Club 80-90 Forums

Went out for a little run yesterday, lovely not have the clacking. Other random sounds I can cope with and nothing sounds terminal, but now, oh yes now, the gear stick is getting very stiff once everything gets warm. Fine from cold, but gets increasingly stiff as we trundle along. Also spent hours and hours washing it yesterday, did the high top, impressive as I'm only 5 foot one, removed all the algae, all shiny now, but the rust on the body....oh dear. I'm afraid Victor is going to need some serious body work soon. No idea what, where or how. Just hoping we get down to Pembrokeshire in a weeks time.

you can't just ignore rust, you have to treat small rust patches every year otherwise they become large holes.

Fun in the sun with wire brushes on the drill, vactan and later, filler, sanding...paint

I use a dremel cutting disc to remove accurately the surface rust to bare me tal, then a dremel wire brush,
usually I can then hand paint, vactan, undercoat and top coat ben ause the area is small.
if you use larger drill wire brushes they take off lots of paint and often don't get down to bare metal.

grit blasting would be better but I don't have a compressor and I suspect it'd hard to be accurate.

Thanks itchyfeet, I checked our dremel, and have some cutting discs, but not many and from experience using it, they don't last long, not in my hands anyhow, but I will bear that in mind for smaller bits. I used the drill and wire things, got down to bare metal and filler, oh so much filler, but did the best I could. Stopped when I hit a hole or two, covered it all in vactan, filled, sanded, sanded the flat big bits which were painted last year, and slapped a coat of paint on. At least it's all one colour, well the blue bottom bits, finally painted the welding work done last year and this years bit. In reality, it needs a full resto, at least four or five new panels etc etc etc, but that's way out of my price range so I'll keep it going for hopefully a year or two, then it'll have to be sold as a resto project. Shame really. Had quite a bit of mechanical work done and the engine runs well. But I can't weld, or cut out metal or anything like that, so have to be realistic. Just need the gear lever to stop getting stiff when it warms up, it's an intermittent fault. Will run it out tomorrow and see how things go. For now, I'm exhausted, ache all over but please with the progress, even if it's a bit gash.