Work on Red's roof

Recently I sent Red to an mot station to get her back on the road. She had been sitting

unused for a couple of months. Unfortunately she failed on some rust on the wheel arch and rear of sill (drivers side). However, this provided the perfect opportunity to do some 'housekeeping' work and fix some stuff I had been putting off.

I began by stripping the interior as the heater motor had given up the ghost some months ago and I was getting sick of freezing to death in the mornings!

Panel removal is pretty simple, 20-ish bolts and mastic.

Once the interior was removed it was onto removing the rear quarter panel (O/S) so I could properly repair the wheel arch. The removal of the rear panel illuminated a much bigger problem! Where the roof and rear pillar meet was rotten and was desperately in need of fixing, this was pretty disheartening at first as my hopes of a quick and (relatively) straight-forward wheel arch repair faded away...

They certainly rot from the inside out!

Once I had taken a step back and had a tea break, I took a closer look and had a poke with a screwdriver I realised that I was quite lucky to catch the rust now rather than a few years down the line when it could have snowballed into a rather intensive repair.

-- Silver linings and all that! --

As always the first thing to do is start cutting out any rust to confirm there is nothing hiding away in a hard to see area.

Unfortunately when I was poking away at the rust in the pillar my screwdriver went straight through the rear roof skin, it was unexpected as the outside looked absolutely perfect but from the inside it had pitted so badly it was basically just the paint holding it together! It just goes to show how rust can hide in plain sight.

-Kira