Red Rallye resto

[procta]

what I was planning to do, was stone chip under the car, but a head gasket change and shite weather has put a stop to that.

[Ben_w]

The underside of the car has been bare metalled. Part of the repaint process was zinc primer, epoxy mastic, 3M flat finish stone chip and then will be painted body colour.

There will be a healthy dose of seam sealant in there somewhere too

[Ben_w]

Right,

First calliper done. An 18hr soak in the electrolysis tank and the rust was coming off in chunks. Gave it a good scrub with a scrubbing brush and this is the result.



Not bad when compared to the one I've not done....







!!!!

So, a quick blast with the wire brush and it looks like this..



Thats ready to go off to be zinc plated and then have a refurb kit thrown at it.

Wire brushed as much of the rust and paint off the other calliper as I could and now that one is now in the tank and cooking away nicely.....

[DeeTurbo]

Wow, that's a lot easier to do then sand blasting.


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Did you use soad crystals in the solution, if so how much?

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[Ben_w]

Yup, stick it in the bucket, connect up the power supply. Go have a cup of tea. Return in 24 hours, Job done.

[DeeTurbo]

How much soad to how much water and is it a battery charger you use for a power supply?

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[Ben_w]

1kg of soda per 10 ltrs of water. 10% solution basically. Yes, bog standard car battery charger. Try to run at approx 5 amps.

[cully]

How much soad to how much water and is it a battery charger you use for a power supply?

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have a read here

http://306oc.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=22295

[Ben_w]

As is (mostly) tradition on Sunday, I had a bit of a hangover.....(Too many Chaplins and Corks at a friend's BBQ last night, along with some crazy spirits from our Slovak friend!) so what better way to get over it by doing some cooking. In a bucket. With a a battery charger....yeah, you know!

Ambled out to the garage to investigate the calliper soup. I put the properly crusty calliper in yesterday afternoon, turned up the current, closed the door and then went and got drunk! This morning the current was showing as about 1 amp. Usually a good sign as it's done it's thing. Lifted the calliper out and already big chunks of rust are falling off with out me even touching them. A good scrub and it looks like this...



Needs just a little bit more. As the majority is now gone, it shouldn't take much to remove the rest.

Needed to clean up the scrap bit of steel in the bucket as it was properly crusty with rust. Did that and then chucked in a carrier. Now the carrier's again had been wire brushed with the grinder before ha d as they too had been painted silver. Underneath the silver, I think was red powdercoat. Certainly much, much harder than paint and reacted differently to the wire brush, almost melting and smearing before finally getting removed. I got most off, just a couple of corners where I couldn't get. Thought I'd try the electrolysis as it will remove paint as long as you clean back a section to bare metal. Again, some very good results. These haven't had any further work after coming out of the tank.





Again, it will probably benefit from another few hours but the general idea is that I get them as clean as I can leaving the platers very little, if any, blasting work to do before plating.

[Jonny81191]

Have you considered doing the plating yourself? You can buy the kits relatively cheap on eBay

[Ben_w]

Yes I have. I have a kit and for small bits the results are ok. For big things like calipers and carrier's, it's pretty hard to do.

[Ben_w]

Turns out the caliper and carrier's should both be a Yellow passivate finish.

Top of the class for JR.

Carrier's and calipers almost complete. Carrier bottom left has gone back in for 24 hours as I'm not entirely happy with it....



Still, long way from what they were and I've hardly had to lift a finger and neither will the platers....

[DeeTurbo]

Once you get them plated don't use most alloy wheel cleaners.

I thought it would be a good idea to use some when I bought my car and the solution turned the yellow passivated coating in to rust on the first wash. I was propper gutted when this happened

[Toms306]

So originally the calipers were a brassy colour? Don't think I've ever seen that lol!

[DeeTurbo]

They were zinc yellow


They were the colour of the bit that holds the pads on this pic.

[cully]

Ben zinc plating is easy
it finishes a mat silver colour

[Toms306]

Well I never knew that! So my Hammerite Gold calipers weren't as far from standard as I thought lol!

[Ben_w]

cully,

Yeah, I've managed to do some plating but only had real success smaller bits. I did try a carrier but only had limited results.....dont think my battery charger is up to the job......

tom, yes, the yellow finish is a yellow passivate finish.

[Ben_w]

Had a shocker of a day at work again so came home and decided to go and twirl a few spanners in anger and take the front subframe off. Been meaning to do it for a while and planning on doing a bit of grinding at the weekend to clean some more of the underside off so went outside and got busy.

The beginning…



Hubs off, suspension legs off etc. Then onto those bloody mounting cups on the inner arches/chassis legs. Passenger side cracked off very easily and came out without any fight at all.



Drivers side was a swine. Plenty of undoing, doing up again, etc. Took the subframe off, thinking I'd be able to brace the cup and undo the bolt further. No such luck, seized solid.



Healthy application of wd40 (not ideal but all I had), subframe back on, two 13mm bolts bolted back and and then more undoing, redoing, undoing etc. Eventually it gave in and came out. Subframe back off.



Little bit of rust here, think it's where I bare metalled earlier but didn't get with electrox. This bit is still pushed in and needs pulling out. Not sure how I will pull it out. Thinking about drilling a hole into a strip of metal, welding a nut on, sliding the strip into the hole on the pushed in bracket and attaching a slide hammer……





Where the cup fixes to the chassis leg….



Should be able to get in here and clean up quite a bit….



So the mounting cups have gone into the electrolysis tank, will see how they clean up but not holding my breath. Unfortunately, the cups are NFP.



I shall get my parts man on the case as I think I'll be looking to replace. Interestingly, Servicebox shows a gasket between the subframe and body, part number 7 on the diagram but no number 7 on the parts number list…..odd.

Thats all for tonight. Was knackered by the time I was done this far so hot shower, cold beer and dinner cooked by the wife…..

[procta]

looking great there ben!

[Ben_w]

Parts man is a diamond. Cups located

[Ben_w]

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin……

Anyone remember this horror?



Unfortunately, despite my very best hoping and talking nicely to it, it hadn't gone away. On that basis, I decided I'd better force it to go away….

Got under and started off by having a good look to figure out a plan of attack. As previously mentioned, this section has three sheets of metal, which all come together and fold under, effectively sealing the floorpan and sill together. They don't take to kindly to an errant trolley jack. Having has a good look, I thought the best plan of action would be to drive the three sections apart, clean up any rust, straighten them out and then reposition them as they should be. Easy enough in principle…

Out came the tools and got busy. It became immediately apparent the layers weren't coming apart without a fight. I had my suspicions why so got the grinder/wire brush going and confirmed what I thought.



Spot welds. I shouldnt have been surprised really. Haven't got a spot weld drill bit but got out a normal metal drill bit and got busy. Drilling out the spot welds worked and allowed me to separate the layers.



Wasn't as bad as I expected in there, just surface rust. Very difficult to get the layers apart above the right hand spot weld I drilled out, they were properly mangled together and the centre sheet of metal is much stronger than the outers. A chisel type of punch and a hammer eventually got them separated



Much work with a small drill mounted wire brush got the metal clean and manipulation with pliers (I know, bit it's all I have) started straightening the metal



Until eventually after about 2 hours, I got it to somewhere near semi reasonable.



Still needs more straightening work but before i can do much more, the three sections need clamping together and the spot welds reinstating. Once that's done, I can work on getting the metal all back into the correct place. Still, I'm very pleased with how it turned out, considering the mess it was before I began.

Also sorted this bit of the jacking point. Goodness only knows how it managed to get this bent. It's probably ¼” thick…..still, a bit of heat and the trusty mole grips and it's about there…





Then got busy cleaning up the surface rust and some scabby bits I could see at the bottom of the chassis leg….






A very small amount of welding required there….not sure if this hole is intentional either…



Was behind the factory seam sealant so who knows….anyway, that was all I did in the car itself today, currently got the zinc plating kit back out and fired up so will see how that goes….

[procta]

ben you want to send this into practical classics! gets this place a mention too!

[Ben_w]

Starting to get the hang of this zinc plating lark....

[cully]

that looks good Ben, was that done with a kit you can buy or chemicals and bits you've put together yourself?

[Ben_w]

Answered on GTi6 forum Paul but for the record here too,was with a kit from Gateros plating

[Ben_w]

More zincy bits...

[rocker8742]

This is an incredible build mate, would love to do this to mine one day but don't think I'd have the commitment to keep it all genuine lol

Zinc plating looks sweet, hard to do?


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[Ben_w]

Thanks fella.

No, the zinc plating isn't hard to do really. Its a bit trial and error to begin with and getting the parts cleaned properly beforehand is important. The kit comes with everything you need though.

the hardest bit is getting the current level about right but once you've figured that, its pretty easy.

[RetroPug]

That hole at the end is intentional by the way. The bottom of it looks like it is covered in dirt but you'll see that if you blow off that dirt the metal is folded back underneath it.

I am currently in the process of welding near that exact same front right jacking point, mine was also bent out, peeling and having rust go up inbetween the sheets.