Even so, I did notice there was a drip of water clinging to the inside of the rear passenger door surround inside the car. Prised the trim off and got busy with the wire wheel on the gutter to explore more fully. At the front it was still as bad as it was, drier now and more stable by the look of things.
Above the drip of water what started as a small hole became an explosion of rust dust and a large portion of the gutter disappeared. That was a bit disheartening.
I spent some time on the driver's side gutter too, that had the same perforation to the flat surface but the majority of the vertical portion of the gutter and roof were still intact. I applied some paint to keep things stable and the hole that had appeared in the roof edge on the passenger side now has a duct tape patch for the short term.
Not too bad though, it's repairable. Our neighbouring mechanic and general car fettler had a good look and a prod and seemed confident it was all repairable just fiddly and time consuming. He also had the inspired suggestion of using seam sealer to protect and stabilise the gutters until I can get them properly repaired, it's not a long term fix but it should prevent water getting in where it's not wanted in the short term.
Foolishly, I then wanted to explore what I suspected was some filler on one of the rear door jambs. I know better than to prod but I prod anyway.
Hmm... rivets. There was a smell too, I've encountered it a couple of times on ex-farm cars. There's this bizarre habit of mixing dung with filler to get a stronger repair but in very small quantities, the smell that comes off is quite unique. Quite a lot of filler was scooped on this side.
When it was cleaned back it look like the car had been armour plated. I'm guessing there's not a lot of metal left under this patch and it will need repairing properly in the future. For now it's solid enough, I've chased some rust out and applied paint, but not before investigating a suspicious bleb on the rear arch adjacent, revealing a large shallow dent and more pin holes.
Right then, let's check the other side because there's cracks and strange circles over there. Same story, but no dung-filler this time, just unadulterated white resiny powder. I did have one large problem in that I couldn't remove the latch on this side which has had the strange star head fittings replaced with regular cross head bolts, one of which just turns and turns.
It wasn't unexpected to find repairs like this on this car but I still wasn't happy about it because it gives me that bit more work to do further down the line. It could have been a lot worse, normally when you chase out a lot of filler there's nothing underneath bar some brown lace. The other big job today was the engine removal, this could have gone better if the instructions in the Haynes book had been better than "just take out the engine" because we ended up unbolting the mounts in a really stupid way and added more time to this job than we should have.
The engine bay looks nice and solid and tidy and the car is comically light without the engine and gearbox in there. Since all the ball joints are worn out the easiest way to remove them was to saw through the posts on them to get the driveshafts out. One had been replaced at some point but the other three were all still sporting rivets and all the boots had perished or split.
The engine and gearbox is tiny and weighs very little, a welcome thing for moving it from outside to in the unit. I'll find out if this engine is any good when I get it taken apart and find out what exactly is stuck. I've had a surprising number of offers for replacement engines if need be and depending on cost it may make more sense just to replace this unit rather than rebuild it, we shall see.
That's all for today. Not sure when I'm working on the car again, contracted an absolutely killer cold just as we were getting the engine out so I'm taking things a bit easy for the rest of today and tomorrow.
