Rescued a One elderly Owner K plate Diplomat saloon

[Robsey]

You just have to love Vauxhall's passion for convaluted up-n-under and round-n-about pipework shinanigans.

Not for the impatient or clumsy.

At least it is all off, so better access to the front of the car.

Those air-con pipes still look quite fresh.

[cavalier1990]

You just have to love Vauxhall's passion for convaluted up-n-under and round-n-about pipework shinanigans.

Not for the impatient or clumsy.

At least it is all off, so better access to the front of the car.

Those air-con pipes still look quite fresh.

I know, only too well with this one, air-con plus auto box = skint arms

[ilovedmymantas]

Nice descriptive write-up & pics

[cavalier1990]

Nice descriptive write-up & pics

Thanks mate I do try and include as much as possible as I like to have a reminder what I done and when, very informative for cross-referencing and of course helping anyone read it give as much info as possible if they are contemplating doing a similar thing (don't)

[cavalier1990]

While I'm waiting on a few wee bits for my blue LS to complete the restoration I thought I'd make some progress on a job I started about 6 months ago on the dippy! I planned to twist knot brush all the bits that had started rusting again during last winter. If you hadn't picked up from previous posts, I had painted repairs with grey primer, but this started rusting due to the dampness you get in the Winter.

So I redone all the wire brushing, got rid of the rust, hit it with rust treatment and painted it with epoxy primer that doesn't absorb moisture. I done the rust treatment last night and got started with the painting tonight. I covered a good bit of the back end chassis legs and arches. Tomorrow I will look to finish the boot floor off and start working towards the front. It's at times like this I really wish I had one of those car cradle things that allows you to rotate the chassis over so you can work on it without lying on your back, that or a ramp!

[Robsey]

Just had a re-read of this thread...
You've come a long way with it.

You have that many cars on the go, I lost track that this car even existed.

Did you manage to resolve the door closure issue, caused by the uneven garage floor twisting the chassis?

[cavalier1990]

Just had a re-read of this thread...
You've come a long way with it.

You have that many cars on the go, I lost track that this car even existed.

Did you manage to resolve the door closure issue, caused by the uneven garage floor twisting the chassis?

Funny that, I did the same thing last night just to remind myself what I've done, and where I've still to go. Yes got that door closing issue. I moved the axle stands at the front from sill area to the bit that protrudes down from the front inner chassis leg, just where the subframe middle bolt goes onto. I reckon this has moved the load away from sill and out over the inner front chassis, which should stop so much flexing of the body, since the sills are removed it will be much more noticeable.

[cavalier1990]

Been a bit lax updating thread so since last up date I've painted all the back underneath with 2 pack primer. Drier garage seems to have held any recurrent rust at bay. I fixed roof leaks. The driver's sill and rear arch is in place, and this week I'm going to tackle passenger side sill. Arch on that side is ok so going to leave it. I've a few pics so will try to upload them and ones I get this week.

[Robsey]

Sounds like great progress.
Looking forward to the pics.
There can't be that much left to do.



Great to know that the garage is going to keep most of the weather off the jalopy.

[cavalier1990]

First couple of pics of N/S/R sill repair. I cleaned off the wax on the inner sill as this was going on fire when I done the other side, quite scary as if it catches every time you start welding you have to keep stopping to blow it out. Very annoying having to stop every weld, get up off my hunkers and all the added smoke doesn't add to the ambiance off the car workshop!

You can see the line where I wiped it off with thinners





Now to weld the new back sill panel in. Don't ask why I done this since I had full sill. Just to make life more difficult instead!

Made a hash of the spot welds that go onto the jacking point at the back, metal is very thick there so it doesn't take well unless you ramp up the amps, which then burns the thin repair panel to bits. Quite a balance to get right, or wrong in this case!. Rest of the sill lip along bottom is ok to weld, as the metal is thinner there just floor with lip edge, not a big strengthened bit of ship lol!

Join on door shut area was a bit tight as well. I'd kind of misjudged the measurements here so you can see a hole where I cut out a bit to remove the corner so it would push under the remaining bit without jamming, however a bit lower than anticipated. Oh the joys!



Next step is to spot on the front section of sill tomorrow.

[Robsey]

Once it is welded in, dressed and painted over, you won't see any of your little hiccups.

Your membrane looks very nice and solid.
I recall mine looking like a flaky pieces of filigree.

[cavalier1990]

Once it is welded in, dressed and painted over, you won't see any of your little hiccups.

Your membrane looks very nice and solid.
I recall mine looking like a flaky pieces of filigree.

My thoughts entirely

I think a spot welder would be better for that back bit of the sill, just for welding onto that chunky lip, mind you I don't have a spare 800 bucks for one of those!

I'm always really relieved every time I see those solid inner sills, probably would have been the difference from deciding to break it or not.

[cavalier1990]

This time it was the bit under the handbrake to get rust treat and painted with primer. I also gave some of the other bits a further coating; there was a bit of paint left over as I made up a certain amount of the 2 pack primer due to measurement and mixing constraints.

Looking towards the back from under centre console area. The plate at the back with sort of capital "I" on it was pretty crusty, so that got the rust treatment as did some other bits like the exhaust hanger bracket:


Looking from back to front:


Up where the petrol tank goes:


Crossmember support bit just off the central tunnel. Yes I can see the crust inside the hole:


Spare wheel well, gave this another coating:


The rear chassis leg area:


Drivers side wheelwell, gave this another coating:


Plan is to do one more full coat on every bit so the paint thickness is more uniform.

I have the following left to do on the body:

Back panel on
2 plates to weld on, one right at the centre bottom of bulkhead/front crossmember area where a pipe clip was, this rusted out and left a nice hole. Luckily not on the main bulkhead, just on the strengthener that crosses below it. The other plate is on thhe NS inner wing just behind the battery tray.

[ilovedmymantas]

Nice progress there, it looks very sound

I miss doing the underside work, it was easier to see the start of a problem and nip it in the bud.
I've never been able to strip a car down that far, I'm a one car kind of guy ( or poor person, depending on your viewpoint )!

My sills and an arch are being replaced soon. I must admit when I got the quote my first thought was how much would it cost to rent a short-term garage, actually that was my second thought, the first one's unprintable

When do you expect it back on the road?

matt

[Robsey]

That does look remarkably solid.

Not a huge amount of welding left.
But still plenty of everything else to do.
I am sure you can see the end in sight.

Cracking job as usual.

[cavalier1990]

Nice progress there, it looks very sound

I miss doing the underside work, it was easier to see the start of a problem and nip it in the bud.
I've never been able to strip a car down that far, I'm a one car kind of guy ( or poor person, depending on your viewpoint )!

My sills and an arch are being replaced soon. I must admit when I got the quote my first thought was how much would it cost to rent a short-term garage, actually that was my second thought, the first one's unprintable

When do you expect it back on the road?

matt

I do feel i've made a big chunk of progress now, what with only back panel and a coupld of bits of body left to do. I can only imagine it will be next year some point that it gets back on the road. I've still got all the axles and everything else to be sandblasted, tank to go back in, and the biggy of biggys the actual bodywork/paint. I am going to get a guy I know to do that so I can breathe a little sigh of relief, although my wallet won't lol! Suppose I've got to let someone else do some work on it, after all it is only money

[cavalier1990]

That does look remarkably solid.

Not a huge amount of welding left.
But still plenty of everything else to do.
I am sure you can see the end in sight.

Cracking job as usual.

Yip defo Robsey, starting to see a small light appear at the end of the tunnel, lets hope it's not a train!

As I said there I think really the only big part left is getting the actual paint/body prep done and deciding what I want to get sprayed, sills/wings/bottoms of doors will be a must for starters. Also the axles and subframes to be powdercoated and I need to go round all the repairs and seal them with panel sealer, I'll probably do that and then give it the final coat of primer and then topcoat for the underneath.

I'm actually choking to wash it, it is covered in work-related dust, it looks like it's been sitting next to a building site or something. Although there would be no point washing it and getting water on the body before it's painted

[cavalier1990]

Just recently I decided to strip the bumpers down and see what was what. I have new chrome strips for front and back so wanted to see how to fit those. I also needed to get the bumper bars off to add to the collection of parts to go for blast cleaning (Rear axle, front subframe, struts etc.) I must admit cavalier bumpers are not something I have much personal knowledge off stripping down, so it was all pretty new stuff. I did have a fair idea of the way it stripped down though from other people's pics and explanations.

When I took the back bumper bar off I initially thought it looked just a bit rusty, but then the more I got into it I realised it had quite a bad crease and bend in it. Now I knew this particular jalopy had taken a clout on the R/O/S at some point, the bumper shell appeared OK but you could see the bumper mount bracket (In the boot) was bent and the back panel too, this was toast anyway so it was all coming off for replacement.

The strange anomaly was that the crease was off centre towards the N/S - not where the impact was. Unless of course there had been another impact this section and the bumper had simply popped back out. Anyways after removing said bumper bar I noticed it was quite a bit more rusty than it initially looked.

So given all this I quickly realised it would be much easier to source a replacement, ideally new. So eventually after much ebaying and googling and so forth I managed to source a new bumper bar. Once it arrived it put it up against the old one and the bend was more than apparent. Not only was it bent it was twisted as well.

You can see the bend in 2nd pic when looking in comparison to the new one side on. The new bar has a slight bow in it, this is deliberate, as if you look at the bumper it is not dead straight.





You might not be able to see it but there is a clear crease at one of the clip through holes.

Now that's all sorted I just need to get the actual bumpers tidies up. The front bumper shell is a bit crappy looking so will be trying to source replacement for that I think, I haven't fully inspected the back bumper just removed the bar, so likely the back bumper will need some work too.

[Robsey]

I have had a few 'tonks' to the back of the car. Thankfully always when I had a tow bar fitted.

What a god-send tow bars are.
I always found that my rear bumper would be untouched, but the car doing the damage was sporting a poorly front bumper or totally trashed number-plate.

[cavalier1990]

I have had a few 'tonks' to the back of the car. Thankfully always when I had a tow bar fitted.

What a god-send tow bars are.
I always found that my rear bumper would be untouched, but the car doing the damage was sporting a poorly front bumper or totally trashed number-plate.

I can relate to that robsey, my old Orion took a rear end stove from a mk4 escort, he had lights bonnet and radiator all wrecked. Mine only had a small crack on bumper trim below lights. I wouldn't say all of that was down to towbar as it pierced right through his bumper and took rad out, although certainly helped. Think Orion rear end was a bit more solid than the tinny front end of a mk4!

[cavalier1990]

I have now completed the rear panel replacement on the Diplomat. It's really been the final bit of major welding I had to do to it. First thing was to rub the panel down with wet and dry to get all the imperfections off it, then primer coat on top.

It took a good bit of elbow grease to get it smoothed down. Then a good clean and painted it. I then had to fix a repair panel on to the leading edge of the boot floor as it had to be cut off due to corrosion. I salvaged a cut off panel from the sill panel I used as it was the correct length between both bumper mount plates, and the end of the chassis legs. I then had one more plate to put at the right hand side edge below the light.



Then on to fitting the panel up and making sure it was all lined up and no big gaps, I had to clean up some more old panel sealant off and fix the edges of the new panel which had been bent in a bit due to storage and movement dings, then clamp it all up. The way it sits under the light holder is the panel edge needs to align right up against the underside of the light holder so that you can then spot weld under the light frame.

I checked some of the gaps on my LS cavalier to make sure I was going down the right path. I then bolted the boot lock latch in to make sure the boot was closing fine.

Once this was all done I started spot welding it up, and then ran a few welds along the back panel and boot floor. All looks pretty good now and alignment seems perfect on boot and edges. The only bit I noticed was the bottom of the boot edge on driver side was a little closer to the panel than other side. This would be as a result of the impact it had at that point, so I just pulled the boot lid edge out and that sorted it.



Finally grind down the welds and spray primer over to stop flash rusting.

[3cav3]

Looking forward to seeing it come back together. Are you painting it yourself or getting a body shop to paint it?

[Robsey]

This takes me back to when mine was done in 2016...
Wow 4 years already??

Looking great Andrew,
and so early in the year too,
so plenty of chance of decent weather ahead to get the car sorted without rain stopping play too often.

[cavalier1990]

Looking forward to seeing it come back together. Are you painting it yourself or getting a body shop to paint it?

I've got a guy I know who can do it for me, due to my OCD, or more like indecisiveness, I can't make up my mind what I want done, for example I think only the bottoms of the doors need done, then I think well maybe the whole doors, will I take the doors to the guy or whole car, then I can get all the doors done, then bring it in for the sills and back end......and on it goes!

[cavalier1990]

This takes me back to when mine was done in 2016...
Wow 4 years already??

Looking great Andrew,
and so early in the year too,
so plenty of chance of decent weather ahead to get the car sorted without rain stopping play too often.

Cheers Robsey, aye well I'm starting to dig out all the things I want sandblasted and powdercoated, I'm also want to include senator stuff in that, like the back axle etc. I think it'll add up to a pretty penny so might just do cavy stuff just now.

I have a few wee bits of primer to finalise and then once all bits powdercoated, I can start to put tank, axles back on - what was that? did I just see a very dim light at the end of a long tunnel just there