Was Ralph's Tin Top, Now it's Adams after 2 other owners.

[Martin86]

Thats Great, Do you have one of the Inside where it mounts. Sorry for being a Pest!

[NylonAdmiral]

Hi Martin86, sorry I only just noticed this message. I'll take some better pictures for you when I can.

[NylonAdmiral]

I started work on the tintop the other day so thought I'd post some pictures in this thread.

Unfortunately, it appears that since the truck left SCUK ownership it hasn't been very well looked after and is going to need a bit of a second restoration.

I don't have a lot of time left to get quite a lot of work done on it so Scottie came over to give me a hand last Saturday to speed things up.

I wanted to try and get a bit of the VL done so we started cutting out the arches. Things were looking pretty good when we offered up one of Scotties 33s:

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33s2.jpg (180.28 KiB) Viewed 8125 times

At the same time, we started cutting away at the bulkhead. It was at this point that we found some problems.

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Since Ralph has had it, the footwells had got a bit rusty. Worse still, rather than cutting out the rot and repairing it properly, someone had simply welded a plate over the problem which trapped more water and causes the rust to get worse. There is a special place in hell for people that do this.

We started taking a closer look and realised that the rust had spread quite badly. I decided to cut it all out, do it once and solve the problem properly. I've pulled the body off the chassis and will cut it all out and replace both the sill and the section of the floor, then carry on and finish the VL.

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Hopefully Scottie and I will make a decent day of it again on Saturday and resolve most of the problem.

It's a bit of a bummer about the rust but it's nothing that can't be fixed and the rest of it is still pretty tidy.

[Anton]

Yikes! Not nice finding a surprise like that, but it looks like you caught it before it caused terminal damage...

[NylonAdmiral]

Yeah it's perfectly fixable, it's just frustrating that it's also perfectly preventable.

It probably would still only be a minor rust hole in the floor if some tard hadn't badly welded the plates over the top of the problem and exasperated it.

Just to be clear though, all the repairs that can be seen earlier in this build thread still look as good as they were in the pictures.

I think it looks ace with the 33s on though and once I've finished with it it'll be good for another 10 years of laning I think so at least it'll be another Zuk saved from rotting away somewhere.

[NylonAdmiral]

Oh yeah, and check out the awesome bumpstops I found whilst doing the work lol

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[Martin86]

Hi Martin86, sorry I only just noticed this message. I'll take some better pictures for you when I can.

Thanks! Good work so far

[NylonAdmiral]

Scottie and I got a bit more done yesterday.

We managed to get the majority of the rust cut out on this side and got the replacement box section sill tacked in place.

Hopefully I'll have most of the repair panels cut out and welded in by next weekend so I can flip it over and do the other side too.

I also bought a 16v Vitara to take the engine out of too so will hopefully have that done relatively soon as well.

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Rearfloor.JPG (147.22 KiB) Viewed 8069 times

FrontFootwell.JPG (89.1 KiB) Viewed 8069 times

NewSill.JPG (170.68 KiB) Viewed 8069 times

[Ladaman]

That's one hell of a sill.

I'm sure that will see the youngest person on here out.

[NylonAdmiral]

Ha ha, yeah it's tacked in place there and will be cut to the right length once all the other panels are cut out and fitted.

It looks big but it's actually smaller that the original. It's only 80mm x 80mm whereas the sill which was cut off was 130mm x 80mm.

The only difference really is that its 3mm gauge so it's quite a bit thicker but that's the only size that was available. Once the work is finished it will be almost indistinguishable from the original sill.

My plan is to just do everything once and do it right so that the truck will last a long time.