1 hour ago, skoda_cat said:

oops.

"Bother, and other chemical words"?

Wellllll I MAY have made a mistake, but it's just tin and I have a welder.

But generally I'm pretty close to getting the new panel weldable in.

Perhaps tomorrow.

Yesterday got a bit scrappy because I was real stressed about cutting up the car and it was hot day in full sun and I suffer a bit from "health". I took myself off to bed with a thumping migraine in the end.

It's galling because so much got done really. My friend took me to his favourite paint shop and I picked out a colour which I'm not sure about any more, but whatever.
I've got seam sealer for where I've welded, some PROXL stuff to dye plastics back to black which will be used on the scuttle cover and the bed trim, a tin of primer, a tin of the paint we're not sure about, and some lacquer. All this in aid of painting round the window area before the screen goes in so we don't have to remove the screen to paint the whole car.

This is because I'm not paying for paint till the car is MOTed so everything is a bit about-face. IF I was sensible I'd prep the whole car whilst it's in bits and get it well painted, but I can't invest that much in it in case it never gets road legal. Anyway, that's the doom loop.

I'll chuck some of this paint on one of the old wings to see how it looks and if it's what I really want to go for.

The rest of what got done is:

Drilled out the spot welds on the rotten scuttle and slit the ends

Found out what joys were underneath.

Fixed the damage from drilling out the welds by zapping in a bit of weld and flatting it back. There was one thin area which will have really benefited from that.

Started trimming both ends of the car and the panel to gradually move them closer to being well aligned friends.

The last thing I did which MAY be the mistake is cutting the firewall BELOW the first spot welds because I thought this will be the easiest way to butt weld the most good metal back into the car.

What I'd not realised is that by doing that and drilling out those welds (which I already did) I'm separating the firewall from the lower section of the 'triangle' that forms the scuttle.
It just means I have to take care about my alignments when I put it back together so I don't fail to bond the scuttle together correctly to keep that triangle which is obviously forming a 'beam' across the car.

I'll make sure I weld the new scuttle to the lower scuttle BEFORE seam welding the firewall back together so we get all the stronk we need.

This is the really good bit because a) it gets the car almost back to being 'an car' and b) it's the time I'm MOST likely to burn it down.

The battery is out and the ECU is disconnected so hopefully electronics survive.

Thanks for reading, sorry I got sick and didn't do more, hrmph.

Edited 18 May, 20251 yr by skoda_cat
I can’t spell

Looking good so far! Keep going when you're able to obviously!😁

I'm such a child, I got a cheap vinyl cutter... it's TINY but length is basically infinite. this guy is just less than a meter long and only JUST fits on the back windscreen. I've already decided to steal Bete Noir's high brake light idea so the back window is going to get a bit crowded. it's ok though I have a reversing camera and will have two wing mirrors.

I'm POSSSIBLY going to do that thing where you put your performance stuff on your doors, but like listing all the standard crap that's fitted :P I dunno, that might be a bit too stupid.

I am honoured to have provided some inspiration 🙂

For my Felicia I made up a SURPRISING SKODA sticker for the rear window, in the style of the 90s (?) advertising slogan. It seemed appropriate in a tired-looking Felicia hatchback running 200hp. 😆

Work’s in the way of getting stuff done sadly and the weather’s on the turn. I’ll use what hours I can though.

Power washing didn’t get the red off the lovely new centre console, just chipped some bits off. I’ve done some research that suggests abs is fine with caustic soda so hoping it IS made of abs I’ll try that on the weekend to de paint it. Rain can’t stop that fun.

The speaker holes in it are weirdly just slightly bigger than the stock speakers I have and the alpine upgrades could work but are also a tiny bit under. I wonder what size they expect! There’s not actually any sign that they’ve ever had speakers installed.

I ordered the windscreen glue finally, having that in hand will mean no meaningful barriers stand in the way of windscreen in other than me.

I need to not forget that the gearbox oil still needs changed. I’d write a list on the windscreen but it’s not in yet ;p

I need to not forget that the gearbox oil still needs changed. I’d write a list on the windscreen but it’s not in yet ;p

Yes but that won't be long in happening. Will it?😄

dunno if this is the worst idea, or if i should just be painting over with grey....

mistakes

are being made

I don't THINK I'm eating into the plastic, but either way I think it's not coming CLEAN but I can spray it grey from base rather than over the red.

It's embossed PP and i looked up benzyl alcohol and it SAYS it's tolerant to it.

I mean, it's as least as good as any of the other beat to hell panels in this truck already.

more to do but not today.

That looks so much better than the red though.

Yeh, it's the real colour of the plastic. I've just slathered it in paint dissolver waited an hour and then pointedly thrashed it with the high pressure wiggly guy on the pressure washer. It makes a really angry noise and most of the paint comes off.

There's probably a plastic primer on there and then the red top coat. something 'whiteish' is under the red anyway. I was really nervous that the paint dissolver would eat the plastic but I suspect it COMES in a PP bottle so I can keep rubbing that into it till all the gunk is gone.

I just wish I could work out what size speakers are supposed to go in it, I'd love to be able to use all 4 outputs from the stereo.

I've been experimenting with vinyl since it's been raining off and on. This took 4 goes to get done and I still had to manually transfer two 'i' dots and one of the four inverted commas. I was ready to lob the machine into the sea by the time I finally succeeded.

The centre console is probably as done as it's getting

It also looks like the issue of speaker sizing is moot, I guess the holes are just something to do with heater circulation or something.

The "glossy" black in console will create you some problems, even the tiniest grain of dust will be visible plus the reflections from the sun in summer will be annoying.

Hmm, I didn’t think that piece was painted.

I’m not sure sun is much of a risk in Scotland either ;p

I’ll have a look.

17 hours ago, skoda_cat said:

Hmm, I didn’t think that piece was painted.

I’m not sure sun is much of a risk in Scotland either ;p

I’ll have a look.

I think you're right, it shouldn't be painted, just been kept well polished. You could wipe it with brake cleaner or something to take the shine off then re-apply silicone stuff to make it look nicer again if you wanted to. That's for future consideration I would say though.😁

I think there is meant to be speakers there, you can see the screw holes around the perimeter. There are possibly different versions of the cubby setup you can get, not 100% on that though.

That would make sense, the one that's in there is hot glued in :D I can always 3d poop something if I want to.

It's still weird that the holes don't want to line up with either of the 13cm speakers I have. You'd think it would use the same speakers as the doors. but clearly not.

They might be the same as rear ones fitted in the cars. Might be worth checking your stock to see if any of them are present.

Sadly I have no others than the doors from this pickup and the ones I've bought to replace them because they smell :D

Oops, got a strut brace. I don’t know if trucks NEED them but I keep hearing that they have them and mine doesn’t, so one’s in the mail.

I hope it fits and I can corner at mad speeds in years to come \o/

I was considering some nice wheels to give the thing a nice look when it's 'finished' but I realised the ones I was looking at were 14s, which is the same size as it on it now. That's not going to have the look I want so we need to go bigggggeeerrrrr.

What I don't know or trust is that the stuff that's on it now is correct. Is there a source for what the total radius of wheel/tyre combo we're supposed to run to get an accurate speedo reading?

I've been learning about what 205/55/16 actually MEANS so I need to make sure I'm eyeing up a combo that will not screw up the speedo, not TRASH my ride characteristics and actually have an available range of tyres for the future.

One of the make it up from the contents of the internet machines suggest we want 165/70/R13 or 174/60/R14 for a total diameter of 561 mm or 566 mm for each.

It's currently got 185/65R14 on which seems to be 596 mm!

the rotten steel wheels that came with it are 175/65/R14 or 583 mm.

I'm off to make a spreadsheet, I guess.

Hrm, I've been looking though the ranges the crazy thinking machine suggested but out of the stuff it says will keep the speedo fine:

195/50R15 (seems to be popular but is only a 15 sob)

195/40R16 (national.co.uk will only sling me nankangs in this)

And anything in 17s which doesn't throw out the speedo isn't available at all!

I think I'll go look at other tyre shops.

I don't even yet know my pcd and offsets yet, tum te tum.

4x100 ET38? on a 175 wide? I think I need to go poke stuff with a tape measure. Thinking in three dimensions isn't my strong suit.

@skoda_cat Back when the Favorit et al were "New" cars, typical wheel and tyre sizes were 165(/80)R13 or 175/70R14 or 175/60R14.