Best couple of days yet – by a long way. Well, possibly not as good as the day we first went to see it before buying the buggy, but it ranks pretty high!
Last cutting and grinding
Yesterday we did the last bits of cutting and trimming with the angle grinder (Which is lucky, because we also broke the angle grinder!). We got the little bits around the pedals removed, and cut away some old brake line sections. With a borrowed angle grinder we smooth out the burrs from the floor pan welds.
Next we moved onto attacking the entire thing with the wire brush attatchment for the drill. This is, by the way, clearly the best tool you can ever buy for 49p! We used it to get into all sorts of tight places in the transaxle, the suspension, and the front member. With the help of the drill and a traditional hand held wire brush, the last of the (fixable) rust was gone. YAY.
Pressure washing
To get off the remaining dirt and rust we got out the pressure washer and blasted it all back. At this point, we found new colour on some parts we hadn’t yet seen, and discovered some newer components which had been replaced. We also washed and scrubbed down the body inside to get out the mud, mould and plants that were living there.
To make sure we could do it, we decided to test the engine. It took about 30 minutes with the wiring diagram and some creative use of old cables we had to rig the engine up to run. In the absence of a battery, we had to start it from my car. In the absence of a fuel tank, we dunked the line in a fuel can from my old buggy 
This was a very worth while activity, as it’s massively rejuvenated our want to work on the thing! She sounded beautiful – see the video at the end.
Hammerite the front member
Last task of the day was to seal what we’d cleaned up before we started welding on the floor. We popped to Andersons and picked up a large-ish tin of hammerite – silver hammered look. This was so easy to apply it shocked us. You could litterally slap it all on and it would stay there! The chassis is now looking silver everywhere it should be, and ready to receive floors.
Next steps:
- Purchase and weld in place new floor pans
- Investigate/Repair/Replace brake master cylinder
- Build brake lines
