Well another week down and a bit further along, First Arch fitted and bogged.

 Second arch I have trimmed down the excess steel in the tubbing and screwed the Arch into place to see how it fits.

 I have made more progress on the floor pan including more cleaning and repairing the old bolt holes and coating the finished area with an epoxy spray to assist in combating rust will continue as time allows tomorrow Sunday and on Monday as it is a public holiday here in Auckland so I don't need to go to work.

Ok it is Monday here in NZ. I had a few things to do around the house and over at my mothers place after I had finished I went out to the garage to continue. I started to clean off the paint and old bog from around the R/H rear wheel arch and I discovered yet more rust under trhe old bog and fibreglass matting BUGGER just as i thought I was getting to the better part of the car some of the filler was up to about 10mm thick

The start of the clean up

What I found around the rear tail light

Just some of the bog out of the rear corner

and the top  of the rear corner

TIME FOR A LITTLE STORY

 On another front the Alfa Romeo I own is a 2001 147 We absolutley love driving this car however as is fairly normal with Alfas it has had an electrical issue since Day 1. It has always seemed to absolutely eat batteries we have replaced batteries ( too many to count) Alternator (twice) and in a last gasp effort we replaced the Body Computer. I have realised on the last couple of batteries that the dash lights were dim on startup and Brightened up when the car reved to about 2600 rpm. The Auto sparky seemed to think that it was in the computer system and as he could read fault codes but not do software checks we took it back to the Alfa agent and they found a (I hope) unique problem. Luigi the Italian sparky at the factory left an entire wire out of the loom not disconected but MISSING Completely. It ran from the alternator to the body computer to the dash and back so that when the car was started the signal from the computer to the alternator telling it to charge couldn't go anywhere until a second circut came alive at 2600, NOW thats What I call Italians at work. Any one got any weird and wonderful stories that can top that one.
Vent over 10 years of fustration finally fixed
Peter  

This week I managed to purchase a 6 dial instrument panel for a reasonable price (thanks trademe.co.nz).

I  also started to have a look at the under side of the floor pan and much to my surprise all the underseal is coming off easily. So instead of getting the car sodablasted I might save some cash and strip the seal off myself ( I know I am nuts) but from what I have done so far the floor pan is in better condition than the previous photos reveal as you will see in the new photos ( these will go up when I have taken them). I do have a bit of work ahead of me but it is achievable and I will end up with a floor pan that is not too badly damaged.

Finally I have located an area an area that is not rotten. all I used was some elbow grease and a scraper and then gave it a good wipe over with some thinners. There are some areas that will be harder to clean off and for these areas ( mainly where the exhaust has baked the seal on) i will use a product called Tergostrip which is a commercial grade paint stripper. I got it from my local panelbeater suppliers. The shiny areas are repairs that I have cleaned up all of them are old bolt holes

Oh by the way I have now passed 1200 views so thank you for taking the time to look 

I was able to get a bit more done this weekend including cutting out and tubbing the R/H rear wheelarch and started to fit the L/H rear bubble arch. I decided to take the area where the arch will fit back to bare steel to get as good a fit as possible and found some more rust and quite a bit of bog so I am going to clean the whole rear quater panel back to steel and start again. Primer on the bare steel as most of the flaws in the bog is from surface rust under the old bog a coat of POR 15 and a light sand should give a good rust free base and will hopefully slow down any rust coming back. Then bond the bubble arch to the steel and reform the Bog from there. I am also extending the Tubbing out to the Arch to give less area for dirt and road grime to hide

 R/H wheelarch cut out and tub fitted and tacked into place

L/H wheel arch finished from here I cleaned up the inner arch and primed the whole area with POR 15

 The rear quater panel with the bog removed

The L/H wheel arch primed and ready for the bubble arch.I have pre drilled the holes for the Bubble arch so before it is permanently fitted the holes got a good coat of primer

The rear quater panel all primed and pre drilled ready for the arch to be fitted

January 2011

Happy New Year everyone
According to my stats i have had nearly 900 visits to my blog so Thank you for visiting. Since my last post we have had a fantastic vacation on the cruise ship Diamond Princess visiting Sydney Australia Melbourne Hobart in Tasmania some of the sounds in the southern area of New Zealand Dunedin Christchurch Tauranga and finally getting off in Auckland. On the escort front I have finished the L/H sill put the final patch in the A pillar and started to cut out the rust around the top of the bulkhead on the L/H side. So it is progressing slowly.

the rust all but cut out in the bulk head

the final patch in the L/H A pillar

these 2 show the finished sill

Another of the bulkhead showing hom much i had to cut out till I finally found the extent of the rust