Project 75 - Page Two.
With the car installed in my garage and up on the stands, the first thing I did was to remove the transaxle, and the entire rear axle assembly. I then inspected the transaxle to see why there was oil pishing out every where. It turned out that the breather on top of the diff was choked solid. The breather has a wire wool filter in it and this had turned to solid rust at the top. A good clean out sorted it and then I replaced the oil seals for good measure, making sure that the bearings were ok first.
Repaired Gearbox on the bench.
Next
I dismantled the axle assembly. The axle itself, I cleaned up and then applied
a few coats of hammerite. I also installed a 'urethane bush in the main pivot.
I then stripped all the bushes from the Watts linkage and the transaxle mounts
from the crossmember and sent them off to be powder coated. I also installed
'urethane bushes in the anti-rollbar mounts.
Rusty front axle / gearbox mount ready to go to powder coater.
Both
rear inner arches were coroded and required attention as can be seen. The
most difficult part of repairing this is in the repainting. The corosion occurs
because the arch section is spot welded to the chassis leg. Water and salt
get between the two layers and after a while the inevitable happens...
I
used weldable primer between the new metal I welded in then dribbled hamerite
down from above, hoping that capilary action would ensure good coverage.
The boot floor was in pretty bad shape as water had been leaking in through various locations resulting in the carpet being permenantly waterlogged:
The car had also been hit at the rear at some point and a new rear panel had been fitted. The lack of factory sealant had not helped matters. I ended up having to cut away a fair bit of metal from the boot floor.
