On a wing and a prayer

First, here's a picture of the car again. The thing to note here is the absence of the "panel lines" around the front wing. Why?, because someone thought it would be good to fill them in with body-filler I guess. Why?, the answer is possibly revealed below.

"Luckily", some slight cracks in the dodgy paint job gave me an indication of where to start so I started chipping away with a selection of chisels, scrappers and a screwdriver.

Some hours later I had filled an old cornflakes box full of chipped and sanded out filler and I finally revealed the lines where the wing joins the rest of the body.

These panel joins are supposed to be visible.

I had done a "magnet test" on a lot of this area and was worried that because the magnet didn't stick to the car it meant there were large areas of body-filler and no metal. As it turns out, there was actually metal under there - "phew" - but the filler was 5mm thick and the magnet wasn't strong enough to find and stick to the metal beneath.

It was the same story on the driver's side. I decided to remove that wing first. I checked my workshop manual and started to remove the bolts as instructed and found several of them were connected to thin air. The metal the bolts were supposed to be connected to had rusted away. Now starting to understand why the panel lines were filled... probably holding the wings on. All the bolts removed as per the manual, I started carefully pulling and jiggling the wing - all the time expecting it to drop off on my foot... and then... nothing. Ten minutes of stronger pulling and jiggling and some gentle persuading with a mallet and it still hadn't budged. I read the manual again and confirmed all bolts removed. At a loss I started to have another look round and found two more bolts not described in the manual. Hey Presto! one wing off. unsurprisingly, there was a lot of rust on the inner wing.

I was looking round the net for a rust removing product and was drawn in to a couple of YouTube vids' about how to make your own. Thinking what the heck I headed down to the corner shop to buy some lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda. I mixed up a paste in a jar and painted it on to the top of inner-wing panel. I rubbed it in with screwed up tin foil (another tip). After leaving it for 10 minutes I washed it with water. To be fair, I was pretty impressed with the results.

Here's a picture of the same area after one application.

(Note the nifty piece of carpet gaffer taped to the wheel and some surrounding bodywork. There's a sharpish corner to the inner wing that i don't want to rip my car cover).

I repeated the process and then examined the area. The metal is still pretty thick and sturdy and there was no sign of any rust only black carbonised steel so i decided that the best bet was to protect the area from the elements for now and then decide later if i need to do anything else to it. When the water had dried I cleaned the area with White Spirit and painted it with two coats of Hammerite.

One job done but further bad news you may have already glimpsed in one of the previous photos...

This is the Outer Footwell (also under the front wing) from the outside.

And from the inside... Ouch!!

I don't think Baking Soda and Lemon Juice is going to be "man enough" for this one.

I did have some help after that though - for a short time - from my four year son.

The "J-Cloth" gaffered to the steering wheel... "There you go Daddy, that's so the steering wheel is nice and comfy when you drive the car".