Project Pickle - paint primer party. It's my party I can cry, if I want to... (part 9.2)

 I'll be honest, I thought I was on a bit of a roll. The metal content of the body was nearing the factory fresh state, everything had come apart without excessive drama and disassembly didn't reveal any new drama. It's a warm afternoon in late September and the car is stripped down as far as it has to.

It was going too well. I was planning to play it safe, whilst I was aware that the paint I used on the Lada wasn't exactly perfect, it was cheap, relatively elastic and last time it was easy enough to use.

There were just two deviations from last time: I used a spray gun and I followed my notes from the Lada whilst someone at the paint manufacturer had changed the recipe, resulting in the primer now being ready for spray paint and not set up to be rolled on thus being much thinner viscosity.

Also it reacted with whatever it was that the previous guy spray (generously) over the lower sections of the interior.

At this point there's two ways of tackling the situation: the correct (professional) way or my way. Get out a set of rollers, push the car into the sun to get the metal to heat up a bit (would probably have been more effective, if I had gone with a darker primer) and roll on the primer nicely thick. Remember: in case of doubt you can always call it art or some kind of statement.

The good thing about September? There's plenty of sun,nice temperatures and with a bit of wind, which means you don't get much more than a quick snack between coats...

Project Pickle - paint and preparing for it was actually the easy bit (part 9.1)

 In case you haven't seen the status update from about a month, the paint scheme I most seriously considered was this very, very 50ies combination of a light mint green and a cream colored roof. 

You well enough know that this didn't happen, but let me tell you, I was pretty close. Another thing I wasn't even closely done with was to do more seam sealing. In hindsight, I am not even hoping to keep all the water out at this point, I just want to politely show it the sort of the right direction by now. 😉

The oldest joke when repairing old cars? "That'll be the welding part of it done." In this case it mostly has to do with the fact that the old antenna was nearly ripped out of the A-pillar and let the water in, which then resulted in the driver-side sill... you get the idea. Not sure, where I'll put the new one, but it most likely won't be here.

Hard not to notice: the windscreen is out. Compared to the Lada way too easy. Aside from the fact it shattered, because someone had glued the old windscreen rubber in and it was waaay too late, when I realised it. (Or in other words the glass was already cracked.)

The following picture shows the arrangement of all the cables going to air-vent-levers and as I couldn't find ANYTHING similar somewhere on the internet (and no the one from the later models is entirely different), maybe this one will help. Also, if someone knows which ones are hooked up incorrectly on this one... let me know, because the cable for the heater valve is way too long.

(Also some fine craftmanship with the powersupply for the radio bodged onto the cigarette lighter, if I may say so myself...)

With the dashboard mostly cleared out, this left only the heaterbox that needed to be removed. The first two bolts are very, very obvious.

And then there's this one, which goes through the firewall and hides behind the distributor.

Other than that it's just two cooland hoses and the fact that you most likely removed a small ecosystem from the vehicle.

As such, cleaning it out thoroughly and removing whatever lives inside makes quite the difference. (Quite a pile of moldy leaves actually)

Project Pickle - new fuel tank modifications (part 8)

 With the rust issues addressed it was well about time to treat myself to some new parts. As the old fuel tank was almost rusted through and a new one wasn't all that expensive this was a bit of a no-brainer. The only thing the aftermarket tank lacked was a fuel drain. 

Quickly made a very solid disk on the lathe and tapped it M14x1.5, so I can use a magnetic drain plug to catch some of the rust that will inevitably build up over time on the inside.

Top tip: If you plan to fit a copper washer, put it on as soon as possible or you might end up wondering, why that tank is dripping fuel ever so slightly...

Project Pickle - floorboards aren't quite as overrated: rust (part 7.5)

 When viewed from the outside, little Mr. Pickle was starting to look a lot like a car again. Shame that he was the vehicular impersonation of a Potemkin village, i.e. a lot of facade and not too much behind it. 

As I had decided to work from the front towards the back, the first step was to spot weld the two floorboards to the mid-crossmember. 

A quick fit up of the boot floor and wheel wells revealed that whilst everything fitted substantially better than I dreaded.

As at the time the correct repair panel for the lower rear door frame was unavailable (and when I saw it later it was waaaaaaay too flimsy anyway), I decided to make it myself from 3mm thick flat bar. Together with a serious amount of cavity wax this should be one of the few spots on the car that shouldn't cause headache down the line. 

With the rear door installed and locked during the welding this is probably now the opening in the cars body with by far the nicest fitup.

One little thing I missed in all this excitement was the fact that the crossmember actually consists of two parts - an inner and an outer. Said inner crossmember will not fit past the transmission tunnel, once the outer is fixed in place. After a moment of being quite unhappy with my own lack of forward thinking, the inner was sliced into three parts.

Getting the boot floor permanently installed was then more or less just a case of a stupidizillion of spot welds. 

The wheel wells were a case of more of the same: Drilling (a lot of) holes for the spot welds...

... and then doing a lot of spot welding.

Only to finish everything off by seam sealing the living daylights out of all those weld joints. 

Which gets a bit trickier, when you have to do it in spots, which you are out of reach later.

With the inside actually finished off it was necessary to do something that would make this mess with wheels look a bit more finished, so I decided to "just quickly" fit the new front wings and grill. I will spare you the gory details, but let me emphasize that neither quickly nor fit properly were something to be achieved quickly and it became rather apparent that Mr. Pickle had been involved in an not quite so minor accident. 

Which lead me to address to the situation at the roof. I had noticed a slightly mouldy scent on the inside and quite a bit of surface rust where the padding of the roof liner touched the roof on the inside. I can only assume that at least for a while Mr. Pickle carried a roof rack and in the course of this, the paint was damaged and the roof slowly rusted through. 

Which left me with one of the last repairs on the rear door pillars and most likely one of the most interesting ones. Let's say I found out after ordering the correct repair panels that the open top and "station wagon" version sport dramatically different rear doors. As such I had to fabricate an S-shaped angle bracket so that the door seal ultimately had somewhere to go. Though it sounds daunting, this turned out to be relatively simple and is in retrospect probably the one bit I am most proud of on the whole car.

... and at this point we're at the end of September.