Initial condition and work order

Finally long document clearance at Customs and State Revenue Office was ended and car was set off container and landed at our workshop.  

Unfortunately first visual inspection showed, that quite a lot of parts and components were not present on the car. Parts were taken out from the boxes and sorted as far as possible by function groups.

Set of seats was acceptable complete. Carcasses of the seats were just rusty, but springs had been corroded totally. Padding was destroyed by humidity and should be replaced as well. 

Gearbox with no clutch was received loaded in the car.

Some amount of miscellaneous parts and screws had been also arrived. There were needed far more parts to get this car ready for driving.

Chrome parts had been partly polished – especially bumpers, just the top part but bottom. Rusted through holes in the bumpers had been repaired by welding, but result was not succeeded since there were still a lot of holes permeating through metal. 

Chromed passenger compartment edges were fixed to the body in completely wrong way. Door chromed decorations were not restored at all.

After repainting with rear bumpers installed car had been got a hit from the rear, so rear panel, rear transverse beam and trunk floor were misshapen and fuel filler lid was squeezed by bumper destroying paintwork.

Wooden soft-top structures were rotten though over sprayed by black paint. Under synthetic upholstery at the lower part of windscreen there were found wooden trim details completely destroyed by mycelium and decay.

Dashboard trim was completely falling off including leather over layer, varnish and veneering of precious wood. Some wooden parts were missing and some broken.

Some of components were already returned into the engine compartment though in wrong position – master cylinder interfered with accelerator linkage. Brake booster as well as some of the wiring was at the place. Wiring insulation was damaged and so whole harness required extensive reconstruction.                     

Most confusing appeared condition of the body. We had initial information that body recently had been restored and after that has got new paint, so at arrival it should be ready for assembly. Though having a look on the exterior of the arrived car we started to hesitate about advisability of further investments in assembly without restoration of body redone. There were found many places where paint was sprayed over the rusty unclean and unrestored surfaces. Like here in the roof boot – such corrosion dens as usual are delving through the metal.

 Hidden cavities had not been cleaned from the rust and primed. There were rusted panels overpainted in the engine compartment. 

The same reproofs on surfaces pre-painting preparation applied to the firewall. For acceptable restoration result car should be stripped down and complete sand blasting applied.               

 There were quite a lot of damaged paint areas which should be repaired - like on the front panel at the safety lock. There were some hollow and protuberant areas on the painted surface signaling about superficial job. Our paintwork thickness testing device at some areas was warning about unacceptable use of filler material – more than 5 mm!

Lifting of the car led us to surprising discovery – restoration of the body hasn’t been finished before final paint coat is applied! There were still missing significant parts of body construction.

There was missing jack attachment junction on the RHS at the rear.

Many places were featuring unfinished welding seams – structural pieces were kept together just by temporary welding spots.

Rear LHS longitudinal member was repaired welding onto rusted body additional steel sheet segments, so finally it become too wide and had been cutting away rubber from tyre. 

A lot of rusted through components were not replaced or restored. There was not applied primer on new steel parts and existing rusted panels had not been cleaned.

Though we still believed body had not slanted because of wrong welding – we found that there’s broken rear spring and at the moment considered that it was a reason for car rear sloping to LHS.

There were welded new “wheel pockets” in the trunk, but unfortunately it was done in wrong way so there’s spoiled exterior form of rear part of the car and bottom of the pocket was too shallow so at the end it was not possible to close trunk lid with spare wheel in place.

There was missing front brakes mechanism on the RHS wheel.

There were not welded to the place both hand brake cable supports. So all in all we got at conclusion that it is not reasonable to start assembly of the car without serious repair of the finished (as it was expected) body. In present form it was not possible to make it even usable (wheel whetting modified body). Safety as well had to be observed – missing supportive floor panels, temporary or missing weld spots, unrepaired rusted through important body panels – undervaluation of these defects may lead to dramatic consequences. This was our main message to owner after this short inspection – it was needed to redo body to save the project.

Based on initial defect detection extended contract schedule was determined including jobs mentioned in the table below: