My 1976 Lada 2101 - Nikita: 40+ Years of Dirt

[Scruffy Bodger]

Just read the last few bits of this thread, are you still or will you be using those shitty, tiny bottles? If you are then bin them off and go to Bryland Fire Protection on Peartree lane and buy a bottle of Co2 and a cheap regulator.

[St.Jude]

1 minute ago, Scruffy Bodger said:

Just read the last few bits of this thread, are you still or will you be using those shitty, tiny bottles? If you are then bin them off and go to Bryland Fire Protection on Peartree lane and buy a bottle of Co2 and a cheap regulator.

A RAV4 was welded between then and now, so I’ve got the proper gas for it this time round.

[St.Jude]

Managed to get a little bit done today, on the hottest day of the year! But wasn’t really too bad in the shade of the garage, until I realised I hadn’t restocked my Dremel wheels and finger sander sheets. So couldn’t really prep anything.

Most of my old welding has been removed. Wasn’t as easy to take off in some places but couldn’t wait to come off in others. No matter, new steel with my RAV4 learnt skillz will see this right again.

I also managed to (sort of) get the trailer working. Meaning I could shift the engine to storage.

The engine didn’t stay that way for very long, and it wasn’t until the oil pooled in the trailer did I realise I hadn’t drained it like I thought I had. A pure mess.

[St.Jude]

Day spent re-welding what I welded before.

Obviously the photo is upside down. It’s a much neater job than before, so it is all good.

This didn’t go as well. Wife was moaning at me, I rushed, and it’s not great in places. Im going to die grind it out and redo it. 2mm steel here, the other part was all 1.2mm.

Think next weekend, after redoing the weld, it’ll be a case of epoxy primer on all the welding I’ve done in order to move the car out of the garage.

[St.Jude]

Spent today knocking back the last bit of welding I did so I could see what I missed before. I missed two spots, so welded those, knocked it back, then vactan.

No idea why it’s upside down, it’s the right way up on my phone. You get the idea.

Slapped some Bilt Hamber Zinc primer (which weighs a tonne!) and left it to dry. 

Next weekend is the big move out, but given the weather we’ve been having I would think that I could do a bit more welding on the passenger side before the weather ruins it all for me.

At least the first thing I need to do is remove the driver door to take the rest of the drivers wing off!

[St.Jude]

The great thread resurrection of 2023.

Nothing to report. You all know (or should know) the craic. The Lada has been sat outside while the extension was built, it’s now waiting for the Land Cruiser to earn its keep and work a bit so I can scab some slabs to put in front of the garage in order to be worked on.

In the meantime I got the bits of video together about the process. 

 

[St.Jude]

Nikita is finally in its “home” for the duration of the work that’s needed.

My plan has always been to work clockwise around the car, which is just as well because the car cover (are related thread) wasn’t waterproof and it’s suffered from it. More photos during the week.

Need to get my welding cart built now!

[Matty]

1 hour ago, St.Jude said:

Nikita is finally in its “home” for the duration of the work that’s needed.

My plan has always been to work clockwise around the car, which is just as well because the car cover (are related thread) wasn’t waterproof and it’s suffered from it. More photos during the week.

Need to get my welding cart built now!

Drive looks well. Are you still k seriesing it and are you going to rhd it as well?

[St.Jude]

7 minutes ago, Matty said:

Drive looks well. Are you still k seriesing it and are you going to rhd it as well?

Thank you! It’s only temporary, for however long temporary lasts.

The plan is still to K Series it, if it’s workable. I think dimensions wise it fits but there’s a lot of things outside of that to dictate what happens.

Im going to keep it LHD. Got to do these things to put me off going through drive thrus 😂

[St.Jude]

Great thread revival.

Put it on stands today as I’m spending Friday and Saturday welding on it. The front wing is coming off and I’m setting to the hole in the passenger floor. I’ve gone around it and marked down areas of concern. There’s nothing new, and it’s pretty much as I remember it to be. I just need a magnet to ascertain how much filler is on the arches, as if they’re just filler I need to buy repair panels.

I also thought, for a laugh, that I’ll start it. I’ve never known it run, albeit it was bought as not running with no brakes or clutch (clutch pedal is rock hard down). I’ve no petrol but I thought fuck it, let’s see if it runs on vodka. I have no vodka. But I have poitin. I turns, but no spark. There endeth the experiment as it’s neither here nor there if it starts. It turns which is good. As either way an engine will need to be rebuilt, and it’ll either be a K Series or a Lada lump.

That said I found a thread on another site where someone has the same idea of using these Mazda MX5 boxes for other applications due to cost (as the boxes are like £40). I’ve done rough calculations, think I’ve mentioned them, the MX5 clutch is the same diameter as what the Rover uses. Only issue is the spigot bearing placement. But that’s at least towards the end of the year problem.

[St.Jude]

I have been well lucky* today. It stayed dry for most of the morning and early afternoon, which is just as well because the garage thing was a total prick to put up. It’s not even a 2 man job, it’s a 3 man I think. But there was only me. So it is what it is.

Today though really is just tidying up so I can get cracking. The tarp I had on the car, again, wasn’t fully waterproof. The passenger floor is very wet. 

Right now it looks worse than it is. It’s not thin, and it’s mostly detritus I think. So this needs cleaning to assess it. If I need to do the pan I need to do the pan. I’ve enough steel to do that.

I am also taking the front wing off now. I’d like to take the doors off too.

[St.Jude]

All cleaned up.

Did more cleaning on the scuttle(?) area. The hoover got blocked up several times, flakes of metal and remnants of Quality Street wrappers from the mouse who called it home.

Under the wiper motor though…

 

It’s a bit holy. On Good Friday of all days!

It was to be expected. It’s cleaned up enough, wing removal tomorrow and I would imagine the start of the floor.

[Zelandeth]

If you're removing the doors, ensure you use a properly fitting bit and an impact driver to shift them.  Otherwise there's a 99.999 (recurring)% chance that the screw heads will just strip out.

[St.Jude]

29 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

If you're removing the doors, ensure you use a properly fitting bit and an impact driver to shift them.  Otherwise there's a 99.999 (recurring)% chance that the screw heads will just strip out.

I bought an impact driver and have an appropriate bit for it. But I thought I’d use it on the impact wrench on a low setting. It moved the one screw, so I’ll do the rest like that.

[Zelandeth]

2 minutes ago, St.Jude said:

I bought an impact driver and have an appropriate bit for it. But I thought I’d use it on the impact wrench on a low setting. It moved the one screw, so I’ll do the rest like that.

Should do the trick.  It's the shock that's the important part here.  Even with a perfectly fitting bit it will just gouge the head out they're (usually) so tight otherwise.  

If you're already removing the doors, it's worth pulling the door card off and checking the condition of where the hinge plates attach to the door frame.  They're just spot welded on and it's not unusual for them to break free.  Dead easy to fix with the door off the car, but a right bugger to get into while propping the door up with it on the car - so worth checking as a preventative measure while you already have them off.

[Dick Longbridge]

Just remember, progress is progress! Good to see this one see the light of day again. 

[St.Jude]

12 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Should do the trick.  It's the shock that's the important part here.  Even with a perfectly fitting bit it will just gouge the head out they're (usually) so tight otherwise.  

If you're already removing the doors, it's worth pulling the door card off and checking the condition of where the hinge plates attach to the door frame.  They're just spot welded on and it's not unusual for them to break free.  Dead easy to fix with the door off the car, but a right bugger to get into while propping the door up with it on the car - so worth checking as a preventative measure while you already have them off.

Yeah the cards have been off for a while. The bottom of the frame looks crusty and the door skins on the bottom need doing so I’ll have a good look. Thanks for the heads up.

18 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Just remember, progress is progress! Good to see this one see the light of day again. 

I am so happy that it’s there and I can do stuff with it now. I have come in and I’m excited by it. I’ve never not been really it’s just something or other gets in the way. But I have at least a full day tomorrow to get reacquainted with it, and now it’s under a cover I can do odds and sods to it over the week.

[JMotor]

Good to see you're on with getting the Lada again.

Hopefully it'll not be too bad getting the rot sorted.

 

[St.Jude]

Took at it with a hammer and a screwdriver today. I managed to put a hole in it and nearly put it through two other places. So I’m taking most of the pan out.

Yes, that’s a baby monitor. My wife decided to go out and said if he cried I had to go in. I’m covered in muck and oil, by the time I cleaned to go and pick him up she’d be back. But he slept all the way through.

There is the floor gone. You can tell at the bottom where I did my best to drill out the spot welds, but further along it was harder to find them amongst the pitting. So I just chiselled them from underneath in the end.

Some bits of the floor were thicker than others. The jacking point and arm were totally gone, but we knew this anyway.

Ran out of time today to make a panel. It’s a large piece of lining paper here. I couldn’t just cut holes in the floor and do it patchwork but I am better than that now. I’m 100% going to do the drivers side floor again like this.

On the passenger side, I’ve no photo, but there are two holes where the tar a previous owner used for cavity wax is seeping out. Next to that, under the chair rail, there is a hole. I only found this out on tidying up. So I think next job is to remove the seat bracket and cut out the steel under it, and clean and inspect the sill. I have an outer sill repair panel for this anyway so not too alarmed.

[St.Jude]

Had 20 minutes this evening so decided to investigate the hole under the wiper motor.

It’s a devil to remove if you’ve not read the instructions. But I got the motor out.

That hole goes straight in to the cabin, right over the steering column. I can imagine that this scuttle will need a good bit of attention when I get round to it.

[St.Jude]

So here is a 10 minute video of the mistake I made leaving it under that sheet and the work I did last week:
 

This evening I decided to get a head start on tomorrow. I spotted a hole under where the the seat rail is last week, and decided the best thing to do is to take the rail out altogether. For now anyway.

Some spot welds are easy to find…

But I can’t really see where the main spot welds are…

And fucked if I know how to get my drill in to this gap!

 

However, this gaping hole passed me by last week.

Hiding above the jacking point.

View from the inside:

So I’m going to go ahead with the removal of the seat rail tonight. I will drill what I can see but the rest I’ll just hammer with a chisel. Tomorrow I’ll remedy that hole in the sill before I cut the rest of the floor and make a panel.

Also a question to the hive mind: the sills on this are full of a bituminous substance. If it gets hot in the summer it drips out, and I never really could get it clean before. What can I use to remove it? I’m guessing the bulk will come off with a scraper but it’s difficult to get inside the sill. What else could I use?

[Dyslexic Viking]

22 minutes ago, St.Jude said:

Also a question to the hive mind: the sills on this are full of a bituminous substance. If it gets hot in the summer it drips out, and I never really could get it clean before. What can I use to remove it? I’m guessing the bulk will come off with a scraper but it’s difficult to get inside the sill. What else could I use?

I have experienced that diesel dissolve asphalt/wax but it is flammable. So how about heating the inside of the sills with for example, a heat gun and get them really hot, will it then flow out?

[St.Jude]

27 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

I have experienced that diesel dissolve asphalt/wax but it is flammable. So how about heating the inside of the sills with for example, a heat gun and get them really hot, will it then flow out?

Could be there all week doing that but it’s worth a shot.

Tried to drill out the welds I could see but mostly took the chisel to it.

And the angle grinder to get it off properly.

Will cut the bit of floor out from under where the seat rail was tomorrow. Then going to attack the hole in the sill tomorrow.

[Dyslexic Viking]

26 minutes ago, St.Jude said:

Could be there all week doing that but it’s worth a shot.

Can you put the heat gun end into a hole in the sill and leave it while you do other things, is that possible?

And cover as many holes as possible apart from drainage holes so the heat stays inside the sill it's quite a small space so should be able to heat up fairly quickly.

I have no idea if this works but if it drips out in the heat in summer, one would think this would work?

[St.Jude]

I did no welding today. Not for the want of trying. In a quest to tidy the area up and sort out the rust I found yesterday - well I found more.

 

At the foot of the A pillar it was thick with muck. A good 3” block of it. 

Given I have to put a new outer sill on, I thought I would just take the whole bottom of the wing off.

I was cleaning up the inside sill stuff and I gave that rusty bit a tap with the chisel. No hammer, just me…

Oh dear.

Yeah all of this needs to go.

Not all finished with rust discovery though. The bottom of the A pillar was equally rotten.

Thankfully, this covered more steel which was rusted BUT only rusted where you see it. I cut more of the skin off to see.

As you can see in Australia, this is how it looks. But the inside part is strong.

I have cut back more of the interior sill because I suspected the inner sill was rotten. It was, but only really where the A pillar meets it.

Remember kids - this car is MOT exempt!

I had intended to use rust remover on the A pillar before painting it and putting things back together. I don’t have any, and couldn’t find any, so I’m going to order some online. When it comes I’ll give it another go with the wire brush (already did it once) and will paint it with weld through primer. Which I may need to buy some of!

It’s a jigsaw now really. Love it!

[St.Jude]

So finally got the order of rust remover, and realised something.

I am a full kit wanker for Bilt Hamber. But I like what I’ve used, and the primer stood up well to being outside.

The Deox-Gel has been applied to the bottom of the A pillar, I’ve no cling film so relying on a sandwich bag and gaffer tape to keep the gel from drying out.

In the mean time, this came today.

Only place I could find one of these was the US Amazon site. All the others were Beta ones with a chrome fitment at the base which I didn’t want. But why would I want this?

Well unbeknownst to you all I started to remove the door. One screw, eventually, came undone. The second screw was a proper bitch, to the point this happened:

The bit twisted, then slipped, and I ended up chewing the screw. So it needs drilling out. That’s for another time.

Tomorrow I’m working from home for the rest of the week. So I will be cutting the steel to make a replacement panel.

[St.Jude]

Finally welding. This is a replacement part of the bottom of the A pillar.

And it’s a hard reminder of how easy it is to blow holes in existing steel. It’s not too bad really though. I also added a plate on the back (seen above, the strip with three holes in). This plate goes behind it, so it’s like a “C” going around the pillar. That’s welded behind too, as well in the front (as per how the original was put on). But the strip on the right didn’t exist, so I’ve added that.

Anyway, onward.

[St.Jude]

Finished for the day.

Door is off, had to drill the two screws I fucked earlier. The stumps are still there but I can deal with that later. Somehow.

Replaced the arch and the panel that the A pillar welds to.

I think I’ve been told a porky that the Lada uses 1.2mm steel. I think it’s closer to 1.0mm. But it is what it is. 

I need to put in the chassis arm/jacking point, floor, inner sill which hopefully is next weekend. Then I need to take the outer sill off.

And my smashed phone got even more smashed at the end. So that’s annoying as I liked using it for filming. But it’s dead now.