(cue Wayne's World-style wibble effect)
I've been repairing the left hand side of the floorpan, where there was some corrosion at both the front and rear edges. This is not good, as the TR7 is a monocoque, so the floor forms part of the structure, as does most of the metalwork, to be truthful. The rear floor area is especially important, as this is close to the area where the trailing arms that hold the rear axle to the chassis bolt in.
So I've been busy - cutting out rusty metal with tinsnips and angle grinder cutting disks, and welding in new metal. I've been using both sheet steel and commercially available repair pieces as appropriate. Once the new steel was welded in, I cleaned up the remaining areas of original metal with a twisted wire cup in my trusty angle grinder, before treating any remaining surface rust with Kurust, which chemically neutralises the rust. The surface rust formed in part because the bituminous sound-deadening panels fitted at the factory were fixed to the floorpan underneath the paint, so I am hoping to prevent this by putting the replacement sound-deadening panels on top of the paint.
At the moment, I have primed the floor, using U-Pol Acid #8 etch primer aerosol and normal grey primer. The next step, which I did this evening, is to seal the seams and welds using U-Pol Tigerseal, which is a polyurethane adhesive sealant which comes in a tube.
Here's the primed front floorpan before Tigersealing:
And here it is afterwards:
Tigerseal is very gloopy, and it's hard to get it looking neat. But it's sealed the edges well, and once it's dry will be ready for paint. Hopefully, I'll get the paint done (as it's completely hidden by carpet and the like, I'm going to use a few coats of satin black) before the TR Drivers weekend at Billing Aquadrome, Northampton next weekend. Like last year, we're dragging out the tent and will be camping all weekend. The car will be there next year, honest...
