1969 Viva HB Patina wagon. Now with matching retro caravan..

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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby yoeddynz » Fri Mar 27, 2015 10:49 am

Well now... a little update. Its started to rain here in normally sunny old nelson and I didn't like seeing the wagon out there filling with water due to no doors (although the fist sized holes in the sills let the water out..)

My brother was over this evening so while extra hands were about we pushed the little wagon into the shed where Hannah has been spending a few hours here and there doing her wagon thing. I felt like I was missing out.. not helped by Hannah now giving me grief that I dont actually own a wagon. She claims its just a mere hatchback. Not fair! :-(

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Once inside I emptied it out. There was a spare tailgate (or hatch......) and the doors off a white car. The tailhatchgate is actaully the original item. Not sure why it was swapped over but luckily its much better rust wise. Still rusty but not terminal.

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Then I set to picking out all the various bits that old cars collect. So far I found some money as usual...Im now up to 7c. So car now only owes me $599.93

I also found various tiny plastic toys, a key ring clip, a bicycle combination lock - missing the chain, a eraser and a tow ball. Quite a score...

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The fella I bought the car from cut up another Viva a while back. But at least I managed to score a complete floor plan half along with the sill for the rusty(er) side. It will be bloody handy and will make the repair job so much quicker!

The worse of the sills..

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The floor/sill for transplant..

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The doors need to be put in place before I start bracing and chopping things up. Not so easy when they were removed by simply chopping through the pins. Vivas dont use bolt on hinges! This I have only just learned. They are instead welded in place and the only way to remove the doors is to 'carefully' hammer the pins out. So I have some rusted in pins to deal with. Fun times.

Tomorrow I will have a go at starting the awesome 1200cc power plant. Hopefully fit the doors so it can go back outside and dealwith rain a bit easier and I can sleep easy.
Last edited by yoeddynz on Fri Aug 07, 2015 6:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby yoeddynz » Mon Aug 03, 2015 9:25 am

Righto- update time!

Ok so I have started cracking into this today. Hannah has left me for a few weeks for the lovely grey sky days of the UK summer. So while there is a gap between jobs coming in and my meals simply consist of toast, cheese on toast, cheese on toast with salami (my favourite, takes a bit more prep but worth it) or cereal this means I have ample time to chop out rust.

The aim of the game with this wagon is to get it safe and road legal as cheaply as possible with no effort at all to tart it up. (Mainly because I am broke and it would also be a crying shame to lose any of that patina that has been carefully encouraged by years of nurturing from previous owners.

I just want it to be a turn key hack wagon. I have spoken to my wof (MOT) man and warned him that one hellish eyesore of a manky old Viva wagon will be heading his way in the near future. I have told him I want to push the boundaries of what non structural rust I can get away with and be legal/safe. His cars have rust so he understands anyway :-)

Photo time now I have showered off a heap of rust dust and grinding dust. Im pretty happy with how far I got today.

First off, a photo of some of the patina I would really like to keep. I would like to treat the rusty scrapes and surface rust with something that keeps the colour but stops it getting worse? All the rust neutralisers I know of turn the rust black which wont look so good. Ideas? Clear coating it is an option. It doesnt have to last for ages because after a while Im sure I'll want to paint it but for at least first year or so would be good.

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I was going to remove the windscreen to avoid getting grinding sparks marking the glass on the inside. But I didnt. Three reasons; the rubber will disintegrate and I dont want to fork out $100 for new stuff right now, the glass is scratched already so might as well wait till later when the car is insured and then has a random stone hit it...., I like the moss. It adds character.

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I took on the worst area, the passenger floor and inner sill, which is also the area which dealt with first because it will put some strength back into the shell. The steel on these HB Vivas is actually quite good quality and quite thick I think. It certainly knocks cut off discs down quickly. I picked my way out to good steel and chopped away. First off this bit..

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I am not really fussed about trying to piece this back together the way it was from the factory. If its strong and lasts Im happy. But I want to keep things like the channels in the floor because it will leak and they do help let water out. Plus they keep the flat bits of steel from being wobbly. So I whipped up a jig the right size and hammered the channels into the steel..

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Now the nasty bit. The inner sill was beyond patching. But I am very very lucky that the top of the sill is rust free and solid which meant I could happily chop out this lot and not have the door aperture move on me. Also helped by the fact that Vivas have nice substantial chassis rails too. Not that the inner sill, or what was left, was doing much. It pretty much fell out.

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Next job was to cut out what I needed from the spare sill/floor pan I had been given. I think its about here that we should give a few seconds silence for the little Viva that sacrificed its life for this part. Not my choice- it was chopped up by a man who insists that every Viva he kills makes his worth more. But at least I got something from it. The donor was pretty rusty.

Poor viva.

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The piece I required was cut out..

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Then heatgun and scrape the underseal off..

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Followed by lots of chopping, measuring, trimming, measuring and finally in place ready to be welded. Which is about where I finished off today.

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My bin of rust is filling up..

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Tomorrow I'll weld that bit in place and start on the outer sill and sill ends. I'd love to put it up on the hoist to do that but then I think I would be risking things moving out of place. So I'll continue kneeling on my 5 layers of carpet off cuts and persevere.
Last edited by yoeddynz on Fri Aug 07, 2015 6:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby jpsmit » Mon Aug 03, 2015 2:26 pm

Great work! and always amazing to watch your updates - great great fab skills!
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby chrismc » Mon Aug 03, 2015 5:47 pm

Good solid repairs. Well done. :D
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby junkyarddog » Mon Aug 03, 2015 9:08 pm

Excellent work Mate,
Will really enjoy watching this one coming together :D
Just one more turn should do it....
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby yoeddynz » Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:29 am

Cheers guys. It will as usual be pretty awesome to get the worst rust dealt with and then just pick away at the rest. Then I will be bombarding the knowledgeable ones on this forum all about original vivas and where/what goes where....

Coffee time so update time.

Floor all welded up and feeling a lot more solid :-)

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Next up the passenger side sill. Before I cut it out I thought Id show you all what a truly wonderful bit of filling work had been attempted to hide the rot. I think whoever did this had slapped the filler on and just gave up.

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I thought I might cut a section from the spare sill I had. But no. Its been attacked before and the old man who had owned that car obviously didnt have a welder but certainly had a pop riveter...

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Hopefully it will all go OK. Im hoping the rot has not extended right up the top as I want something to weld to. If it has I will just have more sections to make. Will report back later with my findings. I will have to do it in 600mm long repairs whatever as that is the length my folder will take.
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby yoeddynz » Tue Aug 04, 2015 10:51 am

Today in pictures. With some text. So I finished welding up the floor and inner sill then tidied up some other frilly bits in there near the front. There are more little holes in the floor here and there but I will leave all the little bits for later once the big yucky stuff is done.

This mudguard...

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I normally dont like them. But it seems to tie in well with the car in that utilitarian sort of way. So I carefully removed it. Then I cut away what sill was left.

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Here's a bit of the sill..

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..and here is most of the sill...

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I was hoping that more of the top of the outside face of the sill would be solid but upon closer inspection it look like this wagon has had a replacement sill already. You can just make out on this section I cut off where they had blended the new sill in just below the corner and then ground it back.

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So I cut the sill top back further and will butt weld the new sill on the top face.

Speaking of butt welding... this is my preferred method for all joins where ever possible. My several reasons why..

Firstly - it means that there will never be a overlap of steel. No matter what you seal it with its always a place where rust will begin because moisture creeps. Even if one uses a seam sealer its not perfect because usually one panel is corroded and if sealed up against another fresh bit of panel it can still continue to corrode.

If you butt weld panels together you can prep them properly both sides and paint them properly. The join will last. No collection point.

Secondly- both panels are flush so once the weld is ground back you get a neat flat surface that should hopefully require the bare minimum of filler (if one is bothered). Butt welding is a lot trickier especially with one panel usually being thinner and rusty. But if the welder is set up just right then by carefully zapping the join and getting just the right heat in the weld will go right through and create a good solid join.I like to see the weld coming through the other side. If the steel is thick enough, like say 0.8 ~1mm, then a very small gap will fuse together with the wire melting in and leaving very little proud.

If I do have to do a lap joint somewhere I will always have the overlap facing down so moisture cant enter from above. However if its done without the use of a Joggler to put a step in one panel so the panel faces end up flush I think it always looks a bit messy plus will need more filler to smooth it off.

I suppose it all just depends on what the repair is for and how much bother one wants to take. Areas that get the most moisture and you want to last I reckon it makes sense to avoid any extra traps.

Enough blabbing. Photos.

I was also foolishly hoping the lowest parts on the inner sills would be ok to re-use. I started to grind back what was left of the outer and it was *Bleep*. So I just cut the lot off back to good solid steel and welded in fresh sheet. This actually took less time then it would have to try to clean up what was there. Here's what I chopped off..

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New steel in place..

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Now onto folding up some new sill outers. I can only do 600mm at a time so I had to take time and try to do each half evenly so they would match. I had made a little gauge based off the old sill as a pattern. The sills turned out OK. Not as neat as if I had some rollers because you can see the gentle ridges where I did all the little folds. But they'll most likely get covered with underseal and hell- look at the rest of the car...:-)

Folding..

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Cut, bend, tweak and generally shape the front end where I will be rebuilding the bottom of the A pillar..

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Oh shit- is that the time? Decide I need to eat but on a roll so just quickly bbq some sausages and drink some beer..

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Treat the inside of the sills while I can..

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This is pretty much where I'm up to now...

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Hopefully the other side wont be as bad but I am expecting it will be.
yoeddynz
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby rizzo » Tue Aug 04, 2015 5:52 pm

coming along nicely :D
HB 1159 1968 10K White
HB 4000 1968 Green
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby yoeddynz » Tue Aug 04, 2015 9:11 pm

i was on a roll but now have to do some contract work. Boo.
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Re: HB wagon with added rust. Woo hoo.

Postby yoeddynz » Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:25 am

Just a little update because I got called in for some work. Back to this properly tomorrow. Hopefully for the car it will be raining because I'm itching to go for a bike ride and if its sunny that will win over grinding and welding all day. Anyway tonight I finished off tweeking the sills to fit nicely and tacked them into place. I welded the bottoms in and was about to start the finish welds on top.

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..but it was just too dark with the portable light I had always in the wrong place. It either lit up the inside of my helmet from behind or wasnt bright enough where I wanted it. I messed about with bits of wire hanging it here and there but no good. curse word it! I thought. I'll make a stand I can adjust. So that's what I did. I call it the stand'o'matic and it fits my really old GE light. I added some hooks for the cable when not in use and hanging my googles etc on. I wish I built this bloody ages ago!

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yoeddynz
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