Well between watching Garth Tander cleanup at the Phillip Island 500 in fantastic style on the last lap, I managed some work on Catalina as well.
I grabbed the new seats from a mates brother, their VS Berlina seats in fairly good nick. Doesnt matter, their free and in 100% better condition then the VL seats that will come out of it. :thumbsup:
Then I got stuck into the floor ...
The floor panels are made up of 4 pieces, a RH front, LH front (so where your feet go), RH rear and LH rear (where the seats bolt). I thought we'd need to change all 4 panels.
As you can see during a trial fit the floor doesnt "exactly" fit.
Last weekend at muscle car masters at Eastern Creek the announcers told how Rare Spares have reproduction parts that are 100%, but this tends to tell another story ...
Doesnt matter, as it is we only need to fit one panel out of 4 because the rest havent been attacked by rust yet.
I dont have any "before shots" but you can see from one of the very first photos how the floor looked.
During the cleanup ...
The offending rusted panel removed
After cleanup and rust converter treatment
Ive got some more photos but their not uploaded yet.
So esentially after I attacked the floor with a wire brush and "flapper disc" it cleaned up well and better then I thought, ripped off all the surface rust and treatment, although there was alot of fine red "rust dust" everywhere, through my clothes, through the dash panel, on the concrete. It was only the passenger front half that had to be completely cut out because it was destroyed by rust, but the rest was fine, only a minor rust hole here or there that we've cut out and will patch shortly.
Its all been rust converter treated, once the new panel goes in it'll all be rust inhibitor treated too then the interior goes back in.
So I invested 90 bucks to pickup a cheap "temporary carport" from kmart, it wont last long and is just about already falling apart - I just need it to last til I have the new doors on and door rubbers on, to stop water getting into the interior like it had been otherwise I'll be just undoing all my good work!
Work will come to a temporary stop for the moment coz Im busy the next few weekends as is dad