My long awaited 87b mk1.5 swap

[D2W]

Great thread. Delighted to see another mk1 coming back from the brink. Very impressed with (and a bit jealous of) your workmanship too.

Hope you don't mind me taking advantage. I've got a caliper refurb job to do too and I'd like to achieve similar results to yours.
What exactly is your process after taking them out of solution?
Exactly what paint did you use?

All the best
D2W

[Hurricane]

Once you have the calipers stripped down e main thing to do to get the best results using the bilt hamber is to make sure any flakey dirt and rust is removed with the wire brush, and any oils are removed by using a degreaser. This means the solution can get to work on the rust rather than having to cut through the crud. Once removed from the solution they have a layer of black grunge, but this rinses off, plus a blast with a wire brush brings them up quite nicely.

My calipers had previously been painted with some sort of caliper enamel, so the worst bits around the lettering wouldn't come off easily, hence I turned some plastic plugs to protect the bores, then shot blasted the worst bits to get them nice and clean.

The paint is just a can of cheap caliper spray from the motor factors local to work, I'll check exactly what make it is tomorrow. They only happen to be silver as the other choice was red, and I'm past the stage of having red calipers in my life

Edit, paint is Hycote caliper paint

[Hurricane]

I'm trying not to let too much get in the way, if I don't get this finished by July then the baby will be with us and nothing will get done!

My main worry is having some decent weather to crack on with the welding. At least if I can get the engine mounts welded I can prep and paint the bay and get the engine in, so at least something is happening, then I can do the bodywork over Easter when we will, fingers crossed, have some decent dry days

[D2W]

Thank you for the advice. It gives me a good idea what to do and what to expect.

Good luck with your build. Will be watching with interest.

D2W

[Hurricane]

So, I'm not entirely sure where the last 6 or so weeks have disappeared, but I have been doing bits and pieces, mostly rust removal. As such I've had to wait for the weather to be nice for me to crack out the welder.

Anyway a few pictures to show the mess of the front passenger chassis rail and inner arch






Soooo, quite a mess in there, so I got happy with the grinder and cut some more out. This took me several hours to get back to clean metal







So I started to patch things back in. You can see a couple of my angle pieces as I made them above. I forgot to take too many pictures as I worked through the repair, but here are a few. The captive nuts for the ARB and the crossmember were replaced with new ones before it was all sealed up











Not the neatest bit of seam sealing, but they are covered, I will blast the lot with gravitex once I've finished all the repairs

[Hurricane]

So with the front corner finished I attacked the sill. I have a replacement sill and arch connector to go on. I had always suspected there was filler at the bottom of the b pillar as the door corner was rubbing. Turns out at some point in its life it has had a part from a less rusty mr2 welded in to the quarter panel in the kick up behind the skirt. So around where this was welded in the panels have rusted out, meaning it now needs a lot more repair, I'll let the pictures talk



You can see the thickness of filler here, at least 5 mm in places













In the last couple of pictures I have wire brushed the rusty inner sill, and treated it with jenolite. I have since red oxide the lot. Until I can get a b pillar repair piece I can't cut anymore out. I had to remove a part of the inner sill strengthener at the rear, but this can be patchy in easily. The rear inner arch/rear sill area will be a bit harder to replace, but I'll deal with that. It looks like the inner arch is completely shot, and the outer is bubbling, but I intend on fitting some woodsport bolt on arches, so I'm not bothering to treat this for now, as most of the arch will be cut off

[Jiff Lemon]

That's some excellent work! Goes to show that mk1's are very much still save able if you're prepared to tackle them.
My cap is doffed in your direction mate, keep up the excellent work.

[cdwood2010]

Mighty impressive work. I've got similar rot to cut out and repair on the Datsun, and i was somewhere between scared and excited about it. Leaning towards excited as you're making it look so easy.

:)

[adamh]

good job