Now, I assume it's a pretty safe bet to say that nobody likes to find rust on his/her/their project car, but I have to admit it was kind of soothing to find it for me. Why? Becaus if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's most likely just a dog with flippers. Seriously though, it simply seemed too unreasonable to expect no rust, especially given how rust holes were fixed in the past. And dare I say: someone LOVED bondo.
First step was to remove the front bumper.
And then get the angle grinder with a wire brush out and see why pickle sported completely flat sides atop of the wheel arches.
Ah yes, that'll explain the bow in the sill.
Bit more digging and it's clear - two new front fenders will save A LOT of work.
Did I mention that someone that someone loved bondo? Seriously the section under the fuel filler cap is a healthy 13mm (1/2") thick and the bead has been completely plastered over.
As I had already arrived at the back of the little car, it seemed rude not to take the rear bumper off - all 4 bolts holding it to the floorpan snapped and the center bolt had a stripped nut, so here's a bit of work for future me.
As the rear body corners were both fine, I went ahead removed the grill, which unlike the fenders had next to no rust at all. (Which sort of makes me wonder, if this one might have been swapped at some point in time.) Admittedly I feel a bit of a Series Landy vibe going on and I am almost sure one could fabricate a front to match... Also as the next thing (even prior to doing the rust repairs) is to do a full service on the engine: timing belt, thermostat, swap the radiator, reseal the manifold, tackle some oil leaks, you get the idea, having no grill in the way makes it even easier to do those jobs.
With the front tackled as far as I can take it at this point (as I want to drive the little truck over to the other workshop and not have to push it all the way), I turned my attention back to the rear. Usually the cover for the filler neck is bolted on, here it was welded to the floor plate with an ungodly ugly patch panel, which to put it mildly didn't inspire the level of confidence I was aiming for and guess what: mouse poop and rust. Especially seeing how the last person did the inner wheel arches made it very easy to come to the conclusion to do a slightly better job at this end myself.
This left the tailgate as a last piece to undergo a more thorough inspection and to no one's surprise, there's a few spots both inside and outside, where the skin had and thus leaked inside and outside. Or in other words, the rear window has to come out as well and a bit of reconstructive metal surgery needs to be done.
And with that the little Suzuki was placed inside the other workshop and rust repairs should start very, very quickly.
One thing I plan to do differently than how I did it on the Lada is to break the work down into smaller subassemblies, for example I will fix the new bonnet in my workshop and then transfer it to the car, same goes for the tailgate. I am still a bit on the fence on how to do the sills as a lot of guys seem to swap them for thick-wall box section, which is very, very pragmatic, but I am not sure what my MOT guy would have to say about that. If I go down that route it's *just* the floorpans, inner and outer wheel arches and a repaint, before I can get back to reassembly. Sounds overly optimistic? Yep, totally.
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