Regular followers of our blog know that we are not phased by blight of every classic car owner – rust. We have a ’70 fastback  in for some serious work. The underside has been attacked relentlessly by the dreaded rust worm. The floor pan will have to be replaced as a matter of course, but as we cut it away we found issues with the inner sill, chassis legs, and torque boxes which all need replacing. From underneath it didn’t look to bad, but patches on patches hide what is really going on under all that patchwork when you peel back the layers. But the car is a great looking car on the outside and is certainly well worth the effort to sort it out in the long term. Yogi paced around the car, muttered some sort of mechanics riot act, offered any last words to the rust worm, rolled up his sleeves and began to kick some butt with the angle grinder! This will obviously take some serious time to sort out properly, and we will bring regular updates on the progress. Who will win this battle? Our money is on the big bad bear they call “Yogi”. Game On!

The drivers side was obviously the same as the passenger side so we thought we do a quick before and after of the chassis.

New Parts ready to go in, the torque boxes and part floor pan.

 Chris’ I6 Project:

We have covered similar to this before on Marts Acapulco Blue coupe, now it’s Chris’ turn to take up the challenge. The bottom of this car had been heavily wax oiled and Chris thought smart and uncovered early in the morning to get the sun to soften it all up. Then set to remove it by the use of a hot air gun and scraper. Slow progress but it’s getting there. The funny thing about this floor is that half is fine and the other half needs a little work, but it’s all still solid. Chris said it was down to the “Self coating floor pan under seal mechanism,” apparently he tells us this was an after sales option. We tend to call it oil leaks! In a way the oil leaks has regularly coated the floor and kept it in surprisingly good condition, so in the long term Chris has been fortunate. This was much to the dismay of Mart who says that Chris is getting away with it lightly! We did tell Mart that’s because his car stood in a swimming pool by the looks of it and Chris’ was a daily driver, and will be again. Not sure we can print what his response was, but it was funny though. 🙂

 ’65 Convertible:

We had this little lady in a while ago to upgrade the wiring loom, but she is back for more work. This time a great upgrade the AOD gearbox, two in as many weeks would you believe. While we were at it Yogi got to do his therapeutic pipe work, he loves it. The exhaust was also tweaked to make it fit again.

 Acapulco Coupe:

A large part of time has been dedicated to gapping the fenders to the door and hood correctly. This is usually as slow process with nothing to show for it at the end of the day except that a cap of 3 mm has been reduced to and even 2mm etc. But a step forward has been made with the front of the car once this was done. The grill is in and the original corral. Mart wanted to keep the original as much as possible. The corral was one of them. Yes it could be shiny and new, but for now he wanted the original in place. We can’t blame him to be fair.