The Surprise
I knew that we had to find more dramas with the car than we had so far, and today was the day we did.
I started the day by cleaning the workshop around the car a little. I had boxed quite a few of the interior parts, but not stored them with the rest of the parts from the car. With the parts all stored, I decided to see what was involved with removing the petrol tank. We need the tank off to do some panel beating on the tail of the car.
I jacked up the car and placed the stands under the car. As I was placing the stand on the passenger side of the car, I noticed that the pitch looked a lot newer in one spot than the rest of the floor pan. I decided that I would look into it once I had investigated the petrol tank. The petrol tank looks to only be held on with two large straps of metal with one nut/bolt each. Other than the hoses, not too hard to remove it. But my mind was more on the pitch than the tank.
I returned to the passenger side of the car to investigate further. With my trusty flat-head screwdriver in hand, I started to prod and poke around, until the head went straight through. Looks like we have some more rust. I also discovered a large metal patch that had been added under the rear-end of the main rail. At that point, I moved to a chisel and started to remove all of the pitch. I found that the metal patch was mostly bogged up and was only migged in the corners.
I reverted back to the screwdriver to see how securely the metal patch was attached and guess what, three of the four corners didn’t even resist the force and easily snapped off. I needed to use a metal chisel to break of the last weld. Once the metal plate was off, I could more clearly see the damage. Looks like the floor had been hit by something and there was a large amount of rusted metal, right in line with the main rail and under the passenger seat rail.
Once I had a good amount of the pitch under the car removed, I moved to the inside of the car to see what was hidden under the pitch mat. Behind the passenger seat rail was just a re-confirmation of what I had already discovered under the car. In front of the rail though, the rust continued to run up along both sides of the main rail.
Not sure how bad the rust is, but we are going to have to do some chopping and more investigation before we can decide on what needs to be done to fix it all up.
A message to those out there that are rebuilding Z’s. Don’t limit your repairs to what you can see. We had been very lucky to date with the amount of rust that we have found. But, we scratched the surface of another area and hey presto, rust.