Long time reader, first time poster..

[Yorda]

Looking at my front fenders I was trying to work out how to get the rust out of some of the corners that I cant get a wire wheel into, electrolysis seemed a good idea, but I did not have a container big enough to hold a fender...

Early the next morning drinking coffee and looking out my house window as the garbage truck came and collected the rubbish bin and emptied them I had a twinge of excitement, Yes...the 240 litre wheelie bin! So i gave it a test and the fender almost fits, it will have to be turned after its first soak to get the end sticking out, but completely do-able, so washed out and filled with water and washing soda mix in the fender went, its still soaking so will see how it turns out tomorrow.

 

[Yorda]

This morning I pulled the front fender from the bin and gave it a quick wash before dunking the other end in the electrolyte, over all quite happy withe the results. I did not expect the paint to come away, just all the rust. Anywhere there was a stone chip, scratch or star in the paint and rust had started to develop had mostly dissolved and it had reached into all those hard to reach edges which was my main goal.
For the amount of labour that goes into this, I think its a very time effective way of removing rust.

 

[Yorda]

I was convinced my only hope of putting a roof on the 45 meant a fibreglass replacement, I had been trying to find one in good condition for a long time. My old roof as you can see was pretty rusty.

I picked up a roof this weekend, needs some work as it has the front corner smashed in and the front drip rail is rusted out but its a steel roof with no large holes.

 

[Yorda]

I had some time available so decide to remove the front drip rail, because of where it was smashed it had popped several of the spot welds on the side drip rail also.
The front drip rail was rusted out and had rusted the roof edge where it attaches in a couple of small spots, the drip rail has to be replaced.

I smashed out the dent quickly to see what needs to be repaired.It came out not to bad and requires a bit more time for shaping

I decided then to have a look under the rest of the drip rail and glad i did, I drilled out all the spot welds and removed it.

More rust was lurking all the way around under the drip rail, which also had started to develop a few pin holes, thankfully the roof edge seems to be in reasonable condition still. Removing the drip rail and checking for rust has saved this metal roof hopefully from becoming a rust statistic for some years to come.

 

[Yorda]

So this weekend I spent a day reorganising the garage space as things had started to get disorganised, and I basically had a goat track to move around on. I did'nt realise how much stuff I had accumulated over the years.

 

[Yorda]

I had the passenger side door off already so decided to strip it down, and do a preliminary rust unearthing. Initially the loose scaly rust made the door bottom look worse than it turned out to be. It still requires some major rust repair but not as bad as I first thought.

I put a straight edge across the door skin and noticed it was dished in quite a bit.

I could push the inside door skin out and it would pop out but not stay, was a little confused as the skin looked quite good over all. I started to buff the rust and bog out from the bottom of the door and discovered the bog went up a lot further than first thought. I used the wire buff wheel to cut lines through the bog to see how thick it was and where it stopped.

Bog covered almost the fuller lower half of the door skin.

It was quite thick 3-4mm in the centre, adding quite a bit of weight to the door as well, as I could notice the difference after I removed it all.

After I removed all the bog the bow in the skin was just as bad, not sure how I will go about getting it flat again, anyone got any tips?

 

[Yorda]

After all the bog was removed the lowest point in the door was about 13mm, I have never looked at other cruiser doors to see if they are bowed in or if they are perfectly flat, given there are no real supports in the door I would expect some dished in effect but how much would be considered permissible?