Project Theseus

[Noll]

Ok, tires are on! Quick photoshop to a rough hide-height.

[vvise]

they look great!

[Noll]

they look great!

Thanks! First set of new wheels I've ever bought for anything, so pretty excited. Still unsure if I'll paint them or leave as-is (will depend on car colour I think). We do seem to have the same taste in wheel face styles haha.

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Got the passenger floor cut out today. This was way easier than it should have been due to rust. Before:








And out. Work will be required, but honestly it looks better than the other side did for how far the rust has spread.






it initially looks like way more of this "shelf" is intact, which is nice.




I have replacement panels for most of this stuff, and the inner wheelarch is an easy patch.





"For sale - datsun floor, only used once"




This came in today too; will be super useful for eliminating oil-canning on the hatch, roof, and hood.




next up is to weld in bracing then cut the rocker off.

[Noll]

Metal shrinking went great:

Still a bunch of little flattening to do to get the hatch properly smooth, but that's the bulk of the work done.





And started cutting the unneeded stuff off the rocker to prep for welding it back together properly:

[Noll]

More rocker work today.

Cut out most of the bad:






This corner shouldn't actually be too bad to fix.




And began the process of mixing and matching bits to make one complete rocker.

[Noll]

Bunch more patching done, the rocker is nearly ready to go on once the welds are cleaned up and I rebuild the bits it welds to on the car.

[Noll]

Worked on the rear interior floor corner today. Turned this:




into this:



Next up will be to get the unibody structure and seatbelt stuff in that area rebuilt.

[Noll]

Got the wiring harness out:




Which revealed this. Pretty expected:




Cut out the bad:




Removed the battery tray and cleaned it up. It's in pretty perfect shape.




The usual rust:




Got the rocker tacked in too. Man, I had forgotten how much of a pain this was to get just right. I also managed to mess up the cuts slightly and leave too big of a gap at the front, so need to weld in a ~6mm strip. I'll aim to get that all done on Saturday, so I can move onto the a-pillar repair.







The reason it looks like the door gap at the bottom is too small is because it is. For some reason when the door was originally patched, they got the shape wrong here, and raising the door to where it should be (it's sitting ~5mm low in relation to bodylines) means it hits the a-pillar. Why they decided to bondo the door up instead of doing this properly I have no idea. I'm not using these doors anyway, so will just cut off the offending section to adjust the hinges.

[Noll]

Rocker is on for good! Still need to clean up all the welds and get a couple small bits I missed.











next up, a-pillar and seatbelt mount repair.

[zedfoot]

My back aches just looking at these photos.

[Noll]

My back aches just looking at these photos.

Yeah, it is a lot of kneeling and lying down to weld stuff in just right haha. Not going to end soon, as most of the rust on this car seems to be in the lower third.

[Noll]

Started on replacing the section of a-pillar that had a lot of holes.




All exposed:




I replaced this section, but didn't get an "after" pic for some reason. Will do tomorrow.






New bit mocked up. That big gap at the top will close up once I grind a flange off the replacement part that I still need to do.

[zedfoot]

Good time to test fit the windshield.

[Noll]

Good time to test fit the windshield.

Excellent idea! I'm going to do that tomorrow when I work more on the car.

Christmas today so was spending time with family, but I did get some horns for the Z which is very nice . Will be painting them black.





Merry christmas everyone!

[Noll]

Finished trimming the new section of a-pillar, and test-fit the windscreen. All is well on this side:





Other side will need some work though, as I thought it might. Guess I'll either need to learn to use lead as filler, or do a little bit of creative cutting and welding, which won't be difficult.




All welded in. I'll do the proper cleanup of the welds next time.