500 (Classic) '65 RHD F Restoration

One of the previous owners of this car decided that the best way to preserve the new floor pans that had been welded it was to waxoyl them... inside the car??! Nice sticky black goo all over the inside metal work, that ~30 years later is not really doing a great job of stopping the rust either.

I wasn't happy to just ignore it, so like the underside it all needed stripping off. This is a time consuming dirty job, and one I hope to not have to repeat any time soon! I used a mixture of sharp chisel and white spirit with a scouring pad. Slowly but surely I was able to remove it all.

The end result looked arguably worse than when I started! But with the addition of some primer things looked much better!

Now to repeat the same task in the engine bay...

I found that the underseal in the engine bay was so old that it had dried out to the point where I could attack it with an angle grinder with a knotted wire wheel on it, and instead of melting it just turned to dust. A rather large amount of unpleasant black dust though, which seemed to just stick to everything, especially me as It was a warm day! Anyway, it was done and so I could get a bit of primer on it and feel better about the world.

Seam sealer was the next task. I tried a different brand of seam sealer, as it came in a nice tube and would go in my calking gun, making hopefully a neater job than the usual brush on type. Sadly though, it reacted badly with the primer I'd used and cracked. So I had to dig that out and went back to the old trusty Upol seam sealer I've been using for a decade. With that dried out nicely I could mask up and prepare to get the spray gun out.

On top of the primer, I went with a rubberised stone chip, which went on fairly well. It should give me a decent level of protection in those hard wearing areas.

And now it was ready for some paint! In most of my previous builds I'd gone for black underside. I like the look when its all fresh and shiny, but the downside is that very quickly, once it's been driving out in the real world, the black seems to just look like an old car, and can give off that 'slathered in underseal 'bodge job vibe. So for this car, I decided I would go with body colour for once.

I mean its such a dark blue it'll probably just end up looking black under there anyway! haha. I do like the colour though, and I think this mix I've had made up might even look a touch more grey than what was previously on the car, which I like. It's even more understated and is a wonderfully elegant colour.

I'm pleased with how the paint went on, it feels like a fairly easy colour to work with. It always makes such a difference to see things painted.

At one stage I was considering stopping the body work here for a while and focusing on getting a rolling chassis together, but having thought more about it, I'm going to push on and try to finish out the body shell before the warmth of summer leaves us. I don't know if I'll manage it, but it's gotta be worth a shot! I don't want to risk micro blistering from damp under the paint, like I've had issues with on the Daimler, so if its not ready to paint before autumn starts to really bite I'll have to wrap it up and wait till spring to paint it I think.

With no clean running gear I repurposed the box tubing I'd bought to brace the shell into some stands so that I wouldn't damage the fresh underside when I roll the car the right way up.

I think a couple more cross braces would be wise, so I'll sort that I the next few days. Then it's time to get the car rolled the right way up and time to break out the sandpaper I think!

Picking up where we left off... I got that passengers inner arch finished off.

Which is a nice feeling, because the next move was starting to offer up all the new panels. It felt like a huge leap forward.

...well it did till I saw the sort of panel gaps I was faced with on first attempt, haha.

It was like trying to do a jigsaw, knowing some of the pieces were the wrong shape, but not knowing which ones! I got the doors and bonnet on and spent many hours trying to work out some datums and work out which panels were right and which needed tweaking so things would line up.

Ultimately I found that the front edge of the wings was very flexible, so was likely knocked out of shape in transport/warehouse and so I bent them to match the profile of the front panel. After much head scratching about the inner wing fitment, I decided the repairs I did to the inner arch lip was where the misalignment had originated, so some of that was cut out and repaired for the second time. I also found that my drivers door hinges were slightly bent, causing the door to sit too far backwards in the aperature. That, at least, was an easy fix with a hammer! So many hours later, things were finally starting to line up.

At this stage I'd just been clamping and screwing the panels into place with some self tappers. But now I was getting somewhere close with the alignment It was time to take the panels off and turn them into Swiss cheese, ready for the millions of plug welds I'd be doing to fix it all together properly.

Lots of work in there, much more than I thought it would be to be honest! Still, now its all together, and its looking pretty straight and kinda like a car, which is great. The welding was nearly done, but now I had quote a few small cosmetic jobs to finish off before I could actually pack the welder away for good. First up was the top of the front wings. The previous repair job had involved hammering this area in and covering it thick filler, so months ago I'd just cut it out and decided to deal with it later, unfortunately later had now arrived!

I also had the nasty extra holes that had been drilled into the car for the radio areal and for extra dashboard switches to deal with.

And small areas of rot in the bottom corners of both doors.

But finally, after 9 months of hard work, I could remove the bracing from inside the shell, and step back and admire my rust free Fiat!

That's a nice feeling indeed! I've got heaps of tidying up to do now, lots of underseal still to scrap from the inside (why would you do that previous owner...) and engine bay, then on to paint prep

This past month since the last update seems to have a flown by, and in many ways I don't feel like I'm much further along! But it's not for want of trying, it's just that theres a lot of prep to do before the comparatively quick and visually impressive bit of fitting the new front end panels.

My first move was to deal with the bottom of the A pillars. I cut out the rot and did a functional, although not super pretty, repair to both sides. It didn't need to be pretty as it will be hidden inside the front wings.

After that I continued to hide from dealing with the mess that is the inner arches by looking at the front bulk head. From the inside I could see some swollen areas under the passengers side strengthening plate. So I drilled the spot welds on the strengthening plate so I could remove it, then cut out the rusted part of the bulk head and then welded the strengthener back on.

It might have been easier to cut out a large chunk of the bulk head, but as the rotten area surrounded the steering idler mounts, I was keen to make sure they didn't move. With that in mind I did a number of smaller patches, one at a time instead.

This left me nothing for it but to get on and dig into the front arches. For the same reasons of making sure the front end geometry stayed intact, I had decided to repair my original inner arches rather that entirely replace them with pattern parts. This started with many hours of scraping and wire wheeling removing the old under seal and fibreglass and then I could see where to start the repairs. Starting with the drivers side, the strengthening plate around the front wishbone mounts was clearly rotten and so were several of the layers behind it. There was nothing for it but to chop it out.

Hmmm. what a mess. Still, once some new layers started going in things always start to look a bit better. With some metal back in here I could also cut away the many old patches to the lower rear edge of the arch. In some places the patches were 4 layers thick here!

This weekend I was able to finish the drivers inner arch off, which is now looking so much better, with new strengthening plate for the wishbone mounts, new repairs where the rear edge meets the floor and patches to the front edge and return lip. It's been quite the task.

Now I've got to do it all over again on the passengers side! Argh! haha.

Still, once this second inner arch is repaired I can start offering up the new panels which will be quite the moral boost

Well a few weeks have gone past, and while I have not updated, I have none the less been busy! As the work has mostly been a mirror image of the previous rear quarter, there’s not been much to show really.

Picking up where we left off, I finalised the internal structure at the rear of the sills and then got the outer arch welded on.

The closing panel behind the arch needed a similar repair to the other side.

The side panel for the engine bay was next. I take the silence in reply to my previous question to mean there was no repair panel available…

My metal shaping skills won’t win any awards here, but I did manage to make it from one piece, and it’s broadly the right shape!

And then, as before, I moved on to the inner sill.

All of which makes several weeks of hard work seem very quick and simple! Anyway, the good news is that with this work complete I hit a mini milestone, all of the welding rearwards of the A pillars is complete!

So that meant yesterday there was nothing for it but to reposition the car…

And to break out the grinder to be rid of the poorly repaired, fibreglass, filler, pop rivets and underseal mess that was the front end.

Eeek! It’s a little daunting seeing the car like that. Still I have all the new panels and such a nice feeling to know that the worst of the rust is now cut away and it’s all going forwards from here.

It’s good to see the A pillars are actually pretty sound. Much better than some I’ve seen in other restorations. A simple patch to the lower 6”, which I’ve started cutting back for on the drivers side, and a small repair where they’ve been buttered at the top when the last set on wing ls were fitted sill soon have them sorted.

What’s left of the inner arch isn’t so good, I still think I can patch them but it’s going to be a fair amount of work. They are available new, but as they hold a lot of the critical shape of the front end together, I fear that removing it entirely could lead to stuff getting out of alignment. I guess I’ll see how it looks when I start digging deeper into them behind the patches!

This is my first update, to the new garage format of this thread. So if anyone is reading this in the garage, there’s a whole heap of other updates in the discussion thread that covers the months between introduction and this post!

I’ve had a couple of days off work this week, and so had a bit more time than usual to push on with the welding. I’m really grabbing every moment I can on it, as if possible I’d like the welding done before the heat of summer comes. It’s no fun being bundled up in overalls on a hot summers day.

I won’t bore everyone by going into the same levels of detail as with the other side, it’s all been very similar just mirrored, and it’s taken me less time as I’ve not needed as much thinking time.

The first job was to finish cutting back all the rot and poor repairs.

There was some lovely deep filler over multiple patches on this side.

Anyway, that’s all gone now, after that it was a case of fitting the new inner wheel arch, rebuilding the back of the inner sill structure and repairing the rear lower corner of the door aperture.

So that’s really good progress, it took me several weeks to get to this stage on the other side.

The next step is to fit the outer arch and then to deal with the closing panel, as with other side, but then before moving forwards, I need to look at this panel in the left hand side of the engine bay.

I had bought what I thought was a repair panel for it, but it is actually a very different shape now it’s here! I think it’s an under tray of sorts instead. Any of you folks know if this panel is available to buy or not?