106 Rallye Prep and Restoration

Having lurked here for some time following Davenport's small french hatchback restoration and other work I felt suitably inspired to tackle the work needed on mine. So over the last few months I've been doing my research and getting kitted up and finally started welding just before Christmas 2010. My project is also a 106 Rallye, but mine is a phase 2 model and at age 12 is about 5 years newer than most of the phase 1 models.



It's currently a trackday car, but I'd like to do some hill climbs in it in future. The reinforcements and mountings for the Safety Devices 12 point cage and some chassis repair was done last year by a friend who competes in rallying. It's the only work I've ever paid to have done on the car, but when I've looked at it closely on return I know I would have done certain things differently. So I decided that the best thing was to learn how to do further jobs in the long run.



So with the welding gear on order I stripped the car down and started looking at the bodywork. Surface rust indicated problems, but gave no indication of the state of things under the paint and behind the underseal.

Engine bay stripping in progress...


Stripping back the paint


Starting to reveal problems...


When I first bought the car in 2008 I did some tidying up of the inner wing and essentially buried some pretty ropey metal work in filler. Today it was time to reveal the true extent of the rot! On a positive note the repair job had held up pretty well in the interim



It didn't look too bad at first, but then I took the underseal off the inside of the arch and the true swiss cheese nature was revealed. Only one thing for it - it's got to be chopped out. Marked out a cut line back to the good steel, drilled/ground out the spot welds then introduced the angle grinder!



The cut out section has three elements that act as crumple zones. I decided to make a wooden former by routing and filing a wooden block, then clamping in the steel and using a ball pein hammer to shape the steel to the mould shape.





As this was just a test, I though I would shape up my test and see how close it is to the required shape. Test section mockup:



I am not sure if this is the best way to do this. My other thought was to try and find some thickwall steel tube or solid bar with the appropriate circumference to fit the former and then I can press the steel between the two in the vice.

111 views but no replies, how very rude!

Looks like a nice base car to start with and I can already see attention to detail, so I reckon this is going to be another thread to watch.

Nice work so far Cris, make sure you keep us up to speed with progress.

Nice car there, I hope you are a member of psooc if your not then join up and bring your car to pugfest.

Nice little cars,I like to see a bit of attention to detail as well so will be keeping an eye on this one.

Cheers Ross.

dalemills said:

Nice car there, I hope you are a member of psooc if your not then join up and bring your car to pugfest.

Click to expand...

Cris is a Rallye Register member, PSOOC let them in


Nice attention to detail, will keep reading as I have some similar work to French tinfoil coming soon!

thats pretty much how i created similar sections cris, but from looking at the pics your trying to form the groove using a ball end of a hammer?? you`ll find it easier if you use 1 like this:



also try using a harder wood, i used an old scrap of oak and then used a router to cut a 12mm wide groove up it..

i found that with softer wood you could still achieve the recess but the radius at either edge was too large..

Nice!
Good to see you know that you get Chinese take-aways in more substantial chassis than French hatchbacks (R5). Well worth the effort that one, Rallye worth a few bob now. Good luck with it.
Regards Iain

Thanks, yep I am a member of PSOOC and the 106RR. I first joined PSOOC back in about 2000, but my membership might have lapsed once or twice LOL.

Decided that hammer time wasn't the way forward for the creases so went to plan b. It worked nicely


Made up a cardboard template and marked up areas for improvement.


Had an abortive first attempt in metal after which I tidied up the shell a bit more, made a second cardboard template and produced this second attempt. Not completely perfect, but definitely getting there. Bit more shaping with the files tomorrow and then I better start practicing plug welds.

hello hello that looks promising!!!

when you come to tacking or welding that in place, clamp a chunk of ally or brass underneath the tack it`ll help against blowing through and make filling any gaps easier...

the 2 M8 inserts on the tops of the inner wings, did you take a reference measurement between them before you cut the rot out?? i doubt it`ll move much but its sometimes handy to check before trying to fit the slam panel and thinking BO**OCKS!!!

Project looks good! will definatley be keeping an eye on this thread!

I managed to escape to the man cave for 'just an hour' last night to return two hours later having welded in the replacement panel in the O/S inner wing. I didn't take the camera down and the photos from my phone didn't come out very well so I'll post some pics up over the weekend.

Fortunately I remembered to drill the hole for mounting the wheel arch liners before welding the repair section in. All the surplus holes in the inner wings have been filled or left out. I'm going for the minimalist look in the 'bay and none of them served any purpose for drainage or other uses.

I just need to grind down the welds and perhaps do a little more welding from the underside where the penetration wasn't as good as I'd like it... then onto the next repair. The welding went okay, I ended up cleaning the metal twice as the tack welds were being contaminated, I assume by surface rust on the steel that the wire wheel on the drill wasn't shifting. A light buzz from the 40grit flap disc and the welds were beautiful!

The POR15 paint and seam sealer has arrived so I now have everything I need to finish things off. I just need lots of time working on the car and patience, oh and the weather to warm up a bit for the paint, but given the current progress it may be May before I get to that point anyway

the 2 M8 inserts on the tops of the inner wings, did you take a reference measurement between them before you cut the rot out?? i doubt it`ll move much but its sometimes handy to check before trying to fit the slam panel and thinking BO**OCKS!!!

Click to expand...

Took me a while to work out what was meant by this, but I fitted the slam panel back on prior to welding so it should all be okay. I am going to get a couple of new bumper mounting brackets from 106parts as the ones on the car were pretty rusted up before I repaired them back in 2008.

Repair panel welded in:


Ground down and seam welds added in:


Definitely a big learning curve ahead on this welding in repairs business!

Next section for repair:

front driver side chassis rail by any chance????

Yep, this was before:


The drawn cut lines were a bit freehand Not surprised it was rusty there was about 1mm of seam sealer between the panels in places so a perfect water trap. The chassis rail is a bit pitted now it's cleaned up. I'm reluctant to chop it out. Will post up some pics next time I get down to the garage.

I'm also not 100% happy with the first panel where I had to bridge the gaps. So I may either fill weld and grind or chop out and try again with an extra bit. I'm chewing that over...

mine was f**ked so had to repair the rail too..

Just re-read your thread - you chopped a lot of metal out! Hmmm. Not sure mine is as bad as yours was (didn't see any pics of the state of it before the chop) or not, so will take some pics for comparison. What thickness is the chassis rail steel? Is it 3mm?

yeah i had to take it off the spit as i got worried after choping the side out of it hahaha

nah its no-where near that thick.. 1.5mm from memory...

davenport said:

nah its no-where near that thick.. 1.5mm from memory...

Click to expand...

Oh cock

Better chop this then if it's that thin. Need to do some more revealing too:



How did you separate the panels that are spot welded onto it from the otherside?

Also does the lip on the edge of the inner arch panel serve any purpose or was it just there to act as a place to jam seam sealant up against?

ooooh **** me that looks worse than mine now!!!

the lip you can see in those pics that kicks outwards into the wheelarch?? i`m not 100% sure what that does other than maybe stop water running down and into the holes in the side of the chassis rail???

heres waht mine resembeled after chopping:



i don`t recall that row of spotwelds though... unless i didn`t go low enough??

finished:

Work on the car continues. Last night I cut a section out of the chassis rail to confirm the thickness (SWG16 / 1.6mm) and then popped out this morning before work to get a square metre of zintec of the correct thickness. I can't help thinking that anyone who believes that their 106 is rust free just hasn't found it yet

Progress has slowed becuase I've been waiting for some bits in the post, so last night I did my trial fit of the Satchshift. Everything was marked out and then drilled in place so it's ready to fit when I've finished on the rest of the car.