Some seat cleaning and several things...

This weekend I could spend some time with the car.

I fitted new rubber buffers on both the bonnet and the boot, with a new rubber seal for the boot. Original buffers where shot with very rusted screws which in some cases I had to cut off with the dremel cutting disks. Now I have to figure out what to do as the boot lid is about 6mm above it´s normal flush position with the rest of the car body

The seat are the original ones trimmed with the original blue vinyl and silver piping. The vinyl is in superb condition considering it has almost 50 years, with no rips. But I think it has never been cleaned so it was the moment. I removed the pilots seat, removing below the flow the 2 big nuts that hold the seat rails. After you have to move the seat to the front to unveil the 2 rear screws that screw to 2 captive nut soldered on the lower part of the floor. Some wd-40  always help to remove the nuts and screws because as the are exposed to the underside if the car, they are always rusted and difficult to remove.
After removing the carpet, I could verify the floor is solid and the paint is there. Nearly no rust was present, just a few tiny spots, so I was lucky.

Seat rails where originally zinc plates, and the lower part wad some surface rust. As I have no option for a new zinc coat, I just sanded all the surface to remove the rust, and paint it black matt. Once dry, I just sanded the matching surfaces of the upper and lower rails where they will slide. Some grease was applied once installed again, with all new bolts and nuts.

The seat it self was cleaned with APC (All Purpose Cleaner) that my good mate JL gave me some time ago to clean the golf mk1 cabriolet white roof, and it really makes the difference! After soaking the APC, I would just scrub lightly and leave it there for a few minutes so it helps to solve the dirt. Then with a scrubbing pad, I cleaned all the surface and then removed with a clean rack.  The process was made twice on each section. Result was a fresh and clean seat, that slides over its rail very smoothly.

I also removed all the four metal finisher that surround the grill, drilling the rivets. The metal parts are very matt and dirty, with some dents that will need to be removed. I will polish them to a shiny condition. The metal part that covers the lower front part of the bonnet, was a nightmare as I could see that nothing good was hiding below….

As you can see a lot of dirt was trapped between the bonnet sheet and the metal finisher, so corrosion has made it´s work….. The front side of the bonnet is a very common part for corrosion as water gets trapped there. British Heritage sells new replacement bonnets (must cost a fortune to send it to Spain…) and repair sections for the front part of the bonnet are available. A repair section would need to be carefully soldered in place, which now is out of my scope. So as corrosion looks to be more on the surface, and just a small spot has a corrosion hole but nothing structural, I will repair it my self. Once done I will post the procedure I used. 

Next week end I would like to remove the front bumper, and remove all the metal parts that hold it to fit sand blast it and paint it. The front bumper looks tatty, but I will try to clean it first with some steel wool and wd40 to see if I can restore it to a good condition before spending hundreds of eur re-chroming it….