Project Cliff - The Cherry Red Thirty by stretch tech

5 minute(s) of a 220 minute read

this week end, we rolled Cliff onto a mattress so we could start removing the under seal and degreasing the floor pan

we set up my dad's grinder with some off the wire brush attachments we brought at Bingley and started to grind the paint back to bare metal

but it quickly filled the garage with dust so we decided to stop and just scrape the under seal off for now, after all, the wire brush in the grinder will make fast work of removing the last bits of under seal and paint when we take it to the unit in a few weeks to blitz the body repairs

my exhaust from Bingley has also been cleaned up and stored away

i will take some photos this week at some point and upload them then

2-11-2012

today, me and my dad worked on cliff in 0 degrees with man flu ....................now if that' not dedication i don't know what is...........

we have 2 weeks to get cliff ready for when we move him to a unit to blitz ALL of the welding in 10 days ! ! this consists of:

- new front panel
- new wings
- new A panels
- new outer sills
- new front floor pans
- new rear valence + closures
- new (heritage) scuttle + closures
- new lower rear quarter repairs
- new rear subframe mounting end panels
- and numerous patches all over ! !

so, today we scraped all the under seal off of the under side of cliff (apologies, i forgot to take photos of before we started)



near side rear wheel arch



off side rear wheel arch



lower front bulk head



drivers front floor pan



passengers front floor pan



sorry for the awful shadowing and quality of these photos taken on my phone late afternoon

actually i am surprised at the quality of these photos......................................

any way, as we have now finished all of the the oily, dirty, messy jobs, we decided to give the garage a good clean out.....so we took cliff out of the garage for the first time since we brought him back in august last year ! !

this allowed me to have a good look around cliff in the light and remove the broken "special" arches to inspect the damage behind them. i will be putting the same type of arch and sill trim set back on cliff when we come to paint him

rusty front off side arch (will be replaced any way)



(i need to remove that front bumper at some point, it needs one of the bolts grinding off)

rusty off side repeater hole



rusty off side door step/A panel



rusty scuttle ( i think the rust hole is growing by the day )



bulk head and engine bay





rear arches





this is the largest hole in the boot floor......result !

when we started to strip cliff down, we noticed that the off side rear seat/bulk head had been bent in slightly, as if some one has tried to force the boot lid closed with an overfilled boot

view from the cabin of the car





boot view



this damage had pulled the seat belt bracket (in the boot) away from the rear bulk head slightly

it wasn't noticeable when sitting on the rear seat but i wasn't happy with it.............so my dad got his port-a-power from the van and we pressed it back into shape..............

braced on the front bulk head



re-aligning to press all dents out



much better.....

show bargain exhaust all cleaned up and new brackets fitted



i was thinking of buying a pair of twin tale pipes and fitting them to this by shortening the link pipe and making elbows or a T piece.....but i am not sure..........what do you all think ?

keep it as a straight through/centre exit system

or

twin exit tail pipes (oval or circle)

i am really unsure on which one to go for...opinions please ! !

finally we cleaned out the garage and covered the the floor in a roll of carpet and two old sleeping bags, from now on we won't be making much (if any mess) so we can keep the garage nice a clean and tidy



then we put cliff back on his mattress where he awaits being moved to the unit in two weeks



any help on my exhaust dilemma will be much appreciated

Cheers