Red Rallye resto

[Ben_w]

Does anyone else wonder if, that during the early/mid 90's when they developed the 306, that they employed Einstein's offspring and the village idiots, at the same time? Clearly the brains got put into the engine and chassis departments whilst those without the grey matter got to design and decide on the fittings and fixtures.........yes, I have got the right royal hump. I mean, who on earth (other than said morons) designs a rivet with a hard steel centre and a soft aluminium head so that when you try and drill it out to remove the side skirt, the drill bit keeps slipping off the middle onto the soft aluminium, drilling anywhere and anything, other than the bit you want it to? The same idiots that decided a torx head screw would be ideal to live at the bottom of an exposed arch to hold the arch liner in, getting full of muck making it impossible to get a torx bit into it to be able to undo it.......aaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhh!

Rant over. I shall get onto this evenings activities, other than fighting with stupid, stupid French design! Was high time that the side skirt on the drivers side came off for me to get a better idea of how bad the damage to that from jacking point is and see if the rust has spread any further.

Drilling out the rivets, as I might have mentioned earlier is a pain. I ended up drilling two or three holes in the head of each rivet. If you're lucky, the head comes off whilst drilling like this...



Most of the time, you end up prising it off with a screwdriver...anyway, the crushed sill was pushing up on the skirt and pushing it out of line/shape. This pic shows it quite well





Once the rivets were all drilled out, a little careful levering over the rivet stumps that were left and around the crushed section and the sill was off. The sill itself isnt in great shape. Bent out of shape and a couple of the mount mouldings broken...







So, the sill section......not as bad as I'd first feared in terms of the rust doesn't appear to have spread any further. Worse in the fact the sill section appears buckled in 3 places.....





Once washed down, the buckling became apparent..



It's gone in 3 places. Very hard to photo but I've circled them in one of the following pics





Bit of a dilema now. Not certain yet if the crushed section does need replacing or just straightening out. This buckled section is covered by the sill and won't be seen if I were to leave it but I'm not sure I'd ever be happy with it left like that. To be honest, if the crushed section does need replacing, I'll do the lot. It's just a slightly larger cut section I'll need from a donor. It has annoyed me though. As has some of the other poor finish paint bits and panel fit I've been noticing as I go. Clearly had the drivers quarter painted but they left the skirt on and did a crap job of the paint edges....



Paint on the passenger side wing. About 3 tonnes of it. Again, crap finish at the edge...



Poor panel fit on the front end. Very poor indeed.





I'm assuming it's been put back together poorly. Panels are all genuine Peugeot, no evidence of any front end crash damage (that I know of or have found yet....) The perfectionist is me has well and truely woken up. My wallet is busy hiding and shaking like a sh!tting dog and I'm worried now what else lurks below some of the fresh paint..........

Oh well, in for a penny........