If I had to name a single thing I've underestimated on the Lada it must be the amount of work that goes into fixing all the sheetmetal. And no, I never had any unrealistic expectations towards my craftmanship or the final result as in some sort of mysterious "better than new"-type of goal. Just turn the old boy into a less leaky vehicle, which is as structurally sound as one can expect from a 30+ year old car. So just to get this out of the way (and remind myself again, should I have any "funny ideas" in the future once Comrade Car is finished), it was three months. Not full time admittedly and I also tackled some other issues along the way, but still that's quarter of a year and as you'll see at the end, it's not even painted (yet).
Judged by a 1960ies or 70ies standard, the overall build quality of the sheetmetal of a Lada isn't too bad and definitely on par with European economy cars of the era. A Volkswagen Beetle, a Fiat 124 (obviously) or an Opel Kadett would probably have faired pretty similarly.
The main differences being that a Lada Niva is an offroad vehicle, more precisely a very affordable one when new and at least in the case of mine, was used offroad a lot. As indicated by several kilos of caked on mud, which obviously were instrumental in making some of the sheetmetal go paper-thin. Also at least the last owner didn't invest too heavily into cleaning the undercarriage or much other maintenance.
A fine selection of tools was laid out and then there was nothing but actually diving into the job head-first.
The Lada sports a convenient maintenance panel inside the wheel well, that leads into a cavity between the firewall and outer fender. The exact reason for this still remains a mystery to me, but if you see a Niva with a rotten fender tip, it comes from exactly this spot.
The left sill was the most obvious rust issue. Please also not the fine repair at the end going to the rear wheel arc. (Another one of those typical spots, which tend to disintegrate.)
The countersunk philips-head screws that hold the door in position weren't too bad on mine, probably because the whole car must have had a left-side frontend smash at some point and thus had been apart at some time in the past.
One almost surgical cut later it became apparent that there's no point in patching up just the outer sill.
Mind you, I have never done a sill on a car before, so between this and the next picture a few mistakes happened. The biggest one being the strategic decision to actually cut out all of the outer sill and even more so to start welding in the outer sill first instead of the inner one. (It does look good though.)
As the inner-sill support was unavailable at the time, I had to repair it with some sheet metal. Which was my second mistake, as it meant, that I now had another layer that I'd better not cut into, when cutting out the inner sill... (Also I could have asked around and would probably found some dealer that would be willing to sell me this repair panel.)
One of the more peculiar things I found was a massive piece of L-channel pigeon-sh*t welded to one of the frame rails with what I can only assume was meant to be a very hefty towing eye.
The bottom bit is easily 10 to 12mm thickness. As a matter of fact, it was so long and thick, it went straight into the box with steel off-cuts I use on the mill for the various odd job.
Mud + pigeon sh*t welding obviously made for a perfect environment to create some deluxe rust on the frame.
So over time, I would knock up quite a few of these. The recipe was always the same: measure, roughly transfer it to cardboard, trim to size, transfer to steel and make another patch. (I am sure the bend in this one was intentional. 😉)
Another one in the driver's foot well. The holes are where I drilled out all the spot welds of the front frame brace and jack support to gain access to the rust spot and the inner sill. (At least the frame brace, if I had started from the inside out, I simply could have left in place and only reweld the jack-support.)
Over time I started to work on more elaborate repair panels - only to later find out that the whole rear inner wheel well would have cost next to nothing compared to the amount of time I invested.
And it was at this point that I finally was at the point, I where I could weld in the inner sill. (Following roughly a full day of cutting out the last remnants of the old sill with out killing myself.
Added that last bit of the front fender, which I had to cut off to fit the sill and finally the overall looks of Comrade Car had (somewhat) improved.
What followed next was one of those acts of absolutely futile defiance or in other words, patching up a muffler.
Also, now I have a stainless steel exhaust tip on a stock AvtoVAS-muffler.
But just as in the Communist' international - onwards we must go. Next stop a badly repaired left side front crash with plenty of rusted out metal on the front mudguard. Step one cut out the rusty metal.
Realise it's not even remotely enough and that the headlight-bucket has to come out as well. (And seriously question your life-choices...)
Then sigh very loudly a few times and start making a repair panel.
... and just let that welder eat until due to zero degree temperatures and the pressure drop it freezes over.
With the frontend sorted (no it wasn't, but I wanted to work on something a bit more simple), I decided to tackle a series of holes in the tailgate.
Quite a bit of grinding, bit of filler and we're on track to make the rear end at least half presentable again.
What this blog post omits is quite a bit of tedious smaller sheet-metal work, lots of little stuff on the fenders and all those kind of things. Also the whole inner lip of the tailgate is rotten to hell and the best I could do was to cut it all out and just weld in two strips, so the inner structure would not flop around in the breeze.
Regardless, the old Comrade Car is now back at a point, where tackling the remaining technical issues actually makes sense. But I've learnt one thing the hard way: For about the same money, I could have bought a much better Lada and would already be wondering, which tyres to buy or stuff like that... Do I regret it? No, not really. I learned a lot more this way and this one will be a known quantity afterwards. Even if that known quantity actually means knowing that it has got quite a few more fleas, which have to be evicted. 😏
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