Now I admittedly make some dumb decisions, but I am not stupid. So part of the deal was to have the seller deliver the mighty Comrade Car to my workshop. Once they had left, I cracked open a bottle of brush-on rust converter and went to town. Which is when I again encountered this weird phenomenon with Eastern Block vehicles that a patch of blank metal can be right next to some completely rotten steel and only be milimeters apart with no apparent explanation. If you look closely at the left front mudguard you will notice how one part is completely rotten out and a blank bit is right next to it. (I've had this before on one of my Dnepr sidecars, where I missed to repaint on spot and it was uncovered for at least a few months and it was still spotless afterwards.)
Fun Fact: Directly from the Soviet Union imported Lada Nivas, where called Lada Taiga - to the best of my knowledge in the rest of the world they were sold as Lada 2121 Niva. Comrade Car is a 1600cc model with electronically managed Solex carb and catalytic converter. And as it was produced for export to Austria, it came standard with electronic ignition and these alloy wheels, made in Finland specifically for Lada by a company called BWA. (They are for sale as I swapped for the traditional Lada 16" steelies.)
So once I had the Comrade in my driveway I couldn't resist lying underneath it. The car has got a lot of problems stemming from being parked for a long time and not being cared for very well. (Most of the rust is the result of mud having stuck to all sorts of parts for several years.) But no further patches of rust were found on the underside. Neither the gearbox nor diffs seem to leak. The brakes and clutch-hydraulics are completely dead though.
So at this point it looked a lot like a car that had been parked for a while and must have had one really bad repair job on the left sill. Not too bad, eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment