doullama

Almost there, just front quarter now. Sadly my wheel arch lip alignment was thrown off a bit by some bog discovered a touch too late, not unbearable though

and the rear inner + bottom of wheel arch, just about ready for outer which is cut to shape. Guess I'd better repair guard & door for this side so I can bung em on to check sill alignment before I get too carried away

I'm certainly hoping the end is in sight! very much looking forward to getting the rust work out of the way so i can get back to regular bodging, sheds too full of flammable junk to weld in there and its cold outside! Sure thing, i'll be the sucker lying in the driveway haha distractions most welcome

Have finished making some patches & started welding in the front of hz's lh inner sill tonight, luckily most of the inner is salvageable excepting the very front and a couple of feet of the rear! bit where sill joins firewall was toast but complex, just cleaned it up & gave it a mig-wire rebuild. There is meant to be some sort of support under the a-pillar, it was rusted beyond recognition so may just use some handy bent c-channel I have lying around, couldn't find a relevant patch-panel excuse generic bird-splatter

Oh hurro original sill, suspect the other side is an oversill also - however will refrain from confirming suspicions.. The RH rear quarter is an over-quarter too. Seriously is it that hard to run a grinder along to cut out the bulk of the rust before slapping a panel over? Even thats rough but this is next level, oversill held in by about 20 poor tacks + bog to taste.. got it started with grinder +nail-puller then just tore it off by hand! Have both inner/outer repro sills, Outer sill will be a pretty easy replace once I cut out the front quarter panel (still waiting on arrival ex aus) Inner sill looks a right bastard, (complete replacement reqd, big suprise) so much spot-welds under low car.. may even just cut it off at spotweld flange, clean it up and spotweld the replacement inner onto that, then cover the mess in por (just got some, never tried it before but not much to lose -soo much surface rust/pitting to cover. Whatever I do cant possibly be worse than what is there I figure. Be "interesting" to see what A-pillar base is like under guard. Have grabbed a bunch of random scrap steel & an old ute tray headboard which will come in handy for replacing the rotten arch support. Still blown away by 70's australian rust-susceptability tbh!

Whipped the LH door off holden to address some rust in bottom of A-pillar, + its poked (so is RH) so not putting that one back on, while I was there thought i'd do some investigative grinding, someone has kindly smashed in the front quarter? with a hammer to "line up" -read leave room for 1" of bog between it and the poorly folded, and now rusted out replacement outer sill. rearmost 8" of inner sill is also shagged. Luckily patch-panels are available for all this, chinese mig's gonna get a hammering! Also found why water was leaking into A-pillar, nowhere near the appropriate amount of sealant around windscreen, so I guess that comes out too.. Swaps for Austin/morris, no rileyz

i'll just send em to a spring shop, from what I hear its not overly expensive

Max 80s grossness is my precise aim, was just trawling for pics of such haha. Cheers Clint, will look into sending springs away. I'll pull the blocks out 1st, mayy even be ok standard. Max height is just my spontaneous reaction after fixing ground-impact damage haha

As much as I can get away with couple of inches above standard would be nice. At the moment (lowered) It barely clears my driveway, and hz's are apparently prone to cracking in the control arms when fitted with lowering springs and standard shocks..

I'd just cut the spring-seat off and weld it on underneath (if its legal), failing that, are lift-shackles wof-able?

I'm looking at de-lowering the hz van this week, I'd quite like to raise the rear a little above factory height. Can I simply reverse the existing lowering block assembly to use them as lift-blocks and get a wof? Had a bit of a look in the virm but couldn't find much about lifting. Chur

Holden came back friday, had just about forgotten about it! Got some sweet rostyles plus some brown door cards and an 80's shaft-radio off @Threeonthetree, nice to meet you Neal! unbelievably (and probably in a fit of jealousy) my marina failed to proceed after coming back from auckland, sputtered and died in my driveway! Not too sure whats up with it, poor spark. Anyhow here's some pics from the beater, am hoping to have this thing complete in 2019, much work awaits

Great estate!

It should be noted that the rear 1/4's are being done only because beater needed something to weld the arch lip to that wasn't a shopping bag full of rust flakes and filler haha, watch as this chain reaction leads to a 30% new van

And started on a Friday no doubt. At least a van has reasonably simple lines and good access to everything, I imagine a rusty Car equivalent would be far more nightmarish