Digging in

So, I'd decided that things needed an over haul. Too keep from going around like a chicken with my head cut off I formulated a plan of attack.

 I would start stripping until i came across things that I thought were okay enough to stay, leave them, and contunue on. When finished going over the car in this manner id step back and see what I was dealing with and go from there..

At first I was logging the harness but soon stopped and just started unplugging stuff for removal. I knew that not a single thing on the engine and underdash harness were going to be salvaged in their current state.

Next I got around to the back of the trunk and pulled out the, shitty battery box thing and had a look at the fuel system set up.

The fuel tank itself was fine, it had an AN line fitting and what looked to be a new fuel pump. problem being it had no evap canister and every time I would finish for the night and close the garage door it would make the entire house smell like gasoline. the fuel lines themselves were laughable. They were barbed fitted non stainless tubing that ran underneith the car for delivery and return. these were sheet metal screwed into the floor pan at irregular intervals, some sections had 3" of droop that was a couple inches away from drive shaft and squeezed into a gap underneath the transmission mount. It then made a 45* bend at the steering spline and up to the fuel rail. Return traced the same route back to the tank but the hose was only zip tied onto the OEM single barb fuel return neck, I dont even know if the hose size was matched to the barb, it was a real shit show and clearly needed to all be changed so i pulled the fuel tank and lines off. They would've need to come off or at least be dropped anyways so i could check for rust in the space between.

Pretty soon I was down to just the metal, I knew id want to repaint the interior so I pulled the grommets out too while I was there.  In the below pics you can see where the seat was mounted though the sheet metal floor. thank god no one ever wrecked in this thing. I left the e-brake in for now since I was still rolling it in and out of my tiny garage so I could have a bit more space to work around it.

I also pulled off the USDM bumpers and fenders and hood so I could have more access and take a better look around for rust. The stock bumpers weigh like 100 lbs each and look like an overbite so there was no way those were going back on anyways. You can see a small rust hole forming around the lower drivers side window a coupe pics down. I found it when i was yanking out the window wipers and motor, debating if i'm going to run them in the car final form. I haven't decided yet.

170lbs worth of the US nanny state

 You can see in the above picture too the 'rollcage' that came welded in. At one point it was a 6pt you can see by the picture above that they plinthed some (sharp edged) boxes into the foot wells. what they didnt do was removed any of the under coating or seam sealant  before welding. Im certain that under shock stress they wouldn't have held up and 'boinged' into the leg of the driver. The good news is that before I got the car someone had done half the hard work and removed the front section for me. What was left was a weld in rear section drag race type cage, you can see where they cut and grinded down the connection points for the halo bar. The gap to the roof was a good 2-3 inches and once I'd removed the sun roof frame was going to be even more, either way it was doing nothing therefore was history. I sawzalled the remaining cage out. Add that to the list...

   A bummer was when they welded the rear pads in they didnt clean the under coating so when it was heated it just separated the metal from the tar stuff and created pockets where water or whatever could get stuck and eat away at the chassis. This means that I was at least going to have to remove these sections of under coating so I could see what was going on.

Off came the drive shaft and hard lines  (which had all of 2 bolt holding them on) You can see the brown of surface rust, this is where the pads for the cage are welded to the chassis.

rusty spots under the undercoating

I was also worried about a spot that my friend Mark pointed out. It was up in the rear drivers side well behind the cage where it connected to the trunk divider, it looked like there was something eating away at it, now the question is was it dripping from the sunroof assembly or was it rusting from the bottom up. ill find a better picture but you can see the spot on the far wheel well where the flap is pulling up.
 

  The only way to really tell was to take as much of it off as i could have. I went and got a pneumatic air chisel and sharpened down the blade so I could remove some under coating and see.

my neighbors hate me

Satisfying, but slow going

One single wheel wells worth of undercoat weighed out to 8lbs!

Post-wirewheel pass

You can see the middle hole above looks like the culprit for the rust. To get a single wheel well to this point took a few hours with the chisel and wire wheel then a couple more hours on top of that with a dental pick scraping the sealant out of the seams. All the while I was getting a tweaked back and under coating bits in my eyes. Since I need my eyes for work and couldn't afford the risk of scratching a cornea I started to think that acid dipping or media blasting the chassis was an expensive but 'worth it' solution.

  Since I knew I had to do sheet metal work for rust I had begun to toss around the idea of doing a full seam weld and gusset in addition to the cage... and if that were the case media blasting or dipping would clear all the crevasses completely of the sealant, I'm good at convincing myself of things.

more scraping

Well. Guess its all gotta come out now...

on step farther down the rabbit hole