One of the wiper hole covers on the plastic scuttle trim kept falling out, so I welded it back in place with a soldering iron

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both rear shocks, bumpstops and mounts were absolutely knackered. They had no rebound at all. This first picture shows them full compressed, when they should be expanded. Replaced with genuine rear shocks and mounting bolts, and aftermarket bumpstops and mounts. I reused the original sleeves.

 

 

Edited 13 January, 20224 yr by a1topdog

While the rear shocks were out I cleaned back the surface rust from their mounting points, gave the a cost of zinc primer and finished up with a cost of white stonechip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before and after

The car needed a new set of tyres. It came with 4 odd tyres, all old, perished, and one had a big gash in the side wall. I will not be doing much mileage in the car so couldn't justify £500+ on a set of tyres, so I opted for a set of Riken high performance tyres, for half of that.

 

 

The wheel rims are in ok condition for now but needed new centre caps. I bought some from eBay, which I thought were repro, but the have the Skoda logo and part number stamped on them, so not sure if they are genuine or not? I swapped over the metal rings for the originals and all good. 

Still more updates to come, next up is tackling the rust on the bodywork.......

Great to see the level of work going into this! 
I do love the old 1.8T's.... reminds me that I need to crack on building mine that i've been putting off for years.

I spent a bit of time tidying up the body work. Luckily all of the rust looked worse then it was. It was only all surface.  First up was the bottom of the front wings.

 

Before

 

During

And done. Onto the next bit

Even though this car never originally had front mud flaps (only rears) I fitted a set I had lying about. Now that section of the lower wing this totally covered, and hopefully better protected. 

Good job on staving off the dreaded tin worm from this Octavia. Mudguards are a good choice too.

Onto the rear arches

 

 

And the other side

The door bottoms

 

 

The front roof corners. I still need to blend the paint line here, but I may need to paint the whole roof at some point, so this repair was just to keep the rust at bay. 

 

I had to do both sides, but you get the idea

Then there was 2 little scabs on the front of the bonnet, either side of the grill

 

Next was the tailgate. This has the usual mess around the push button and around the handle. I think some of this must have been caused when the police chevron decals were fitted and they cut around the handle, damaging the paint. 

 

 

I was really pleased with how this came out. At one point I thought I might have to paint the whole tailgate, but managed to blend the paint nicely on the localised repairs.

Edited 16 January, 20224 yr by a1topdog

All of these tailgate repairs will be covered up the chevron decal shown here. But as these will be expensive to buy I wanted to make sure there was a solid base underneath

 

(Photo credit Dan Derisive, Facebook)