Body Blows

I'm going to paint Alice a nice light blue color (Florida Blue, close to Iris Blue), and to do that the car needs to be ready.  So it's time to get started.

Here's the color.  Isn't it pretty?

There isn't a lot more to take out or off of the car.  I already removed the dash and consoles.  The windshield came out by removing 6 bolts.  The seats came out after another 4 (and thankfully, they all came out easily enough).  Seat belts are three more per side.  I did find some rot - not bad, but needing repair.  I also found that the passenger's side rear wheel arch was repaired, rather poorly, and instead of welding in a bung for the seat belt mount a bolt was shoved through a hole.  Not good... so I'll get a grade 8 nut, make it round and weld it in place.

After all that fun, I removed the interior carpet and panels.  Ugh.  Smelly, crumbly stuff.

I vacuumed all that crud out and I'll have even more fun scraping out the padding that was glued down by the PO's shop.

I then tackled the boot.  Boy oh boy.  This is what really gets me - instead of doing the right thing of replacing the trunk lid seal (which in a B is attached to the lid or the car, but not both), the shop left the original (rotted) seal, found something that would fit and glued it into the rain channel.  So not only is the trunk lid rusted, so is that channel.  It would have taken all of an hour to remove the lid and remove the seal, and install a new one properly.  It took me longer because of the decay, but it did come out.

Then, the carpet came out.  It's seems like it was put in to hide things.

Most of the metal is intact.  There are parts around the fuel tank filler neck that will have to be cut out and replaced.  I also get to have the fun of removing all that glue so the boot can be painted properly.

Lastly, I cleaned out the battery box.  The PO got creative with their repairs... 

Yup, that's a shingle.  I give an A for effort but liners were available even then, so I'm not impressed.

I also see a wire threaded through the remains of the box (which is actually more intact than I expected to see).  That's the fuel pump lead.  I'll have to reroute that with new wire to where the harness actually goes, as the original wire is nowhere to be found as a remnant from the harness.  I have a battery box liner that will fit here and I have the lid, so I am not worried about safety once I fix it properly.

Now I have lots of crud to scrape out and trim and bumpers to remove, and doors to disassemble.  I will drop the fuel tank and replace it with a new, touring model (16 gallons; over 400 miles of range!) along with the rubber bits.  The pump appears to be okay, so I'll keep it for now.