Cheers guys.
All the encouragement and your comments have really helped this last week, I've found quite a lot of time to work on the old girl but I've felt like I was loosing the battle against the metal work for most of it.
jfulvia, investigating my front subframe further is high on my to do list once I've finished the metal work at the rear of the car. Mine has got visible previous repairs, and the front doesn't sit quite level, so somethings up.......
crahel, get a thread going! Be great to see some other Fulvia restorations going on here
If I'd have known just how much I had to do when I started then an acid dip / sandblasting would have been sensible, but I naively hoped the rot was only localised! haha.
There's more Fulvia stuff it this month's Viva Lancia including a howto on the Fulvia brakes. If you can't get your hands on one, let me know...
Ooh cool. I must get round to joining in the LMC. I tried once but my card was rejected, turned out to be an issue with the website, and since then whenever I have the cash spare it seems to get allocated for restoration consumables!
So metal work... it's been a trying week. This time last week I'd just cut out the first section of the bottom of the rear panel.
After my success with the top corners I was feeling brave and figured I could make that piece as one, complete with it's stepped edge, using the same process I'd just used for the top corners. It was basically some steel sections tacked on to my vice, then with a blunt chisel I could hammer the metal to follow the profile of my makeshift jig. I got the templates made and the steel cut out and then started to try and do the shaping which is where it started to go wrong.
It was sort of working, but over this length the lines were never going to be good enough. Compounding this problem was that my jig wasn't really up to the amount (and force) of the hammering needed for pieces of this size rather than the small corners bits I was doing before and needed constant repairs.
So I gave up with that , binned the piece and started over
This time I decided to make things simpler, and go back to making the main rear panel repair patches, then a separate edge piece with the step in it. The main panel repair went in easy enough, just needed a slight curve to it. The edge piece still was troublesome. I revised my vice + welded on supports + chisel jig and while it was now strong enough it just wasn't creating a clean and consistent enough step and was very slow.
Attempt 2, in the bin.
A whole weekend of work, and all I'd managed was to tack in one small patch and get stuck. grrr.
Sorry about the lack of pictures here, I was grumpy and things weren't going well! Yesterday evening I came up with an idea of forming the step as two separate bends; first making a right angle bend in the metal, then gripping it in the vice and hammering the second right angle into it. It worked on my test piece, so I started on the first real piece. Again not so good, the problem was that by the end of the 1ft length the size of the step had about grown to about 1.5 times its original size without me realising. So that's attempt 3 in the bin.
Late last night I was about ready to give up with metal and break out the chicken wire and fibreglass.....
After having a bit of a grumble I left the garage and spent the rest of the evening reading other peoples build threads and watching classic rally videos, attempting to recharge my enthusiasm!
Today I knew I wasn't working and had the whole day for car work. Finally it all just came together. I made a little support/guide thing for the vice and had another got at the two separate folds plan I tried yesterday. With the new guide my second fold stayed consistant and about an hour later I had the first corner tacked in place
Time to cut the rest of the mess out....
and patch up the rest of the rear panel.
It may have taken days, but it was worth it. So pleased with these lines. I'm going to do the seam welding from behind, so shouldn't have to do much grinding from the visible side and it should stay nice and neat.
With the rear panel all tacked in place I figured I should tie it in the to the rear valance again before doing any of the seam welding, so hopefully it can't distort too much.
I was hoping to only spot repair the top edge of the rear valance but once the last of the lead had been removed it was clear that I was better off replacing the whole width. It didn't take long t get that tacked in though as it was just a simple flat strip.
That just leaves me with one last section to make up, the left upper edge of the rear valance where it meets the wing is well gone.
I've got the cardboard template done, then my marker pen died, and I figured it was time for tea. I sit here feeling much better about the project and generally about life, haha!
Can't describe how pleased I am to have to worst of that done. Just gotta get that corner patched up, seam in the rear panel and then the metal work at the rear of the car is done*! Light at the end of the tunnel! Woooo!
*Only all the metal work at the front left to do eh? haha