This car has a habit of throwing unexpected work at me and it did not fail when I was cleaning up the floor area. The whole floor was covered in a thick layer of black bitumen and it took me two days to clean up the area. I have not decided how I will treat this area but I have heard good stories about Caprotech products so I will check those out:

 

 

At the front, near the subframe mount, it apppeard that this area was also repaired earlier but the work was carried out rather poorly (again!). Again more unexpected work although I should have been suspicious of the amount of putty that was used here to cover up this mess. A metal repair panel was simply welded over rust, making the repaired area about 10 mm thick with lots of filler and putty, while it should originally not be thicker than 3 mm! Inside of the car, it did not look factory fresh either....

 

 

 

So the angle grinder came into use again. The area here is normally double skinned, but here there was an extra layer added, with complimentary rust in between. When grinding, I usually mark the area to cut with tape as this is much clearer than a marker. To reach the stage on the picture on the right below, it took me about 3 hours to get it looking presentable again!

 

 

Here the area is remade with a home made repair panel with the welds ground flat. The actual floor area is up next. A simple repair panel will do the trick closing this area again.

With the outer sill in place (but not yet fully welded) the area where it meets the rear wing also needs attention. There was a small dent, some rust holes and the curve did not really match the curve of the rear door. So I decided to make similar repairs that I had already carried out on the other side of the car.

 

First all the rot had to be cut away and remade from fresh steel:

 

 

Then the inner wing needed cutting away too, a simple form so easy to recreate:

 

 

With the inner wing repaired, the outer section could be offered up to match it:

 

 

And with everything welded in and ground flat:

 

 

The sill and rear wing fabrication is now finished and welded in. Just the sill itself now needs to welded to the inner sill and then this repair is done. That does not mean that the MIG welder can be stored away. Jobs to be done: the front right corner of the car needs welding and the right beam behind the right rear wing needs some finishing and welding. I just keep repeating the same mantra over and over again: make, weld, grind, make, weld, grind...........

The B-post had been repaired before, probably when the previous owner had the sills changed. Again, this work was carried out rather crudely so I decided to tidy up this area. First I cut out the old lower section, then stabalised the B-post. One method for making a repair section is to make a template from cardboard as this material can be easily cut and folded. When the cardboard fits exactly then the template is tranferred to steel. I found out the Christmas cards are just the right thickness so thank you family and friends for thinking about us again this year! After the steel version fitted exactly, I welded this in, creating a neat repair which will need much less filler.

 

  

 

   

 

 

After removal of the outer sill, the first job was to repair the edge of the inner sill. Then the subframe mounting point, which is crititcal of the car´s structure, needed lots of new metal. This area was compromised as it has lots of rust and also the strengthening box that is next to it needed to renewed completely. After that the NOS outer sill was offered up to the car after which the doors were put in again to assure that everything lined up. After some persuasion with a hammer, they did.

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

The subframe corner is now finished. This is a very important part on any Fulvia, if this is corroded your front wing will split right above the wheel.

After a couple of weeks of relative inactivity, and a lot of thinking and measuring etc, I came to the conclusion that the right sill also needed to be replaced. The sill itself was still relatively rust free, but after removing it it was clear that this was a good decision. The sill was made from two pieces of metal that were hardly welded together. On the photo below the outer sill has been removed and it still needs some work to be able to fit the new sill. Especially the area where the subframe mounts to the body will need some more metal removing. And again, the way the previous repairs were carried out was pretty bad. In some places, about 1 centimeter of filler was used to get it in the right shape. Still, a lot of work to be done.  

 

 

Even with the sill off, there is still a lot of rust to be removed......

 

 

First repairs to the edge of the inner wing were called for:

  

 

The inner sill edge has been welded here but the subframe mount and front wing still requires some work.

 

After removing all the rust and dust from this area, I had a pile weighing over 2 kilo!

The Fulvia has been outside today for the first time in 6 years! Not under its own power though, the petrol tank is still out and there are no brake calipers fitted on the left side. Thankfully the hand brake still works so I could stop it running down the incline. My brother was around to help and helped turn it around and back it up again into the garage. Now the other side needs to be done, I am curious to find out how much work will be involved. I just hope that the right side will be better than the one I have just finished but I dare not hope....

 

At the surface, the right side looks much better than the patchwork on the left, but i know there is rust to be found.

 

After 10 years of being locked in a garage, all brake calipers are seized solid. All seals, hoses, brake pads, bleed nipples and locking pins need to be replaced. But before I can replace all this, the seized pistons needed to be removed from the caliper.

 

And then disaster; the front left brake caliper has a broken bleed nipple and is thus scrap metal. I have one set of extra front calipers that I got off a donor car and I have to try and save these. After almost a day removing, dismantling, soaking in WD40, polishing and careful persuasion, I managed to take apart the spare front left caliper and remove most of the rust from the bores. From the two calipers I will try and make one good one. It is important to not mix halves but from the selection of pistons, I have taken the best ones to make one good caliper.

 

This picture was taken halfway though polishing the bores (left bore almost done, right still needs cleaning and polishing). To get all the crud out of the bores and channels, I have put the halves in a ultrasone for two hours.

 

After cleaning the front brake parts, I have fitted them with the new parts and they look to be servicable:

 

 

The Fulvia series 2 was fitted with Girling disc brakes all around, so with the front calipers done, now the rears need to undergo the same treatment.

The spare tank I had was in much better shape than the tank that was in the car originally. On the outside there was some pitting and surface rust, but most of the tank was still covered in undersealing. To get the tank in good shape again, this all needed to be removed so I put a dics on my angle grinder and removed the sealing and paint and got the tank back to bare metal.

 

Here you see the tank in RX5, next step is to paint it with RX10 several times.

 

 

First coat of RX10 applied:

I always try and preserve as much original material as possible during repairs. This goal gave me problems when I fitted the outer skin to the rear door. Instead of cutting out 10 cm as I had done on the front door, I made a repair panel of only 5 cm wide as only that area was affected. When I was done welding this in, the bottom 5 cm of the door was so rigid that it pulled a big dent in the door, that would pop in and out again with very little force. All I could do was to remove the outer skin again and make a new outer skin repair panel 10 cm wide. This did the trick. So it does not always pay to leave as much original metal as possible.

 

After changing the locking plate so that the door accepted the first series lock, both left doors were now finished. I then trial fitted them. It was strange to see the car with doors and without rust! It may have as many colours as the rainbow but to me it is starting to look like a car again.  

 

 

The horizontal door lines were fine so the measurements I made turned out to be correct, a big relief as I had never repaired entire door bottom sections before. The fit is now much better than the previous repair. The door shut lines between both doors did need some correction where I repaired them. I did this by welding material on the door shut lines and then with a powerfile I trimmed them back to the required level. This is a better option than using filler as that could always crack or even break off. An hour later, I was satisfied with the fit:

 

 

I then drained the 11-year- old petrol from the petrol tank. There was still about 8 liters in it and did it smell bad! Luckily, there was no black sludge people are always warning you about. When I had the tank out , I noticed a big dent in the bottom so I expect that at some point somebody either hit the kerb or used the tank as a jacking point. It also looks like one corner has been welded (!) so I will check if the tank I have in storage is any better. For three days the whole garage stinked of 11 year old petrol.

 

Another job I had to do is to make the door openers work with the first series locks I fitted, so that I can open the doors from inside and lock them. The front door was quite straightforward and took only 15 minutes, the rear door lock proved to be a three day nightmare that was only over when I transferred the whole cable guide system from the old to the new door. The fact I had used a second series door really gave me a lot of extra work but they are in now and they work.

The outer skin of the rear left door looked pretty solid, but I am not taking chances. There was a little bit of visible rust on the outside.

 

Still looks pretty good:

 

but there is always rust hiding between the two layers of metal......:

 

This will all come off and be replaced with new metal.