He's in there somewhere.

Seeing shiny paint on the rear wing where it used to be embarrassingly rusty got me thinking about other rusty areas. The front panel on Murf has been scarred by innumerable stonechips and corrosion that was started when I drilled holes for a bonnet safety-catch and spotlights.

It's the original front panel and I want to keep it that way. So I sanded down to bare steel where needed and then etched away all the rust pitting and coated with epoxy primer followed by cellulose.

It looks much better now although the darker shade of 419 Blu Turchese jars a little against my previous colour mix. Maybe it's faded?

I took the image to show a detail that I have frequently mentioned before. Ignoring the many extra holes I have made, you may see four tiny pilot holes that were intended for the small, Italian plates. Despite being an "F" for which all the suppliers suggest a front panel with a round hole under the winged badge, my car has the indent for the "L" motif, which is small enough to be hidden by the badge. The four, bigger mounting holes for that badge are obviously also present.

fiat500 said:

Seeing shiny paint on the rear wing where it used to be embarrassingly rusty got me thinking about other rusty areas. The front panel on Murf has been scarred by innumerable stonechips and corrosion that was started when I drilled holes for a bonnet safety-catch and spotlights.

It's the original front panel and I want to keep it that way. So I sanded down to bare steel where needed and then etched away all the rust pitting and coated with epoxy primer followed by cellulose.

It looks much better now although the darker shade of 419 Blu Turchese jars a little against my previous colour mix. Maybe it's faded?

I took the image to show a detail that I have frequently mentioned before. Ignoring the many extra holes I have made, you may see four tiny pilot holes that were intended for the small, Italian plates. Despite being an "F" for which all the suppliers suggest a front panel with a round hole under the winged badge, my car has the indent for the "L" motif, which is small enough to be hidden by the badge. The four, bigger mounting holes for that badge are obviously also present.

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Keep going Peter, eventually Murph will have a re spray!!!!
Ian.

Bleeding Knuckles said:

Keep going Peter, eventually Murph will have a re spray!!!!
Ian.

Click to expand...

I have kept going but at this rate he will get a bit more than a patch by patch respray.....it's going to be a rebuild by installment. In the latter stages of painting the front panel I had noticed, and then chose to ignore a small area of the bottom of the spare wheel-well that had the texture and strength of a sausage-roll. I couldn't bear the worry of what it might entail and decided that for the "small" input of effort it would be worth welding it up whilst I'm at it. As always, the small area proved to be bigger...much bigger than anticipated (I should have known better).

I have had to remove almost exactly the same area of steel that I fabricated and replaced fourteen years ago; that is the entire bottom of the wheel-well with the flange that faces the bulkhead panel. That panel under the fuel tank was replaced previously, but it has also lost the bottom 75mm to corrosion, Late today I even spotted tell-tale signs in the flat, central area above the brake master-cylinder.

Murph has had more time parked up in the garage over the last three years and I can't help thinking that the lack of regular airing has contributed to the rust. But I also think that such close replication of the corrosion that originally "killed" him is just a symptom of the fact that, as we all know, Fiat didn't place longevity high on their priority list for the 500. Despite that, idiots like me will continue to road test until destruction, until my own personal bodywork starts to let me down.

Big nasty hole above master cylinder.



He was getting there...just awaiting new headlamps. I recently noticed that the number plate was put on off-centre 54 years ago......it's the original.



Big, big hole.



Looking down at my wellie.



I had to make the replacement in two sections so that it would fit in my metal-folder. Then a bit of a tweak with a hammer and dolly to get the curve.

Have I ever mentioned "Zinger"
it is a zinc based primer bit like Galvafroid...
the difference is you can treat it like a normal base primer and paint over it with any normal car paints....

The company are so confident that for professionals who are certified to apply it they can give a 5 year anti corosion warranty, Zinger themselves can provide a 20 year warranty.....
I have seen a couple of companies that do full bare metal resprays that use it as their base primer!!

It's not cheap.. I have a few tins and tried it on a few metal bits that seem to be holding up well having been outside for 2 years

I would be getting close to my 20 year guarantee in any case, and there's always a catch with claiming on warranties. If you have to claim, you already have the problem you were hoping to avoid.
The car was painted with epoxy primer on the bodywork and with POR-15 underneath. It was thoroughly Waxoyled and after a while it also got coats of Waxoyl underseal.
It rusted because I used it in all weathers at all times of the years for ten years and I think it was about 40,000 miles. By 1960's standards it hasn't done badly. The basic construction is impossible to completely protect against corrostion. There are too many welded, flanged joints in the splash zone.

I will be trying a bit harder this time; maybe with weld-through primer and with more reluctance to go out in bad weather.

If it does another twenty years it will probably outlast me.

I know there is one company that blast the underside of 4x4 and trucks used by farmers, coat it with Zinger and then some sort of Bed Liner coating and they were getting rave reviews..

I have used it wher ethe galvanizing has been rubbed off on my big trailer... and it seems to hold up well...
It is also supposed to be self healing when it gets minor scratches....
I would think a top coat would be advised....
the classic car company I read about were in Ireland, they blasted the shells, repaired them then fully coated them with Zinger, they said it was almost as good as modern day rust preventative coatings applied to new cars...

The wheel-well and front panel are now welded-up, epoxy-primed stone-chipped and painted. I've wiped Waxoyl on the headlamp recesses and still have to spray wax inside and outside. It should be good for, let's say 15 years, by which time I'll be almost 80 and paying someone else to renew things.
Although it was done in sections, there's some good welding in there....much better than my original from 14 years ago. I'm pleased to still have kept most of the 54 year old front end intact.

It was so nice to have the car back together again and to take a little run with him. But rust waits for no man, and a little poking and scraping was required in a small hole spotted during the rear wheel arch work. It's under the passenger seat where it is supported by a little stub of "U" channel. It looks nasty here, but is straightforward in comparison with the other work.
I'm away for a week, but on my return I'm looking forward to this little challenge.

Did I say my last challenge was "straightforward"?
The "small hole" proved to be a big void. Some people might have replaced the entire half of the floor and would more usually have replaced the corrosion with one, large patch. I'm an oddity, so I chose to cut back to good metal wherever it existed and the resulting, complex areas were then replaced with sections butt-welded together. This meant I had to make a new U-channel under the seat and weld through the runner from the top.
About one third of the floor edge was rotten and that had taken the matching lower half of the sill with it. I made a new section and butt-welded it in. The slow method that is recommended to reduce distortion leads to an untidy weld, but ground down carefully it's an excellent join.
This means that the entire sill-bottom has been replaced in three stages over the last couple of years. It's all been done more slowly and meticulously than previous repairs and will have better protection than before.
For people who've restored their car and miss the thrill of welding, this gives you hope that there's always going to be something to look forward to with a Fiat 500.

you can't beat a nice bit of butt weld patching

Murf, at last pictured in front of a house that is worthy of his status.
He's probably done the least number of annual miles since returning to the road because of running repairs leaving him on axle stands for weeks on end. But he still started first time and ew e did on a fifty+ mile round trip for work because my modern 500 is stuck with the MOT man.
Now I'm wondering if I should start on another area of concern, being the bottoms of the doors where the filler is bubbling up?

After my concern about the door bottoms mentioned previously I have got stuck in to repairing the driver's side. Door bottom repair panels were available ten years ago, but they didn't fit well. At that time I deemed that this door only needed a patch-panel at the bottom curved corner where it meets the shut-panel and some general de-rusting at the bottom. A lot of unevenness ended up hidden under bodyfiller. But this skimping ignored some corrosion in the frame and skin that matured over time to mean that I have had to make new bottom corners for the inner frame and replace about half of the return lip where the doorskin is attached. Too late to photograph that as I have now primed the new steel and made a new doorskin bottom from three, very precisely sculpted pieces ready to butt-weld in place. It has been handy that I recently acquired an unused, original passenger door that has been used to make good patterns. This has taken ages, and at this point, where I have everything clamped ready for welding, I reckon that I've spent about twelve hours on it.

I will tack the repairs in place and then remove the door for welding on a horizontal plane. That should be fun to achieve without causing any distortion in the panel.

Having been down on the floor with this, I can now see that the front of the sill where it goes under the rusty bottom of the wing has problems too. I already knew that the top layer of steel that covers the door shut section of the "A"-pillar was pushing ot corrosion, and that will be my next target. That should make for some very unpleasant photos.

Test fitting

Murph is putting you through your paces at the moment! Door repair looks tidy, hopefully the door shut repair is the last of the rust in this round of repairs and it doesn’t go any deeper!

Goldnrust said:

Murph is putting you through your paces at the moment! Door repair looks tidy, hopefully the door shut repair is the last of the rust in this round of repairs and it doesn’t go any deeper!

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It's Fiat's way of telling me not to use the car all-year-round in Scotland and to opt out of doing things such as driving through fords.
I'm also culpable for cutting corners on some of these areas when I first restored the car. I think old age has made me more able to do things slowly and methodically; I also have some better equipment and techniques. The main thing is to have him up and running before next Spring.

I think it ois partly due to being more patient....
We have all rushed things to get something done, but know in the back of our minds we have cut corners..
I all teh work I have done as p[art of my living I adopted teh mantra "Do it once do it right" it may take longer but hjopefully it will be a long time before you have to return to things again....

Currently helping a mate make his Transit more presentable and last a fair few more years.... (God the modern ones RUST!!)
He does not like that I have made him get underneath and attack all the rust scabs with a cup wheel and flap disk, then zinc primer put on some cheap top coat then shultz it.. the underneath will look p[erfect (well as perfect as it could) now his next task is to remove all the interior lining vac out all the spaces and he will be waxoiling all the ecavities...
He actually said... I wish i had done a bit of this every year it would not be so bad....
and I said yes and you should have done all of this in the Summer when I told you as now we are burning power keeping teh cold and damp at bay!!

Bigvtwin996 said:

I think it ois partly due to being more patient....
We have all rushed things to get something done, but know in the back of our minds we have cut corners..
I all teh work I have done as p[art of my living I adopted teh mantra "Do it once do it right" it may take longer but hjopefully it will be a long time before you have to return to things again....

Currently helping a mate make his Transit more presentable and last a fair few more years.... (God the modern ones RUST!!)
He does not like that I have made him get underneath and attack all the rust scabs with a cup wheel and flap disk, then zinc primer put on some cheap top coat then shultz it.. the underneath will look p[erfect (well as perfect as it could) now his next task is to remove all the interior lining vac out all the spaces and he will be waxoiling all the ecavities...
He actually said... I wish i had done a bit of this every year it would not be so bad....
and I said yes and you should have done all of this in the Summer when I told you as now we are burning power keeping teh cold and damp at bay!!

Click to expand...

I've found that Waxoyl is great at keeping rust away from areas that aren't yet rusty or where you have removed every scrap of scale-rust and completely removed the rust from any remaining pits by using phosphoric acid treatment. But the best preserved parts of my car are the areas where I did all that and then used epoxy primer.

"Doing a bit every year" is what Ive bee up to at the recently. Looking at some videos of "professional" Fiat 500 restorations in Italy and some madmen in Poland who do the same for the Fiat 126 and BIS!, at 54 years old, my car's bodyshell is comparatively in very good and unmolested condition. The bits that I am repairing are areas that I've restored previously, and the rot hasn't spread any further than it had originally.

Clean welding is proving much easier to achieve this time round. This is partly through experience leading to better technique, maybe partly because I bought a new MIG torch and have taken to using "Hobbyweld" gas rather than "BOC", and perhaps because I've been using Italian steel from old van doors; It's a good thickness...maybe a true 20 gauge.,

Fortunately, I get a lot of satisfaction from repairing metalwork, so once I've taken the deep breath and got the angle-grinder out, doing the repairs is quite enjoyable.

you should look up Zinger paint which is what I use now...
I have a 8x4 trailer and the exposed metal; was flap wheel'd and painted with just Zinger.... still looks good...

Bigvtwin996 said:

you should look up Zinger paint which is what I use now...
I have a 8x4 trailer and the exposed metal; was flap wheel'd and painted with just Zinger.... still looks good...

Click to expand...

I'll try that.
I'm taking a break after starting the welding of the door. Firstly, I looked for places where the two skins of steel met on a perfectly level plane and marked red dots for the first welds. Each weld was immediately afterwards quenched with compressed air.




Gradually, there were more places that came level, although a few places needed gentle persuasion by wedgiing the Stanley blade in.





The original doorskin is a fraction thinner than the repair and despite great care there were a few slight mishaps where too much heat went in. I now have the door off the car and after I've opened out a few of the welding gaps that have been shrunk together too closely, I'll be able to finish the welding.

This door is really stretching me. I'm able to microfocus in a way that I didn't when I was rushing to get the car on the road back starting in 2009.
Talking of stretching, despite my care care and slow welding I still got a significant shrinkage dip in the centre of the repair panel. It took a lot of hammering at the weld-line to bring it back to a reasonable contour. The activity broke off a big chunk of skimmed filler....a benefit really!



I still have to tack the skin to the frame and finish off where the skin is lipped round the frame. Although I've ground back the welds, the approximately 1mm gap I left has allowed excellent penetration and strength.




There is some damege to the door-frame that was only accessible with the door removed....yuck!



Cleaned up it doesn't seem so daunting. I'm etching off all the remaining rust with phosphoric and will prime before fitting replacement sections.



To end this posting and to cheer this up, an image that shows what this car looked like when it was born.