1987 3.2 Carrera Backdate project - Sladeys hotrod

[sladey]

And the hammers




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[sladey]

As usual I made the same mistake I’ve made with a lot of previous repairs and tried to take on too much in one piece



The rear half needed quite a lot of tight work but the front half was more gentle - the two halves seemed to be fighting against each other.


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[sladey]

Eventually I saw sense and cut it in two. Meaning that by the end of Saturday I ended up with this




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[sladey]

This morning I started on the other half

Now it was free it was much easier to work




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[sladey]

Eventually after quite a lot more fettling I welded the two pieces together



It’s not a great picture but the metal follows the curves and contours of the inner wing quite nicely.

The next stage will be to mark around it and cut out the metal underneath and weld it in. However this has to sit on top of the rear piece which brings me to the next job....


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[sladey]

Last week I came in from initial exploration of the problem and found an advert for the rear crossmember - well half of one - but it was the right half.

That was delivered on Friday




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[sladey]

I didn’t need all of it so I set about drilling out spot welds to get the bit I needed




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[sladey]

I then cut out the corresponding part on my car - again using the chisel to help with the spot welds




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[sladey]

Before I could put the new bit in though I had to deal with the manky bit in the middle that had mysteriously corroded

So I started by cutting it out




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[sladey]

Made up a repair patch




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[sladey]

And welded it in



Not pretty but functional


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[sladey]

That’s just about it for today. In relation to the ‘letterbox’ repair though, Gary had mentioned that he’d seen Barry do a careful cut along the line of the spot welds which means the piece going in butts against the flange behind it.

I did some exploratory cutting and this proved to be spot on - so this will make a great line for the top part of the repair piece




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[sladey]

The bottom part of this repair piece is rotten inside so I’m going to unstitch the joint and make a new piece



The far side of the join is all fine so that will be the ideal part to join onto.

I’ll need to buy some more metal this week!


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[Gary71]

Great stuff Mark. Lucky find with the xmbr as well!

[sladey]

Yep it was amazing - within 5 minutes of coming inside I found that part and a replacement front wing. Happy days!