Painted the rollbar:
Hit the floors with rust converter, and reinstalled the interior- getting the bar back in was a little difficult, it warped a little when I finished the back of those welds:
Then it was on to the rust repair. I started with the rear corners under the trunk- here's what they looked like under the mudflaps with the paint stripped:
The other side was slightly better. The DS one had a decent amount of bondo as well, looks like somebody crunched it a little at some point.
Because a number of you encouraged me to try it, I attempted to make this repair a nice flush butt joint instead of my usual obvious lap joint. It didn't go great- I can cut, I can grind, I can weld, but when it comes to making a perfect gapless patch panel I completely lack the patience. I tried a number of times, using the painter's tape trick I've seen in other threads here, but inevitably on all of the repairs I made this weekend I ended up welding in a piece I wasn't happy with and getting subpar results. Next time I'll just do a lap joint again, it doesn't bother me to have the repair be obvious after the fact and I just don't enjoy spending 4x as much time to try and make it look slightly better. That rear corner ended up looking like this:
The other side is almost fully covered by the mud flap:
Some rust converter to protect them until I paint:
Then, for the rocker repair, I had to get the rear lift arms somewhere other than the pinch weld. So I did, but it's pretty scary to have them that far forward so I also threw the screw jack under once the car was up again:
Safety feature so I don't tip the thing by moving the lift with my 5th point of support installed:
Let's chop out that rocker rust:
Two more attempted butt joints, two more failures of my patience and resulting subpar work:
I also filled the holes from the trim so that water hopefully doesn't go in there and rot it out again- there's still a drain hole at the bottom. Rust converter again:
Moving on from how I suck at bodywork, wheels. The car came with the set I've been driving on, with ancient hard R888s that I really shouldn't be using on the street at all, as well as two sets of incredibly 80s Isuzu Impulse 3 spoke/turbine type things. I gave one set to Brian (paranoid android) for his Rabbit project, and those were actually the best set I could piece together, because I wanted an excuse to refinish the remaining four.
Here's my starting point with the clearcoat stripped off:
Then, after hitting the face of them with an abrasive wheel on the grinder, followed by a sanding block and some scotch brite, I degreased them and put them in the sun to dry:
Then I sprayed a satin clearcoat onto them, let that dry, and masked the area I had scotch-brited prior to that:
Then some black:
And then a bunch of flailing around with a rag soaked in yellow paint, followed by white:
Remove the tape and...
Oh yes, now this is the kind of cosmetic work I can get behind:
