1974 Dolomite Sprint

[SiC]

Some good point here.

When I bought the car, it wasn't in that bad a condition. Paint was really nice and still pretty fresh looking. The paint I haven't grinded off still is!

Wind back a year and half, this is what I said at the time:

Body wise she's in pretty good nick really (for the money). Some the drivers floor and boot floor will need welding. Bubbling of the arches and door bottoms too. But they aren't as crunchy as they look. I'll get a video walk around at some point soon as it's easier to show. Nothing as bad as some on here thought it may be!

Contrary what it may seem, I did give a blood good look over it before I bought it. Those arches and door bottoms were crusty but not particularly bad. I did give them a good poke and while crusty they weren't decomposing. At the time it looked like it was just dirt that had got behind them and buggered them up on the lip area. I knew they would need doing but thought they'd last a fair bit longer. I also knew about the A and B pillar bases needing work. But they're not particularly bad bits to weld up and aren't visible until the door is opened.

My intention was always to get it back MOT'd and the little bits welded then use for a bit. Then flog on or do bits as they needed to be. Very much like Richard has said.

So where did it all go wrong?

Quite simply the house move fiasco fucked things up for me royally. When I got the car, I was supposed to be moving a couple months later. So I did a few bits and then prepared to move. In the end there was 4 different buyers dropping out and 2 houses we didn't buy. In this time period I was forever expecting that it'd be a month or two before we'd move and getting a garage. We'd loose a buyer, get another a few weeks later and repeat. Or then a new buyer but need to find another house.

Essentially it meant that the car was left out over last winter degrading. Water got into the crusty bits which naturally froze then defrosted. Rinse and repeat over the space of 6 months of bad weather, this broke up the bubbles into even weaker ferrous oxide. Why didn't I put it away in storage? We were always only a month or two away from moving every time...

Thus the bad bubbly bits degraded much more rapidly and we are now where we are. These issues have been compounded by the previous "restoration" of welding repair panels directly over the top.

The other issue is getting too worried about affecting it's value. I just need to get it done up and remember as the Rev says, it'll always be a ten-foot or similar car. It's done high miles, 11 previous owners and a bit tatty interior. Now the external bodywork will be tatty too. But that's no bad thing of course if I want to use it. It's also why I paid well under book price even when I did at the time.

[SiC]

I did have a good look behind the panels before I bought it. Even now, looking down at this rear arch doesn't look that bad on the inside.

From the outside for reference

PXL_20201128_181913200.jpg (2.73 MiB) Viewed 3149 times

This is inside the boot, looking down from the rear area and probably around the swage line

PXL_20201129_195654310.jpg (2.66 MiB) Viewed 3149 times

PXL_20201129_195707688.jpg (3.23 MiB) Viewed 3149 times

Looking further forwards and again looking downwards. Probably at the middle bit of the arch. You can see the arch liner on the left.

PXL_20201129_200026251.jpg (2.94 MiB) Viewed 3149 times

I'm looking forward to taking off that repair panel and want to do it as carefully as I can. Hopefully not too much damage has been done with it on and from looking at the area from behind, hoping there should be plenty of decent metal.

[richardthestag]

Now you know and understand where a car can rust you will be much wiser.

I have used one of those souvenir flexible fridge magnet things, they are great at finding plop as they just fall off the car. they are strong enough to stick to steel with a skim of filler and a nice paintjob.

Old Landies are a shit load easier because most of the steel is, or at least should be, one layer thick. Bodges are easier to see

[DodgeRover]

I checked on my dad's old series 3 lwb, it's still MOTd despite being exempted and getting no advisories for rust on the chassis! 15 years ago that was welded from end to end replacing about the bottom 3" of chassis along with reattaching a front chassis leg when the previous repair gave way!

[Hooli]

The chassis is a service item on series LRs though.

[SiC]

The chassis is a service item on 70s cars though.

FTFY

[SiC]

Now you know and understand where a car can rust you will be much wiser.

I have used one of those souvenir flexible fridge magnet things, they are great at finding plop as they just fall off the car. they are strong enough to stick to steel with a skim of filler and a nice paintjob.

Old Landies are a shit load easier because most of the steel is, or at least should be, one layer thick. Bodges are easier to see

I always wanted to get a 1300/1500/1850 Dolomite first so I could learn the rust areas on them before committing to an expensive Sprint. But a cheap Sprint got my attention before I managed to get a 1300/1500.

For metal testing, I used my magnet on a stick retrieval thing. In hindsight the magnet might have been too strong on that stick

[SiC]

Side note, here is the pictures from the advert when I bought it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/182263081 ... 9232455423

The pictures from the owner before who restored it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/182263081 ... 9800800436

Original advert:
https://forum.triumphdolomite.co.uk/vie ... =9&t=35082

Thing is, would have I bought it if I knew now what I was getting into? Almost certainly yes I would have done...

Also found this Todo list that I made last year:


Not actually too dissimilar to what it is now. More metalwork with this windscreen area and a bit on the rear sill + rear pillars but not a whole lot more.

I'll probably feel a bit better with the car once the windscreen area is done and I'm no longer welding upside down with bits of car floor stuck into my back...

[richardthestag]

Desmond Tutu said that “there is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.”

The pictures from the owner before who restored it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/182263081 ... 9800800436

Crumbs those pics give me the shivers, you leaving it outside did not do the damage, it was already done just before that paintjob! It was always going to bubble through.

I'll probably feel a bit better with the car once the windscreen area is done and I'm no longer welding upside down with bits of car floor stuck into my back...

Always try weld the right way up, you will never get a decent pool and when you do it will succumb to gravity and land in your privates etc. I have rolled a shell on it's side before now, old mattresses and lengths of 4x2 are awesome tools. Cutting out a healthy panel to weld the repair in from above is preferable. There is always an alternative to welding upside-down. Misery personified

Don't be afraid to walk away and close the garage door, muttering about it's parentage etc! But try avoid lobbing it into storage - you may never regain that enthusiasm. Think of it like shoving stuff up in the loft when really it should go to the charity shop or the tip.

One thing that I always try to do is start the repair with what remains of "as it left the factory", this does mean getting serious with mr grinder. I always leave the opposite corner alone, I may need to use it as a reference point! Once all the bodges and shit are out of the way then I try to work out how the structure went together originally, usually not too difficult. Get yourself a shinker/stretcher and maybe a swaging roller, have some fun percussing steel into repair sections. Think of steel like uncooked pastry, it can be stretched, shrunk and moulded yet retain its integrity. But go too far and you need to ball it up and start again, with another lump of steel .

Slide on down to the church of coldwarmotors but especially arthur tussik, watch them use basic tools to make incredible repair patches. No need for fancy expensive kit when an ancient ballpein hammer and a lump of old railway sleeper do the job just as well.

If you have bitten off too much you may need to get the car back together rather than try to flog it in millions of bits, a complete assembled wreck with moss in every gap is worth trillion times more than a half finished project

[SiC]

I took a few days off work to try getting on with this. Exhaustion and burn-out has meant a lot of that time has been spent resting. Anyhow any progress is better than none, so I got on with at least boxing in the windscreen area.


That's the only picture I have of the boxing in so far. I've cut other pieces ready and hopefully I'll get a chance soon to put them in too.

In the meantime I couldn't resist peaking to see what was going on behind that rear wheel arch panel. Been wanting to do it for ages but held off as I didn't want it to be too bad and be demoralising. But I need to start thinking on what parts needed to be ordered, so I need to remove it and asses the situation. My outlook is nervously optimistic I think is the correct phrase.

I mean it looks really bad from the outside.


However looking through the boot area looked more promising that there was a lot of good metal there.



So there was nothing more to do apart from removing it. I carefully went along with a thin cutting disc grinding off the tack welds. Then further abusing my wood chisel to pop the last bits off.

I was left with this.


Well that looks not too bad! Almost looks like the same with the panel on. Given how good it is under here, it seems a waste of a rare repair panel to have had welded one over the top of this.

But the question is how much of that is filler/paint and how much metal. So out with the wire wheel to leave this...


Plenty there left to work with!

I then used the finger sander to carefully remove the remains of the tack welds. Unfortunately there are indents from the cutting disc but this is one of those few times that I'm happy to use filler to resolve these imperfections!


The wheelarch area inside didn't look too bad initially


But after attacking with a grinder, I found a plate welded on badly. The welds were weak enough with little penetration to pull off by hand



That bit is a mess and will require a bit of work to fix up. At least it's simple flat shapes and not something that is readily visible.

For the repairing the main arch I would like a repair panel. However they appear to be hens teeth. I did manage to snag a nearside panel (thanks Captain70s for the heads up!) but the offside had already sold before I got a chance to buy that too.

However the damage doesn't look much more than what can be fixed up with the club repair panels. With this arch lip repair piece


And this rear wing repair panel. The rear wing might have enough left to be simple enough to fix with just some bent flat steel.


So all in, I'm quite happy with that rear arch. Could have be so much worse. Inner arch is pretty much all there too, with a few thin areas on the edge and another repair patch at the base of the arch. That repair patch seems done a longer while back and still seems very solid.