Knowing the both left and right rear side members are rotten through, we needed to remove the fuel tank to be able to get in properly and cut out the old rusty crap and weld in some new pieces, getting hold of new rear side members is a bit like looking for rocking horse manure! It just isn't happening.
Our original plan for the weekend was to get the rear drive, exhaust, prop shaft and fuel tank out.
We started on the Saturday afternoon with the exhaust pipe, that proved to be more trouble some than one would imagine, and it took hours, the blots on the main section after the down pipe where not only seized but are stuck in their holes. But we finally managed to get that out.
The prop shaft proved even worse and there was no way that was coming off the rear diff, no matter how hard I hit the rear clamp to separate it, that's a story for another day.
We removed the back seats and drained the furl tank, almost 40 litres came out and we managed to drop that out nicely, it was funny as there was a rear metal brake pipe in the way, and it looks at some point before I bought the car someone hade replaced the rear pipes, but not in a very good way, so while the back is stripped, new rear brake pipes will be run correctly.
We decided to peal back the carpet and check some of the areas un the rear foot well, and the moment we saw some rust, we decided it was time to remove the carpet and front seats, which was not fun, but I am very glad we did.
So what did we find??? Well about 5 years ago, I had a garage replace the sills as the car failed an MOT due to them rusting through, I wish I had got under the car properly as I am disgusted with the welds, and I'll be attacking them at a later date, but what we found under the carpet was rust so bad that I managed to poke through it, and then in the drivers foot well, they had obviously set fire to some things, and melted the plastic cable protector and burn a lot of wires as it looks like they bodged them together with speaker cable, not wonder I was having storage power drains, and the central locking was getting temperamental, so another one for the list.
In all we had a productive weekend, increased out todo list and found some issues that will be addressed properly.
