With the chassis and drivetrain all in place, I return to the biggest job, the body repairs and paint.
All cars over 50 years old will have rust in them. The Vicki, when we found it, was a good example of a solid, "rust free" car, in that it didn't have obvious rust holes in it that would make it too costly to repair. The thing with rust is that it is like an iceberg. You only see 10% of it. The other 90% is beneath the paint. Once the body is sandblasted, all the rust damage is exposed, and when I first saw it, I was quite pleased at the lack of rust. I expected to see a lot more.
Basically, moisture goes where gravity pulls it, and the Vicki has a very mild case of rust in all of the usual four places:
• At the bottoms of the front fenders.
• In the "rockers" (the panels at the bottoms of the door openings)
• The rear quarters (the rear wheel arches).
• The "tail pan" (the panel underneath the boot).
In most cars, all the steel underneath the stainless molding strips will rust out eventually, but the Vicki is free of this, which confirms that it spent most of its time in a dry state. It has a lot of stainless on it. I didn't include the floor, though it was completely rusted out, but that is a good thing, because it kept the rust damage to the floor rather than the rest of the car. Floors are easy, and it's mostly done now anyway.
The good news is that there are "Rust Repair" panels available in the USA that will return all the rusted areas on the Vicki to new steel. The alternative is to manufacture the rusted out sections using panel steel, an English Wheel and various body-forming tools. On the advice of friends who were experts in this business, we went ahead and bought the rust repair panels rather than asking the panel beaters to manufacture the bits and pieces, which takes time and effort and skill.
Replacing the rusted areas with rust repair panels also replaces lots of old steel in the surrounding areas. The rear quarters are a good example of this. Only the wheel arches are rusted out, but the rear quarters go half way up the body. If you look at the left side quarter panels of the Vicki, you will notice that there is a lot of bog. In that area around the bit that was cut out, you can see how thick the bog once was. This tells me that there is something more serious going on under there, maybe major ripples, rust or panel damage. Easy enough for a panel beater to repair, but, again, with time and effort.
We chose a panel shop in Albury to do the body and paint. We could not get anyone local, so the job goes to Fine Line Auto Repair. While I wait for the rust repair panels to arrive, however, I need to repair the floor and firewall (again, with help from Danny Fort) and have that all finished by the time the rust repair panels are ready to be fitted.
Fast forward a couple of years. We are now at the beginning of 2014, and the car is back in our garage, all painted in PPG candy "Cherry Bomb." The delay was caused by the extensive rust that we didn't see. Even though we supplied every rust repair panel available ftrom EMS, the inner panels were all cancerous, and had to be manufactured. A big job, and all credit to Danny Fitz, who did a spectacular job.
So now comes the assembly phase. Air con fitted and plumbed. Dash fitted, gauges installed. The dash itself is a 56 Mainline Ute dash, with the bit that had the speedo filled. The centre of the dash has white dolphin gauges in a polished aluminium frame, and that's all ther bling there is apart from the small round air con vents.
The door and quarter glass goes in next, using the NuRelics electric window conversion. I have to admit, it took a lot of work top get them to fit, and several conversations with NuRelics. I ended up making them fit with some modifications.
The front vent window was a challenge. I know lots of people with similar Cussos and Vickis, and all of them say they have leaky and noisy vent wiindows. They are difficult to seal. I have all new seals and rubbers, and there's videos on YouTube in restoring them, but what a pain in the ahrse!
So I took the vent windows to a local auto glass guy, and he fixed the glass in the frame.
Problem solved, and it looks very neat and tidy. With air con, who needs vent windows!
From this point on, it's just a case of polishing the stainless moulds and fitting them, chrome plating the bumpers (again, at Albury, the local chrome shop doesn't have a big enough tank), dummy fitting the connie kit to re-locate the fuel pump, and hundreds of other little jobs.
It's all coming together, albeit slowly.
