Rexanne - Gold s2 restoration project

[Steve-A]

I hesitate to get involved with a technical issue as you guys are so much more skilled at restoration that me, but in my day, if you had a rusty tank you just filled the tank with water to welded it.... but your idea sounds fine to me....
John

Never hesitate John Certainly I\'ve no idea what I\'m doing I\'m just kinda giving it all a go based on what I can read on the internet and the knowledge I can glean from you guys!

The water idea or fill tank with welding gas etc are the sort of things my dad said, maybe the stories I\'m reading on the net are just scare mongering.

But when I did some research pretty much every thread I found said don\'t weld old old rusty fuel tanks and that it was asking for trouble, that modern epoxies designed for fuel tank use were best. In a way I\'m making up a repair patch a couple on inches square, but then instead of cutting out old metal and welding in, I\'ll glue it over the top. Hopefully should do the job.

I was a bit worried it might come to that Tim I\'ve WD40ed them and will spray them and give them a knock with a hammer for a few days in a row then attack them, with the drill at the ready if needs be.

[Steve-A]

Had a day off today, and took full advantage of it

Ian popped over and we got some good progress made on this and the Megasquirt for his Polo, though thats not for this thread or forum!

Started the day by fighting the the fuel level sender screws.



4 came out nicely, 2 had to have their heads drilled off... ah well.

Then made lots of mess...



All that mess and couple of hours later and the fuel tank was repaired! :d



After that I acid etched the tank ready for a coat of POR 15

I also got some more post, the most important item of which being the copper-nickle brake pipe for making up my new hard lines.



And Dad brought home a bunch of shiny new nuts and washers.




Once I\'ve painted the tank I\'ve got the exhuast hanger bracket, the ARB to chassis brackets and the under body heat shielding to paint then its time to put it back together!!!..... and then pull the front to bits

[Steve-A]

What a lovely day its been!

Got quite a bit done too

Firstly I cleaned up and painted the last few little brackets and stuff.



Then I painted the top side of the tank, before running out of POR15. Need to get an order in with Frost ASAP!



I then turned my attention to the under body shielding. It was all pretty dead, and in a way not worth spending too much time trying to save. The metal tank guards were basically completely rotten through, so I\'ve just ditched them. The tank will have a good couple of layers of POR15 on it at least to protect it.

Thinking about adding extra protection to the tank, and inner arches, it it worth adding a layer of stone chip paint or similar over the top of the POR for extra protection, or is it not needed?

The exhaust heat shields I saved though, just giving them a quick brush down and blast over with high temp paint.



Now it was a very special moment, time to start re-assembly!!!!! :Party:Party

I didn\'t get too far though. I got the drive shafts back in the diff, and bolted down fine.



Then I started to make up the new brake hard lines for the axel, when I realised I\'d got the wrong fittings The ones I\'ve bought have a blank un-threaded section on the end of them, and the ones I\'ve taken off are threaded right to the end. The one\'s I\'ve bought only go a couple of turns into the brake line splitter block before bottoming out, which I cant imagine being a good idea.



So instead I drilled and tapped a few of the holes in the chassis where bolt had sheared, or threads that needed chasing after painting.

Then I made the most of the last of the nice day by getting my motorbike out

Feels like a real milestone to start putting it back together. I need to do a little more shopping, just silly little annoying things like a new clip to hold the filler neck onto the tank, then hopefully i\'ll all go back together next saturday morning and I can move my focus forward to the middle of the floor pan, and heading for the front end.

[Ian65]

great progress  there Steve.... wait till you put those polybushes in.... what a s*** job that is!
I\'d stone chip the bottom of the tank up to the seam as POR15 degrades in direct sunlight... I know the tank\'s basically under the car but better safe than sorry.... same goes for the rear arches.

[CHC (RIP)]

Good to see assembly started at last - great feeling hey!  I see while you\'ve been busy with welding and fabrication work your mum has been growing some new bits for the car in the green-house - are you taking orders by any chance?

You\'ve done really well to get so much painted with the 6 small tins and when we consider the quality of the protective coating and that you have applied two coats, you\'ll have a well protected under carriage there - even so, like Ian says, you\'ll be better off \'stone coating\' the underside of the petrol tank.  As you have no protection shield for the tank, I\'d also be inclined to apply \'stone coat\' to the leading face of the tank top too - just as a precautionaery measure.

What a bummer having the wrong brake fittings - ***p happens mate but as you say, this can be overcome.

Keep up the good work.
:Thumbs-up

[Steve-A]

Cheers guys.

Your sentiments on the stone guard stuff mirrors my plans, but just thought I ought to run it by you guys first, incase you said \'oooh no, you wanna do this instead......\'

[Steve-A]

Managed to grab a few hours today to work on the project

I recieved my 2nd lots of POR15 in the post yesterday, so I set to work on finishing painting the tank.



Then I cleaned off more of the underbody, as far forward as I could go with the car in this position.



And acid etched it and chucked some POR on that too!



So really getting to the stage where next I get to start putting bits back together. Certainly I should be able to put the fuel tank and pump assembly in this weekend, and if the ebay supplier can get the brake pipe fittings to me on time then hopefully the rear axel with new hard lines too.

On a side note, whilst its been awesome to be comfy working outside in a t shirt, I may have made a bit of a mess....



Oopps! Long sleeve shirt for me this week at work!

[rossonza]

Weathers too nice for long sleve t\'s Steve :-) good progress tank looks better than new. look forward to see the rest of the car progress.

[captainbizzaro]

You\'re supposed to apply it with a paintbrush Steve, that might be the issue.:2Rolleyes

[CHC (RIP)]

Might take longer than a week too - I had similar around my wrists for near 2 1/2 weeks (and that was with daily scrubbing with a nail brush).  As I said previously, damn good stuff that POR 15.

[Ian65]

my arms looked like that last night... got in the shower with a pumice stone and scrubbed it off.... bloody hurt but I can\'t walk around covered in that stuff for 2 weeks!

Petrol tank looks good Steve, a nice resto job on that...

[Steve-A]

Thanks Ian I was pleased with how the tank has come out too!

Thinking of the tank, Saturday morning I gave it a blast over with some stone guard stuff. I used basically a whole 500ml can on the tank to get 3 solid coats so hopefully it should do the trick. I also used most of another can on the underside of the wheel arches.




Next up I popped into Dads work with him and changed the chamfer on the back of my PCD adapters a little, so they fitted the rx7 brake disks better. I forgot to get a photo but the milling machine next to the lathe was a \'bridgeport\' which amused me

Started with this:



Then did some of this:



Ended with this, which now sits snugly against the disk as it should.



Seeing as I was on a roll, once I got home I started assembling the axel, putting the brake lines on, the ARB in its new bushings etc. Once that was done I pre-assebled as much of the fuel system as I could. This is where I\'d got to by dusk.




The only snag I ran into was that some of the metal clips on the axel for the brake lines didn\'t like being bent back round, after I\'d bent them open to get the old line out, and snapped off Shouldn\'t be too hard to get some sort of clip though.



I was thinking of going for the plastic type that push through a hole and clip into place, and where its not practical to drill a hole, to cut the back off them and Araldite them down? Unless anyones got better ideas?

This type:



Anyway, it got dark, I went to the pub. Sunday came round too quickly, especially with the clocks changing, so I didn\'t get started till after 11.

First up I installed the fuel system. Went in fairly easily, had to fit the tank twice as I mixed up where the breather hoses went the first time!



It went in ok, but slowly. After that storm destroyed the gazebo and knocked over my carefully organised box of bolts, I\'m not even sure I have every bolt/nut/washer. I\'ve had to really slow down the assembly working out if I\'m using the right bolts or if they are needed elsewhere etc.

Anyway the fuel system was in, so now for the axel. With all family hands to the deck, seeing as no car type friends could be roused, we got it in place.



I have come across a small problem though. The latteral watts links don\'t seem to line up with the chassis quite as well as they should.

This is the drivers side link, sitting naturally about an inch forward of the bracket.



The passengers side sat a similar distance rearwards of the bracket. So I got the tape measure out to make sure the axel was in square and measuring from the wheel arch back, from the lower suspension link mount back and from the front wheels back it all seems square.

Then spent about 2 hours faffing with the watts link assembly, seeing if I\'d got something installed upside down etc, but could only make things worse.

So as dusk fell once more I pushed the links into place, and they went fine and don\'t appear to bind, but it just doesn\'t seem right that they are equally out of line, as if the whole watts assembly is twisted.

Either way a good weekends work, leaving me to sort out what length the lower links need to be and this watts link issue, then I can start on the front.

[CHC (RIP)]

Excellent progress this weekend Steve - well done, and you family too.

Just a point - I take it you have purposely missed off the 2nd shield for the fuel filter underneath? It\'s just the filter is supposed to be protected.

As for the Watts Link - my thought was that perhaps you had refitted the lateral links the wrong way as there appears to be a slight difference with mine
Ta
Cliff

[Steve-A]

Nope! There was no cover over the fuel filter when Ross originally picked up the car, so I never knew anything was missing. Have you got a picture of what it looks like?

[David Nock (RIP)]

Superb work Steve.

I don\'t know how you\'d deal with the little clips. Blooxdy great tie wraps would work but so crude.
You could put self tappers into surfaces that aren\'t part of the oil carrying tube. I don\'t like that either.....hmmm. Araldited clips then.

New clips welded in place? Again not on the axle tube.