Well it's been a while ..
This had been sitting in a lockup for about 18 months , dragged it out back in February and put it into my new unit with the other Kadett
Drivers wing is pattern and needed fettling - notice the dent at the front of it where I caught it pushing it out of the lockup
It sat slightly proud of the door too so it needed a bit of work to get right but I guess that's the norm with pattern stuff
Passenger side is a genuine NOS wing I found on Ebay ( where else
) - just needed some rustproofing on the underside and it was good to go
Although I've got a few square lights stashed away I don't have enough really good ones to do both Kadetts ..so I picked up some round headlight surrounds .
I fancy some of those Golf crosshair or crystal type affairs . Thought they'd work well with the clear indicators I've got .
Whipped the NS wing off as I knew the inner wing still needed a little bit of work on some surface rust .
Some 'before and afters' via Mr Grinder and Bilt Hambers finest -
Finished the seam sealer on the n/s and got a thin coat of underseal on it
Had a scrape at some of the original underseal on the o/s - found a little bit of surface rust at the bottom but nothing too bad , you can make out the original blue paint just beside it .
Had a go at the small box section and surprise , surprise it had rusted through . They do seem to be nothing more than a moisture trap..
Had a quick scrape at the top of the inner wing and it didn't look too bad .
Grinded down all the flaky old underseal and sliced the small box section open to have a look
Inside of the box section was as I imagined it would be - no factory rust proofing whatsoever so consequently starting to rot from the inside out
Soooo I cut the whole lot off .
I know these are box sections and are supposed to help with the rigidity of the inner wing/A panel etc but all I can see is a massive rust trap . If in a short space of time the inner wing collapses like a deck of cards then I'll admit I've been a bit hasty . If on the other hand it has no effect at all then I'll claim a victory for the common man. I did speak to a few Chevette bods at the time and it's still 50/50 as to whether those box sections are really critical ; we'll see.
Grinded all the rusty bits which left me with this -
Didn't bother with any original underseal that wasn't keen on shifting - if it's happy to have been there for the best part of 35 years then who am I to argue ? I'm not looking to make extra work for myself and this is never going to be a trophy winner ; it's just a cool old car that I'm desperate to get back on the road again . No point these things hiding away in lockups forever.
Got the n/s door back on .
Bought some hinge pins from the dealers , they're off a Mk3 Cavalier and are slightly longer but the same diameter so they'll do a job
Door back on via a hammer and trolley jack
Sorted through what panels I have for this , the ones I don't use will be available on a well known auction site very soon .
The old pattern wing ( from 18 months ago ) fitted lovely and flush with the door , all the swage lines matched and the gap between it and the door was the same from top to bottom -
The downside is that it didn't sit particularly well at the bottom of the n/s a-post , just below the screen.
So I put the original Opel wing on again -
- and not only did it not sit flush with the door , the gap between the two panels was a bit too close for my liking .
Soooo to cut a long story short , we had the front wings on and off about 30 times , we had to enlarge the mounting holes on the sides just to be able to move them around a little bit easier .
You can see here how much the other side was out when we started -
It mightn't look much but it's more than enough to piss me off !
We ended up using nuts/bolts too just to try and be able to pull the wing in flush.
Anyway , after messing on for a full day or so we managed to get them fitted ok , probably as good as we're ever going to get them .
Car now looks like this
..which , yeah , it did originally ! But it's now genuinely ready for paint .
Painter is lined up , it'll be in there very soon then it's back to be put back together , hopefully in about 6-8 weeks or so .
Bought a brand new windscreen for it at the Billing show a few days ago , bronze tint with a fade-in sunstrip . Also collecting a pair of Ebay black cloth Recaros very soon .
In the meantime I bought this off Ebay , an '82 auto Chevette .
It needed a little too much work to be worth restoring so I broke it and it pretty much now looks like this -
Pretty much everything else that isn't in that pic ^ got sold or will be used on both my Kadetts so it was a well recycled old car .
Ended up ( amongst other things ) with a mint headlining and some other useful interior bits for the hatch .
Two good doors will be used on the estate which if everything goes to plan , I should be starting again around September time..
Cheers all