1977 180b estate 810 (Read 1,677 times)

[Damien4884]

Lows due to


I did get a pair of replacement front wings to go on but wanted to see what the inner wings were like and passengers sill needs some work so off with passengers wing to reveal


most of the work is around the boot lid


Son approves


During this time the battery was on charge, just before I went to work I refitted it and with a couple of pumps of throttle and a touch of choke she purred into life.

[Damien4884]

Some CAD


What looked like a bit of a fiddle actually turned out to be easier than first thought. The rear panel is fitted with self tappers so nice and easy to get a good coat of paint on the inside before sealing it all up. LH side will need more work as there is more rust so its been cut back further, with the RH side done it should be straight forward to match up both sides.

[Damien4884]

Work offered me a 3 hour shift instead of my usual 8 today, so turned some cardboard into some metal.




This took a while as a had to walk through the house to the workshop with a vice in, bend the angles go back check re tweek etc. I ended up bending rh side around whats already in the car, so I could go back and bend the rest to match and the kids were ready for kip so quiet time has stopped play.

I'm planning on welding the new bits to boot floor, popping rear panel off, good lick of paint inside then spot weld the valance back on after to get a nice bit of protection in there, then get some cavity wax in through the ziebart application holes that seem to be everywhere.

[Damien4884]

I'm working funny shifts for the time being and with 2 small kids its hard to get time on it during the week but should make some progress over the weekend and start of next week, at least at the moment i can get the quiet/easy/time consuming stuff out of the way.



Cut off the excess,stripped back to bare metal, coated edges with rust cure stuff, 2 light coats of weld thru primer.



Ready for some welding, hopefully get a few more bits up to this stage tomorrow then i can melt them in at the weekend

[Damien4884]

Spend a while doing some CAD to sort out the hole in inner wing, made up of a few sections due to the angles and curve. The first attempt in metal went well but somehow ended up far too small for the hole, second attempt didn't fit so revert to original and run a weld over a flattened off bit of copper pipe to fill the gap.



After those bits were in a went inside and chopped the non visable rot out and repaired it, no pictures as I was upside on the seat and by the time i'd thought about it all the interior was back in place.

Then had a fiddle with the new front wings.

Passengers Side
Couple of holes needed elongating. Rear edge was touching the door in middle and nice 4mm gap top and bottom, quick bosh with the hammers sorted that out, but needs more attention.



Drivers side

Overall the wing fitted really well, all holes lined up and it sat quite well, apart from along the bonnet line, front edge was about 8mm too far towards centre of car meaning the bonnet wouldn't shut. Big hammer and chunk of wood soon bought it back into alignment.



Back to the boot area

Quick look underneath confirmed this is right next to the fuel tank, I need to get behind it to give it a lick of paint anyway so got it out of the way and got on with it. Bumper came off to reveal 2 holes covered by duck tape




that should be fun to sort out, along with some repairs to lower edge of rear quarter



Just need to copy the long panel to go on the other side and make up a bigger section to go up the side as the rot goes further up. Already made the centre section, ready to go in after the next round of grinder action.

As you can see I unscrewed the rear section and cleaned up the panels behind, 2 small holes in lower edge to repair and all is good there.

[Damien4884]

Had the front wheels off yesterday to see how the brakes had fared after being stood around, i'm pretty sure theres all sorts of nastiness waiting for me in the drums at rear as when i collected it the recovery truck was dragged across the road as i tried to get the winch to help free them off and they now make an awful noise when you roll it and the handbrake does very little. The discs are pretty much shot as expected, so quick scourer of ebay scored me a set of discs and pads, rear shoes and a haynes manual for the princely sum of £52 all in.

Off work tomorrow so i think it'll be out with the grinder and welder again!

[Damien4884]

Chopped out the rot


Cleaned up and knocked up a inner repair


Easiest thing to do here was refit the chopped off bits and repair as needed on car.


Next bit tacked in and rear valance checked for fit


Now time to go to work!

[Damien4884]

After a poke and a peek underneath I decided to attack the side and then make it all match up at the rear after (i can see a lot of fiddling to get that shape coming up). It wasn't actually that hard to make up, one "kink" over a lump of wood few tweeks over my leg and it fitted pretty good, quick tweek on arch end gave me a nice lip, which i ended up chopping in a few places (still have not mastered shrinking with a hammer and dolly, but i got close)




Before I fit that theres some inner repairs needed, some of that has been done, but phone seems to have eaten the snaps of it.

[Damien4884]

Been off work with a severe case of man flu, finally today I couldn't sit around the house any more and had to do something. The way I feel I probably shouldn't be welding and grinding so I moved onto checking out the rear 1/4 window frame.


Pretty much as expected

couple of extras there


Bit of roof needing some attention

More cardboard needed I think!!

[Damien4884]

Is it bad that i haven't actually driven it yet? :lol:

"inner rear 1/4 repairs"




Will need to find my bit of copper to fill that hole in but with the amount of time it took to get that close i can live with it, its also supposed to be rounded but was enough work as it was.

theres still a repair to do on inner arch yet but that needs to wait until I cut more of outer arch off.

Clamped the rear 1/4 repair in place so I could work out what to do around the rear end to make it all match up




Made the bumper recess, needs a bit of smoothing with the hammer and dolly but fits pretty well, so should just be a case of making a rounded bit with a curve on rear edge to meet up with rear valance.

[Damien4884]

Found a disposable bottle and scraped together enough to get some weld thru primer so I can at least get a few bits done.

Along roof by boot seal, no picture of before but it did have a decent size hole in it



Cut out cleaned up and ready for some welding



new section welded in and primed (looks like i've missed a bit of grinding) Theres 5 more areas to attend to around the boot seal but the worst one is now done!

Next bit has been a bit of a faff, I tried making the section in 1 piece but found that when I came to do the last bend it wouldn't go and the previous bends were just straightening out. So 2 bits and plenty of powerfile action seems to be the best way of doing it.



Cutout cleaned up and new section partially welded in

[Damien4884]

Finished off the welding to the inner rear 1/4 / valance bit. Tacked the lower 1/4 repair in got the awkward shaped bit tacked in then made up the final awkward shaped bit to finish it all off. (poor quality on the pics due to low light conditions, it looks quite good in the flesh)





Then ran out of gas. Again.

[Damien4884]

Managed to get some time on it today, finished off the welding on rear 1/4. Got rid of worst of rust staining and give it a coat of primer



Needs more grinding and some filler work to get it into shape but im happy with it.

i'm glad the other side isn't as bad.

[Damien4884]

Started off having a look at the seats, mainly because as a seat they are great but better suited to a lounge rather than a car, I prefer to sit on rather than in a seat. As alramone was going down to strip some bits off the one off ebay, it made sense to me to check out the deal on rear seat and see if I need another one. Pulled the rear seat out to see what had been done to get the leather cover on it. the base was easy to sort, it had an extra bit of foam that matched the leather seats shape stuck on top of original foam, leather was held on by a lot of small cable ties and a few screws. The back however was a mash up of datsun frame with Peugeot foam trimmed to fit. Front seats were original runner with a couple of tabs on so easy to reclaim, all of this is going to sound like i'm returning to original, but i'm not. i've now got another back to hopefully mash my own seats up with.

I really need to get this moving on so i'm using a set of BMW seats I have in stock. Fronts went together real easy, currently just well tacked together so I can get it all apart easy as I could do with making them sit about 2 inches lower. Thats going to take some time to sort so i'll come back to that later.

Whilst alramone was there he got a couple of other things for me; rear side glass (unique to the wagon) and another pair of front wings. These will either get chopped up to repair rear arches or used on front and current pattern part (read as crap fitting) front ones chopped up for rear. Just got to get over and pick them up.

I'm up to a point with drivers rear 1/4 where I now need to sort out the arch but I cant get the arches from al at the moment as the daily is ill.

I've moved over to passengers side, starting at the top around the window, i've removed all the rusty bits , made and welded in a few new panels. These are now sat in some primer awaiting some fill/prep action at a later date.


Got a new toy delivered late last week, so some of the prep has been started whilst I'm leaving panels to cool and paint to dry etc. I've attacked most of passengers side with 120 on the DA, most of it is straight and dent free so preps pretty much limited to keying the surface. I find 120 grit gets rid of the dead paint easily and on this car the paints pretty thin so doesnt take long to sand back to bare metal where needed. A quick guide coat and I have wet sanded with 400 to remove all the swirls left by the DA and leaving it ready for some primer.

[Damien4884]

So left it at the window frame being welded, I heard there was some rain on the way so refitted the window to keep the rain out for now.

Got some money in so took a trip over to datman for some bits and a general nose about. Left there with a passengers sill, head gasket set and a few other odds n ends. Then went onto alramones, where I picked up a pair of front arches and a rear seat back from a wagon thats going to be bangered (TBH its all its good for )

Original plan was to chop up the half decent arches to repair my rear ones, however the pattern ones on the front of mine are really bad fitting, so now have a pair of quite well fitting, slightly rusty red ones on the front which I can repair with the pattern wings. Then use whats left over to fix the rear quarters . Sounds quite long winded but looks like less work.

Now that the window frame is watertight (ish) I can get on with repairing the LH boot area. looking to the other side



It looks quite good, its got an overlap it shouldn't have but its covered by the boot liner and presentable enough. Over to LH side:



Theres a few rusty bits of floor, rear crossmember and a few patches over bits n bobs which altogether looks a bit of a mess. (in that picture i've already removed one patch in corner and welded in a better fitting panel).

Theres should be a picture here of the panels i've already made to finish up the repairs to floor ready to weld in but i've lost it.

Moving to the outside on LH side theres another repair needed to the rear corner, thankfully its not as bad as other side



Now waiting on all the bits I ordered yesterday to turn up.