Disassembly of the front end
At last, the weekend has arrived and I can go work on the Z. Dad showed me his handy work on the bonnet and it didn’t look too good. For the amount of work that it will take, we have opted to look into getting a replacement bonnet.
I have heard that the bonnets are still available brand new. I will have to look into this a little more deeper and see what I can arrange.
After the discussion about the bonnet, we decided it was time to get the front end a little more bare to see what other surprises were hidden just waiting for us to find reveal them to the world. We took the bonnet off first and then proceeded to take off the front grill and bumper.
Of course, as with all old cars, most of the nuts were welded onto their bolts nice and tight with plenty of rust and dirt. Dad had run out of penetrene, so we headed off to R&E Auto’s to get some supplies. Once back, we gave the nuts (all the ones we could find) a good squirt of the incredible rust freeing, nut loosening liquid. We then went up for a cuppa to let it do its thing.
Once we came down, a good few of the nuts were more than ready to come off, but still, many did not want to budge. Alas, most of the ones that started to come off real easy, were not coming off in the manner we had desired. We sheared quite a few bolts today. What was really interesting though, was the sheer number of different types of nuts and bolts. Previous owners have done some pretty quick repair jobs, using whatever they had at hand. A few of them were even allan keyed. Something that I have never seen on a car.
By the end of the day, we had the front end pretty much stripped of all panels. About the only ones left on were the battery inspection lids. With all of the panels off, it was a lot easier to see what the engine bay sides were liked. We discovered that it had been in a slight front end bingle. The drivers side engine bay wall has a crease in it. The damage doesn’t look all that bad as the bonnet and the guard lined up pretty well when they were on. The rails are still very straight as well. A little bit of beating will get the bay wall nice and straight and make the lines between the bonnet and guard that much cleaner.
As for further surprises, we only had one. The driver side guard had a “growth” of body filler at the bottom (in the usual place for rust holes). A previous owner must have just kept on pushing that stuff in until it filled up! Hehe. We were both pretty happy that this was the only surprise.
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- The investigative work on the bonnet
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- Lots of hidden dirt under the guard
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- Lots of surface rust, but no holes!
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- Under side of the cowl finisher
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- A pretty bare front end
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- The guards
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- The body filler