Simon,

Have you gone to the extent of unpicking seams in areas that you are not repairing? The few I have pulled apart for repair so far have had a good amount of rust in them. I am debating pulling apart all seams for cleaning but this would be a horrible horrible job.

Maybe pouring rust converter into seams would work?

Glenn

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Originally posted by MK1_Oz

Simon,

Have you gone to the extent of unpicking seams in areas that you are not repairing? The few I have pulled apart for repair so far have had a good amount of rust in them. I am debating pulling apart all seams for cleaning but this would be a horrible horrible job.

Maybe pouring rust converter into seams would work?

Glenn

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Hi Glenn,

Yes I have unpicked mine in selected areas. All I can suggest is if you remove the paint in the affected area, all of the spot welds along the seam will become very obvious. Hit them with a centre punch, then get yourself a spot weld remover bit and drill them out so you can do all the cleaning you need to. If you're already going to a lot of trouble to prep the car for paint, you may as well do it properly. Ultimately it's your call though.

Not a lot of progress, but some is better than none. I actually spent a bit of time last week making my own sheet metal folder. It's a bit light-on for serious stuff, but it should come in handy.

I've made a start on repairing the heater plenum, as well as modifying the radiator support panel. I know a lot of people get a bit funny about cutting the rad support, but I plan to use an aftermarket alloy radiator intended for use in a Mk2 16V VW Golf, which is quite a bit wider than than the standard Escort radiator. Plus I think the standard Escort radiator support looks a bit fugly. The pic is a bit blurry, but you can see here I've started cutting out the rust in the heater plenum area.



Given I will be using a fibreglass bonnet secured with bonnet pins, the standard bonnet catch on the slam panel will become obsolete, so rather than unpick spot welds, grind back brazed joints, then weld up all unwanted holes, I thought I'd just replace the section with new sheet.



I'm just waiting for my radiator to arrive before I weld in the new section.

And here's the first rust repair on the heater plenum.



Oh, and here's an 'action shot' a friend took the other night on his phone...

Good to see some progress.

You still recessing the bulk head with a modified plenum cover?

I refuse to answer that question for fear it may incriminate me!

Go on....do it, its heaps of fun
I'll show you how when/if i get a mk1 panelvan!!

A little more progress today.

I dressed the welds on the first heater plenum repair. In the photo it sort of looks like I've welded it to a crummy bit of steel, but it is solid, albeit a little pitted. The raised inlet for the heater fan is still to be cut out and welded up.



I also unpicked the transmission tunnel spot welds from the firewall and cut out the rusty mid section.



It probably sounds nuts, but I'm going to try and repair/remake this section so it can go back in.



And finally, I put my home made sheet metal folder to use and folded the lip on the new slam panel top section.



That's about it for the moment!

Any chance of some pictures of the folder?

Nice progres Simon

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Originally posted by tanz

Any chance of some pictures of the folder?

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Hey Anthony, here ya go. It's really nothing flash and far too light in construction to be really useful, but it helps. The fold bar (50x50x3mm steel angle) flexes when trying to fold larger sections, meaning the radius of the slam panel fold was larger than I wanted. So I put it in the vice and tightened up the fold with some gentle persuasion from a BFH...