captain_70s
Forum Addict
With the Acclaim's MOT due on the 21st and it performing sterling service as my daily driver I took it over to a fellow crap car hoarder's place to get some welding and underbody tidying up done:
The result was as thus:
Not the prettiest of repairs but solid enough for a daily run around. While the car was up on a ramp I also took a wire wheel to the sills and jacking points to remove any loose underseal/rust had a poke around and found everything was fairly solid lathered everything in Vactan rust converter and applied some fresh underseal. Then I tightened all the exhaust joins to no avail and resorted to simply plastering every join in paste which stopped the many, many leaks. I then stick welded a patch into the NSR inner wheel arch, which was looking very crispy, the day before the MOT.
I took it round to the garage fairly confident that the only thing it'd fail on was a leaky rear shock and possibly some odd electrical gremlins...
Well fuck. Either the last few MOT testers were slightly less vigilant, that was a rough 1000 miles or my MOT tester was in a really bad mood. My tester had probed every nook and cranny with vigour and created a variety of small holes, he must have been prodding pretty bloody hard as well 'cause he managed to put holes in metal I'd welded to... To say I was gutted was an understatement, especially given how the car is spot on mechanically.
The Acclaim is now sat at the garage waiting for a new shock absorber to arrive and be fitted (and the inexplicably backwards fitted tyre to be corrected). Then it is going back to the unit where the chassis leg was welded for more metalwork.
The repair bill quoted by the garage was £880, £30 more than I actually paid for the car. Needless to say it'll be getting repaired for a fraction of that partially because I can't afford it and partially because it's not worth it. Hoping to have back on the road in a fortnight or so but it's bloody annoying, I knew there were bits of bodywork needing to be done but I was expecting to be able spread them out over summer at my leisure, hate rushing for MOTs...
With the Acclaim at the garage I took the Dolomite home for tinkering as it'd been sat there for two months waiting for them to look at the rear drums and I was tired of the lack of progress...
The result was as thus:
Not the prettiest of repairs but solid enough for a daily run around. While the car was up on a ramp I also took a wire wheel to the sills and jacking points to remove any loose underseal/rust had a poke around and found everything was fairly solid lathered everything in Vactan rust converter and applied some fresh underseal. Then I tightened all the exhaust joins to no avail and resorted to simply plastering every join in paste which stopped the many, many leaks. I then stick welded a patch into the NSR inner wheel arch, which was looking very crispy, the day before the MOT.
I took it round to the garage fairly confident that the only thing it'd fail on was a leaky rear shock and possibly some odd electrical gremlins...
Well fuck. Either the last few MOT testers were slightly less vigilant, that was a rough 1000 miles or my MOT tester was in a really bad mood. My tester had probed every nook and cranny with vigour and created a variety of small holes, he must have been prodding pretty bloody hard as well 'cause he managed to put holes in metal I'd welded to... To say I was gutted was an understatement, especially given how the car is spot on mechanically.
The Acclaim is now sat at the garage waiting for a new shock absorber to arrive and be fitted (and the inexplicably backwards fitted tyre to be corrected). Then it is going back to the unit where the chassis leg was welded for more metalwork.
The repair bill quoted by the garage was £880, £30 more than I actually paid for the car. Needless to say it'll be getting repaired for a fraction of that partially because I can't afford it and partially because it's not worth it. Hoping to have back on the road in a fortnight or so but it's bloody annoying, I knew there were bits of bodywork needing to be done but I was expecting to be able spread them out over summer at my leisure, hate rushing for MOTs...
With the Acclaim at the garage I took the Dolomite home for tinkering as it'd been sat there for two months waiting for them to look at the rear drums and I was tired of the lack of progress...
