Almost all of the really shitty jobs on the rear of the car have now been completed, and I can probably lower the rear back on the wheels early next week. Still need rear shocks, but they should be easy to come by.
3 spots that need welding remain on the car now, (front air dam panel, heater bubble (might be ok with just wire brushing and noverox, it's a shit job nonetheless), and the holes I had to drill to get the battery tray out. My plan of getting the car on the road by the 30th of August looks challenging, but not impossible..
Anyway, pics:
Radius arm brackets welded (they also have paint now), I had to remove them again for adjusting, as I said before, this was the shittiest job I had to do on this car.. They are 0.9mm out of alignment on opposite sides of the car, which is close enough. Excuse the seam, I had to use flux-core wire as I ran out of welding gas..
Front grille removed for blacking out the panels behind (they were showing through the grille) Hard to believe these cars had a reputation for rusting, there has never been any paint under the front slam panel?!
The grille itself cleaned up quite nicely
painted parts:
Rear axle waiting to get under the car
I had to paint the parts of the body underneath the rear bumper black as there was too much surface rust, this picture shows how it looks quite well. I feared it might look worse, certainly passable in my opinion.
(Note the radius arm (or tramp bar) brackets that are pointing upwards in that picture. I had to weld those on with an ancient Telwin arc welder as I ran out of gas for the mig..
Looks, again, quite different to when I took it off the car:
More updates coming soon.