Thanks Tony, and Mahesh I've chosen some special zebra print driving shoes, they will live in the car!
On to the bodywork and I am very happy with this afternoons progress mainly because it represents the start of the final big jobs before I can get the car back together, I think I can see a speck of light at the end of the tunnel!
First of all I'll apologise for the quality of the photos, I'm trying to work out the best way of photographing this process and the garage still isn't completely finished yet!
After a long agonise about whether or not I will have to take the wing off I decided to replace the near side inner panel with the wing on. The rust was pretty bad this side and most of the outer panel had completely disappeared along with the outer part of the eyebrow and the majority of the inner section.
So as a recap this is basically what we started with...
I needed a template to know how much of the old panel to remove so with some measuring I took the club repair section and sliced off the area that I didnt need as close to the join to the inner wing as I could.
The used this as a template on the existing panel to scribe a line to cut.
The cutting isnt easy this side due to the clearance and the rotation of the grinder meaning that you end up with a face full of sparks!
The test fit is pretty good...
Theres a slightly wide gap up the side here but I think I can bridge that with weld or maybe have a plate behind.
As expected when removing the surface rust from the area I found a few more holes, so more sections were cut away.
The tool is a weld splitter, really useful.
With the bottom section cut away I could concentrate on the eyebrow which wasn't as bad as it looked.
That came out easier than expected excet I had to cut a slit in the wing to remove the top section but that was easily welded up.
The bumper mount hole was rusted through so I cut that out for good measure!
With the eyebrow and inner section removed I was able to push out the mysterious dent which appeared whist the car was in storage!
So tomorrow I have some fabrication work to do to make some repair panels, just the eyebrow and lower panel and repair some seams.
On the whole I think it will go back together nicely.
Then I noticed that the brake hose hanger had a hole in it so I'll have to do that as well!
Pleased so far.