That little bit of welding, Allegro content, de'rusting continues

[rusty998]

Just showed the Wife this picture 

I said look what Autoshite have found, which was followed by some worried laughing from Mrs Rusty, I reassured her that I have no intention of buying it as I already have one and a half Allegro's around and about the home which is quite enough for my small plot in suburbia, 

Where is L37 ?

[somewhatfoolish]

3 hours ago, bunglebus said:

So 2001 Fiesta, 1970's Allegro, 1940's car in the garage?

Driveway archeology.  

[rusty998]

6 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Driveway archeology.  

That's good news as it's to far away to be easy and inexpensive 

[bunglebus]

Johnny Smith's latest video just dropped, he's offering the boot floor and fuel tank if you need them?

 

[rusty998]

Cheers @bunglebus I did watch his latest video and twitched a little when I saw the boot floor was up for grabs but I'm likely to have enough now from the spares car to be able to repair that area now, thanks again.

[rusty998]

Don't all gasp at once but I've actually got some progress to share, the rather rusty tie bar mount is no more, from crusty rust

To this 

I'm happy with the result, coated with Rustin's Zinc rich paint which I was able to put in my mates paint booth/oven to get it nice and dry, tomorrow if I get a chance I will paint it in Joton 87 two part epoxy marine paint which I have never used before so going to get my mate to look at the instructions before I mix any as it's very not cheap but will put a middle finger up to Mr Rust 🖕 I hope

[juular]

Brilliant work. Zinc then 2 part epoxy seems to be the way. Keep the updates coming.

 

[JMotor]

May seem expensive at the time. 

But if it keeps the rot away. Then it's well worth it. 

Also do enjoy seeing other people getting stuck into some metal fab. It's satisfying to see people just getting on with it. No matter the car.

[rusty998]

23 minutes ago, juular said:

Brilliant work. Zinc then 2 part epoxy seems to be the way. Keep the updates coming.

 

I have followed Nitrosilver on YouTube and he does really nice work on Rover SD1's where he uses Joton and Rustin's to good affect so I had to spend some money to preserve the work I have done, I have also been enjoying your weldathon on that lovely Volvo of yours

[Lankytim]

Those tie bar mounts are rare as f00k, well done for repairing them- they're often corroded beyond any reasonable redemption. I found a brand new pair on a scrapped stalled project in a breakers yard, £20 the pair. It was an amazing find even 22 years ago. 

 

(edit) I've just noticed i've already said pretty much the same thing earlier on in the thread. 

[rusty998]

38 minutes ago, Lankytim said:

Those tie bar mounts are rare as f00k, well done for repairing them- they're often corroded beyond any reasonable redemption. I found a brand new pair on a scrapped stalled project in a breakers yard, £20 the pair. It was an amazing find even 22 years ago. 

I had no choice but to repair it as finding a good one was going no where, its not something that I would want to do again without the use of a strong metal bender, I had to go all cave man on the 2mm sheet steel to get it shaped, but it's done now and I don't have to do the left hand side which is a bonus 

[barrett]

Any news on this one? The film it 'stars' in has just been released, and I managed to grab this from the trailer...

[LightBulbFun]

2 hours ago, barrett said:

Any news on this one? The film it 'stars' in has just been released, and I managed to grab this from the trailer...

a fairly film famous FX4 there too  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_FX4#/media/File:1962_Austin_FX4_London_taxi.jpg

(well I knew of it from its Wikipedia picture but googling its reg shows it has stared in a few films)

[rusty998]

19 hours ago, barrett said:

Any news on this one? The film it 'stars' in has just been released, and I managed to grab this from the trailer...

Not much to report on the Allegro I'm afraid, all work had been suspended on it due to building work at home with scaffolding, I've put the front suspension back on only to move it out of the way, with the weather being all English the building work had been delayed greatly but as of today the work has been completed, I believe I have all the panels I need so I should be able to get the welding finished with any luck, 

I saw that picture on the Allegro page and it made me chuckle to think it's been in a film, currently it would fit in well in scene from Steptoe and Son's,

Updates soon I hope

 

 

 

[rusty998]

Well well what do you know there's only some progress on the Allegro!

I've a day and a half free, the sun is out with dry weather for the foreseeable so it's time to get the angle grinder to hand and start cutting, the Allegro had as do most of my long term projects become a temporary storage/shed area, boxes of car parts were removed and the hoover was deployed to help get it cleaned up a bit before I made more mess

The inside had not been cleaned up since I was in it last year which was bad form on my part, i had to use a small screwdriver to get the grinding dust that had started to fuse together out of Gap's for the hoover, a cleaner work area for me to contort myself into was achieved

The bigger bits got swept up, I pushed back the carpet and employed the use of a Amazon cardboard box as a spark arrestor, this is the area of interest that I have to attend to, it has a bit of everything here to get my teeth into

To help with access I unbolted the throttle pedal and tucked it to one side, underneath the floor runs both a brake line and the hydro front to back suspension pipe so I took it very easy as I don't want to be catching either of those if I can help it,  then i cut out the rust 

Now that I see what needs to be done it's not as bad as I first thought, the chassis rail itself is in good condition with only the top part needing a small plate in 2mm so that should be easy to tackle, the floor will then be welded back up after some more cardboard templates have been made, back on it tomorrow 

[rusty998]

So I woke up rather early this morning around 4:30, I just sat with my coffee watching historic saloon car racing at Donington race track until I could start making noise, I cut back a little more and cleaned up the edges,  then made some repair patches using an old cardboard box for the template, then I fired up the welder, first bit was the wheel arch/tub area

then the 2mm plate on top of the chassis rail of which I forgot to take a picture of, next plate on the lower section of the firewall and then the floor itself, this is the point that I ran out of welding wire so a trip to Halfords is my next move

[tooSavvy]

Ahh.... Floors!

ToMM© had been dribbling down the drivers A-post inner for a long time... Behind trim/under carpet

Before the last MOT, I lifted the drivers carpet and found a 50p hole under the acc heel point.

I popped along to our local 'leccy glooman' and he slapped a Slice of Warburtons on/MOT seamed.

I slapped over zinc preserver + spraycan shulz.

Rust Never Sleeps

 

[rusty998]

Due to the welding wire running out last time I was working on the car I had left it how it was, I returned to RPE today to find I had a small amount of water inside the car after last week's rain,

a quick feel of the bottom of the door card confirmed my suspicion that the door membrane had either split or was missing letting water in, once I had removed the door card it was plain to see that it was in fact missing, this door the drivers door is not original to RPE and the membrane had been removed while it was fitted, so while I was in there I changed the door handle and the chrome trims as these are not correct for a Series 3the door membrane here I got from the spares car, I used stretched butyl tape to seal the plastic membrane to the door then taped up the bottom section as Austin had done in the factory, I will wait and see if this works before I look at the door seals.

[rusty998]

It was raining when I woke this morning and continued to do so for the rest of the day, so when I got home I thought I would check on the Allegro and the water ingress situation, this is what I found so it looks like I was successful with the door membrane, the missing door membrane could well be the reason why the car has rust on the right hand side, if it's been missing since the drivers door was replaced that would have let the water creep in for years causing the rust to set in, I'm just happy it's dry inside now

 

[rusty998]

Allegro update, I have been really rather busy with RPE of late with de'rusting the spares cars suspension components which has involved striping down of the front hubs, brake calipers, rear trailing arms and rear beam, I have a large bucket with HC acid in it that has really helped removing the rust from the hubs, calipers and anything else that would fit, hours of wire wheel brushing happened followed by priming and paint, the calipers, hubs and driveshafts got the Hard Hat Rustoleum paint, the rear trailing arms, front lower arms and rear beam got zinc primer and then the Jotun

and yes a selection (all) of the restored bits are being kept indoors to keep them from going rusting again in my metal shed over the winter as it sweat's, I was also lucky to bag a new old stock front caliper on eBay that I will be removing the piston's from for one of the calipers I've painted as I only needed two and the cost of the caliper was the same as buying one piston 

RPE has had very little done to it this year what with the weather, builders/scaffolding and life just conspiring against me so today I thought I would get a bit more welding done as the sun was shining today, the floor still has some thin bits that I wanted to get sorted, firstly I cut out the thin bit then made a piece to fit, a quick clean up and then welded in 

on the outside the lower inner strengthener of the A pillar needed a new piece putting in after I had cut the rust out from it earlier in the year, a cardboard template was made then transferred to a piece of metal to fit the hole, this was mostly welded in as the light began to fail 

the welding got some zinc spray primer on it to stop the flash rust and then packed all the gear away and went indoors for a nice cup of coffee, the welding will get dressed back where necessary and then primed with Bonda rust primer 

but that's for another day