor section tomorrow now the back end is ready for primer.

[4wheeledstool]

A marathon session on the wheel of wires has provided me with this.

The tunnel shouldn't take too long to do as theres no rubbery sealant on it - just a layer of wax over the e-coat. The wax scrapes off pretty easily, so not much to attack with the wire wheel.

[4wheeledstool]

Under floor area now stripped back.

Next job is to repair the frilly bit of the floor + replace one of the brake pipe tags that fell off before giving it all a good clean for the Hydrate 80. Pretty boring stuff, but I reckon that's the bulk of the horrible stuff done now!

[4wheeledstool]

Only managed an hour on it this afternoon. The brake pipe tag that fell off was stuck back on, then the rusty bung hole was cut out.

The repair is only just over an inch square, and somewhere that will not be seen, so not much finesse was necessary.

Job jobbed!

[4wheeledstool]

Hydrate 80 going on

Both coats on both sides done

Now I can crack on with the lower bulkhead repair before stripping back the front end/engine bay.

[danthecapriman]

Lovely job so far. It’ll be the most minty of mint Cav’s by the time your done!

You must be going through gallons of that hydrate 80 I bet. I’ve been using it on my Capri and other cars and it does seem to be good stuff.

[4wheeledstool]

Many thanks! I've used about half of a litre bottle so far - I reckon it'll be pretty much done by the time I've finished!

Bulkhead bottom repair now done, no incremental progress pics due to leaving my phone at home! 

Back to the noisy, fiddly and dirty joy of stripping the front end back to the metal.

[richardthestag]

loving the work mon brave, well worthy project too ?