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The car is also getting NOS inner & outersills & new reinforcement panels. The sills were also attended to "badly" 10 years ago so we are going to put it all right. I particularly love the lump of steel that's been welded full length over the re inforcement section here, not sure exactly what it's doing -
This illustrates why cutting out rusty sections is crucial. Using flat sheet of a suitable thickness (1.6mm) would have then been fine to replace the diaphragm
(at the expense of extra weight).
The rust along the bottom edge of the repair patch perfectly illustrates the weakness of Dolomite sill design, namely the moisture trap that ensures internal
corrosion along the full length. The outside can appear sound. As I have said often on this very forum, if you have rotten ends in the sills
then the whole sill will be rotting away internally.
Back in the days of the DSR, restorer Howard Bowles described how he cut the outer sills open on his apparently sound Sprint
to see what was inside. It was indeed perfect inside, so he then cut up OE outer sills to make repair sections to fit to his car.
That was a time when people complained about the cost of OE panels rather than their unavailability
.
As always, following your progress with much interest,