Rust

Having a fibreglass body is a great thing as there should be very little rust on the vehicle.  Later, however, we found out why it is not quite so maintenance free as we had first thought.  But, until then, we looked into how to tackle the rust issues we had.  There was a small hole in the chassis by the battery carrier and that was patched up easily.  Then we had the supposedly mammoth task of recreating some of the bulkhead below the windscreen.  We'd already been quoted £800 for and the chap wanted to removed the entire screen cutaway the section of body directly below it.  After a bit of a head scratch we decided against all of that and removed only a slip of fibreglass to gain access to the damaged area.

 It didn't look to be as bad as we had first thought.

I'd been tipped off by a friend of mine that there was a company who produced racking in town and they left all their off-cuts in an open skip outside over night.  He was right and came back that evening with plenty of steel sheet and angle perfect for the job.  The next day it was repaired and the fibreglass section ready to be reinstalled.  Next job is a new bonnet hanger, the dash board and that dreaded wheel arch but for now I'm out of gas so it's on to different jobs.

A wet sheet over the engine to stop it catching on fire.  The sheet dried out and caught on fire anyway.

Panel on the underside of the dash cut and ready to be welded into place.

 

A woeful wheel arch.

Rust damage on the dashboard.  Could be a bit tricky.

We also removed the panels from within the engine bay including heater fan and rad and the horn.  We tested them and found the horn to be faulty but the heater fan still works although neither work on the switch.