The story continues / Why is there always more rust than you can see?

Hi Guys
Just a quick one to re-introduce my Elf its about 12 months since I last posted an update, just a reminder that "wilbur" is a 1969 G reg almond green with white roof Elf bought on ebay as a project with my 15 year old son although he has since lost interest. it has 3 owners from new & has covered about 79k miles
It looked quite ok when delivered, Bit of a shock to discover it was an Auto! as the seller said it was a manual , think he got confused by the 4 speeds showing on the gear lever ! good news was it started and ran .
The second slight shock was the Major distotion in the outer rear wings above the wheel arches Which where kinked inwards to wards the wheels
Being Brave we decided to start @ the rear of the car working forwards removing all the trim
all went well untill we removed the petrol tank and the inner boot floor suport brackets ,
when some pretty horrible welding / patches came to light ,
it turned out the whole of the boot floor had been patched from both the inside & the outside, 4 layers thick in some places so off with the subframe thats was a nightmare of sheared & rusted imovable bolts, plumbing fittings & bits of copper central heating pipework let into the supension pipes with compression joints !
Needless to say the Wilbur was soon releived of his boot floor or rear seat pan, my wife was not best pleased with all the angle grinding & dust & the vast expenditure on gringing disks ! but the good news is that with the floor out the application of a bottle jack between the parcel shelf & the inner wheel arches pushed the wings back in to their correct position , it seems the previous owner had made up patches & bent the body to fit distorting the wings !
since then lots of metal has disapeared and lots of new has or will be appearing soon ! Will post photos once i have worked out how to get them on the [img][/img]

managed to get photos loaded so here we go ,
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here is wilbur as he arrived dosent look to bad ! [img][/img] dismantlingg starts , still dosent look to bad [img][/img]

bottle jack used to straighten the rear wings [img][/img]
bend removed from wing top & a new hole discovered ! [img][/img]
repairs to the rear valance might bite the bullet & buy a new one [img][/img]
body shell moved to friends unit with more space
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repair panel let into near side window frame [img][/img]
the faint pen mark visible on the wing isnt for a bolt on arch it was there to highlight where the crease was, as we jacked the inner arch down before we put the new boot floor in [img][/img]
some more holes discovered in the scuttle panel & crunchy screen surround the filler was about 10 mm thick ! this is where we dicovered the wings had been brazed on![img][/img]

made a repair panel for the rear window , the drivers side needs the same as it is a combination of lead & filler [img][/img][img]
boot floor goes in also drivers side inner & outer sill have been replaced catmint boot floor extension & half the heel board
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drivers side foot well replaced [img][/img]
the floor pan was a new old stock item (so i was told)which fitted well but the strengthening pressings are a slightly different depth, nothing that cant be sorted according to mark my tame welder !
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New inner flitch panel in place [img][/img]
Drivers side floor almost finished small patch needed for rear floor & rear wheel arch repares

I will post some more this evening

Wow! you're doing well, keep it up and the [photo too
Tony

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Back the right way up before we start on the other side you can just see the bracing we put in to keep it all straight & the pen marks where the arches where bent inwards now 95% straight
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Heres what happens when some one puts oversill over the existing rotten sill without removing them first 3 layers thick in places ! the other side was just as bad
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this one is a bit blurred but you can see 2 layers of sills
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this one shows the original sill covered by the "new"wide cover sill by this time Mark my next door neighbor & ace welder was getting fed up with all the rust but i told him he had,had plenty of practice on his own much newer mini shells just visible in some of the Photos above and convinced him that this was the easy bit ! as he had done it @ least 3 tmes now !!
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If you look closley you can see 2 layer of floor pan some one had plated the out side & welded a complete floor over the old floor on the inside !
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Hard to beleive when i bought the car the mot had only expired 2 month previously looking @ the state of the floor& inner sill god knows how it passed its last one surley the cant rust that quickly
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3 cutting disks lots of swearing later the odld floor pan is out so are most of the remains of the front end of the inner sill[img][/img]
th large peice dangling in the middle of the door opening are the remains of a "previous fix " a 3mm plate that looked as if it was a patch from a battle ship
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finally all the rotten metal is out front inner wing flitch is next to go once the inner sill goes back in
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veiw looking from front to back of car along the sill line
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Looking much cleaner now lots of de rusting fluid poured into all the openings just the lip of the over sill to grind off
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near side rear wheel arch de rusted & striped of underseal and rotten front edge removed
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Veiw from back to front along the non existant sill ! you can just see the bracing inside the shell keeping it all square (hopefully )
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This one shows off the Cat mint boot floor extension
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repares to the lower wing corner starting
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the difficult bit will be the panel that runs across the car below the boot lid does any one make one ? or have a decent used panel that could be cut from a scrap shell ? the one that was on here was a supreme bodge of chicken wire & fibre glass .

so the update on panels so far is..

new boot floor+extension piece
new front drivers side floor
drivers side inner sill
drivers side outer sill
drivers side heel board
drivers side homemade closer panel
drivers side rear quarter lower half
drivers side piece inside pocket
drivers side inner front arch
drivers side repairs to rear arch.
drivers side rear floor patch

so just the same again on the passenger side !!!!!!!

At the moment work has ground to a halt due to bad weather ( we are both to wimpey be out in the unit in the cold )and Mark's (the welder) imminent move to a bigger unit with a heater and work on his mini a monster 1380 mg turbo beast has taken priotity for a while whilst i save up some more cash
( not to much as he welds for mates rates & bits for his car ) once we get going again I will post more pictures, Hopefully we should have the inner & outer sill & the off side floor & the inner flitch in by the end of February then on to a new front end
Mark has just been given a genuine 1968 998 cooper engine & gear box that has been under a sheet in a car port for 10 years depending on what it looks like when we strip it down a deal could be done to replace the orignal engine & auto box as being a 68 engine its close enough to go in a 69 Elf
( bizarley we have just found out that the engine originally came out of a genuine cooper owned by a mutual friend (now with 1275s engine) small world

"the difficult bit will be the panel that runs across the car below the boot lid does any one make one ? or have a decent used panel that could be cut from a scrap shell ? the one that was on here was a supreme bodge of chicken wire & fibre glass"

You mean the boot slam panel? You should try starting with this one! And it's really much worse than it looks.