Flooded!

In the last couple of days I've found out a bit more about the history of the Stylus, including some details of restoration work carried out a couple of years back. It appeared that the car had at some point suffered some water ingress which had been allowed to sit in the footwells for a while.


This was all I needed to convince me to investigate a little further.



So out came all the seats, carpets and interior panelling. It all looked a bit horrific at first, but on closer inspection it appears to be surface rust only, and certainly hasn't weakened the chassis. I've never seen so much duct tape used. For a while I was beginning to wonder if the original builder had used any rivets. (The rivets they had used were all unevenly spaced. A bit of a mess really for a so called factory built car)

I'm glad I've done this now though. So it's a good scrape and rub down, on with the Kurust, then a couple of coats of anti rust primer and a good coat of black acrylic chassis paint (much better than hammerite which is too brittle in my opinion). It should all look much better once that's done.

Strangely I really enjoyed this evening..... Hacking away at a rusty car is quite fun really

First few changes

Since getting the car I've found several problems, fixed a few, and started a list of the others. The first problem was on arriving home. I took the car for a quick spin round the block, parked it on the drive when I got back, after which it wouldn't start. The battery was quite flat so off it came and onto charge overnight. The next day the car started again, but the voltmeter was showing it was hardly charging at all. Nice... I then noticed that a wire from alternator to engine block was melted through, so replaced that and things looked better. I did notice however that when I turned on lights or anything electrical the charge dropped below 12v..(not so good)

The next problem on a later drive was the exhaust breaking where it was routed up and over the rear wheel. I was planning to remove this so I was saved that job. For the moment I've made the exhaust a side exit just before the rear wheel but I think it would fail a noise test for a track day, so a better silencer with side exit would be the best solution.

Finally I changed the tiny steering wheel for a 300mm wheel which gives much better feel. That's better.