I went to get to work on welding the rear arch tonight in high spirits of completing the final welding job of the project!
my spirits were short lived when i stuck my hand under to feel for the jacking point and felt a hole in the sill. no matter, ive welded teh sills on both my N15's! just a little extra hassle! but no
turns out that whoever repaired the sills previously did a bodge job of it. the replacement panel was welded along one edge and seam sealed/siliconed/glued on the other 3 sides. not on its own a major issue but the fact it was badly repaired on the end cap has lead to it becoming a mud trap... i easily removed 3kg of caked mud from the sill when i cut it open.
unfortunately due to the extent of the rot, running from the rear arch along the sill to the middle of the door me and rick took the joint decision that repairing it would be false economy. yeah, i could weld it. but there was so much missing inside the cill that there was no structure left in it. so if weld it and we take a knock at knockhill it is likely to collapse. since it is a track car the risk of said knock happening is vastly increased and it is not a risk i am willing to take.
below are pictures, the second picture believe it or not is how it was before i touched it. it passed an MOT with this extent of repair...
the pictures are hard to make out but here you go :
where do we go from here?
well we are moving out our unit soon for refurb, so the former turtle is getting scrapped very soon. after we get back into the unit we can consider re-starting the project, as the majority of the leg work has been done now. the mounts are ready, the loom is ready, the hubs and suspension are ready, all of which can be easily transposed into another shell when we get started again.
my spirits were short lived when i stuck my hand under to feel for the jacking point and felt a hole in the sill. no matter, ive welded teh sills on both my N15's! just a little extra hassle! but no
turns out that whoever repaired the sills previously did a bodge job of it. the replacement panel was welded along one edge and seam sealed/siliconed/glued on the other 3 sides. not on its own a major issue but the fact it was badly repaired on the end cap has lead to it becoming a mud trap... i easily removed 3kg of caked mud from the sill when i cut it open.
unfortunately due to the extent of the rot, running from the rear arch along the sill to the middle of the door me and rick took the joint decision that repairing it would be false economy. yeah, i could weld it. but there was so much missing inside the cill that there was no structure left in it. so if weld it and we take a knock at knockhill it is likely to collapse. since it is a track car the risk of said knock happening is vastly increased and it is not a risk i am willing to take.
below are pictures, the second picture believe it or not is how it was before i touched it. it passed an MOT with this extent of repair...
the pictures are hard to make out but here you go :
where do we go from here?
well we are moving out our unit soon for refurb, so the former turtle is getting scrapped very soon. after we get back into the unit we can consider re-starting the project, as the majority of the leg work has been done now. the mounts are ready, the loom is ready, the hubs and suspension are ready, all of which can be easily transposed into another shell when we get started again.
, right kick in the balls that is! but as you say you've done most of the hard work already, and getting another shell to drop the bits into wont be too costly, so onwards and upwards once you've finished the refurb on the unit :yes:
