Lancia Beta Spyder (77 or 78)

[lbcoupe76]

That looks awsome, top job

[hongkongphooey]

Thanks for saying so.

[lanciamad]

Wish I could be bothered to clean and paint everything as I went along, looking good
Will it be making Beta meet/Retro rides? I no you can only drive one car at one time.

[Lancia Beta 2000]

What a wonderful job!! 

[falcoron]

Doing a great job there, brings me back a few years when i did this for a living. hard dirty work that never seems to end. You are doing the right thing cleaning and painting as you go. Bits get lost easily if you dont.
One point i would like to make to everyone who is doing this, ( i found out the hard way many moons ago)
When chopping and welding so much of the floor pans and panels it is wise to make a temp strut for the door gap one you take the doors off the body (especially a targa roofed car) as it can  can move quite a bit, you wont know until you refit the doors and you will be too late then. Im sure you will be fine as you were doing small areas at a time. But do check and strut up if you are doing a restoration.
Another tip if you dont mind. There is a wheel that 3m make that is fantastic for cleaning up rust, underseal, seam sealer etc. Its a clean and stip wheel and its brilliant. Great for the awkward bits and wont carch and split like a sanding disc can, flexible to get right into the grooves and ridges etc.
This is the wheel, you need the middle arbour as well

this is what it does very well
fits on a drill,

this is the area i will tackle for this demo. Not rotting i know but just to show how this works.


This is what it does for the area and for getting old cracked sealer out.


once really clean ( and i do mean clean to keep crap away) you need to protect with a chemical zinc coating. Do this bofore the damp gets at it and compromises the area.This stuff is very good and is only for a light protection coat. and always BEFORE you seam seal so you have prtection under the sealer. A thing most manufacturers never did with disasterous results.

It will look like this once coated with 2 light coats.

Use an acrylic or polyeurathane sealer like this or any good make. These are over paintable and always remain flexable and have excellent adhesion properties

You are now ready to prime with a good 2 pack acrylic filler primer. You can then finish paint or waxoyl.

Hope this helps and remember the cleaner you get the steel the longer the crap stays away.
Ron

[HFStuart]

Very effective in an angle grinder too. Cruicially they don't produce much heat either so the risk of panel damage is less.

It still took hours to get the inner wings free of rust though - too many nooks and cranies !

Stuart

[falcoron]

So true, its a long process but a sanding disc will put tons of metal dust into the air and it will settle all over the car. This alone can, if not cleaned up properly start the whole oxidisation of the rest of the car. You can also introduce this dust into the paint as you go and that will always find a way through, its like weeds in a garden.
 clean, clean then clean again thats the secret. use the best products you can. I have a good knowledge of corrosion prevention coatings so please use me if you need advice,
ron

[hongkongphooey]

Thanks for the comments and the advice people.

Hopefully i'll be back on this soon....i've moved house and got the workshop sorted.Just need to get a few more curtains put up and my other too oldies mot'd,then it's full steam ahead!

[Paul TC]

 

Superb job, only just noticed these posts and it's given me a boost to do a bit more to my long term Spider project.

Keep up the good work and posts, love it.

Cheers


Paul

[Duncan23]

I discovered some very sad news on retro rides - HKP was killed in a crash in his Celica.  :'(
http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=98906

You can see the finished car on page 7 here:
http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=readersrides&action=display&thread=71914&page=7
Never met him, but what talent he had...  :'(

[HFStuart]

Oh crap. I did meet him to exchage some trim parts.

Really nice guy and a suitably eccentric enthusiast.

[Duncan23]

His cars are featured in Tetro Cars magazine this month. The article is more about the man than the cars, but it is good, and thrre are some pictures of the finished Spider...

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[Pee Vee]

I never met Simon and only exchanged the briefest of e-mails with him but I feel a kinship to him working on basically the same project; trying to bring a very rusty Spyder back from oblivion. Looking at Simon's pictures I didn't feel so alone.

It's like I am walking in his footsteps especially on the floors. See below:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.115132145180952.15361.100000525018141&type=3&l=ed4893071f
Hope mine turns out as nice as his did.

[peteracs]

Hi Paul

I thought mine had a lot of rust until I saw your photos, can honestly say mine was pretty good in comparison. You are a brave man to have all that work done. Did you do the work yourself?

Peter

[Pee Vee]

Thanks, Peter. Are there any pictures of your car on the www?

Not sure that I'm brave. Foolhardy, perhaps. No one in their right mind would have gone to the extent I did as these cars are very inexpensive here in the US. You could probably buy the best one in the country for under 5000 pounds. That is why I felt a comfort in seeing Simon's pictures. We obviously both had the same impared judgement. 

I have done almost all of the work on my own. I did send the quarter panels, doors and fendders to someone to be media blasted and then primed. I'm sure I'll have someone else paint it too. And, since I don't know how to sew, there is a professional trimmer in my future.

[Duncan23]

Wow, those are good pics of a rusty Spider. I'm another member of that club - I've not yet taken a grinder to the floor, but I have taught myself to weld!:)

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[peteracs]

Thanks, Peter. Are there any pictures of your car on the www?

Not sure that I'm brave. Foolhardy, perhaps. No one in their right mind would have gone to the extent I did as these cars are very inexpensive here in the US. You could probably buy the best one in the country for under 5000 pounds. That is why I felt a comfort in seeing Simon's pictures. We obviously both had the same impared judgement. 

I have done almost all of the work on my own. I did send the quarter panels, doors and fendders to someone to be media blasted and then primed. I'm sure I'll have someone else paint it too. And, since I don't know how to sew, there is a professional trimmer in my future.

This is my forum post on the LMC site, not much progress since then sadly, but hope to complete this year.

http://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=3359.0

Peter

[rossocorsa]

very interesting thread the work looks really good I think you are lucky to have found somone that is working to that standard, one observation if you haven't done it I would recommend sourcing a set of wheelarch liners from a later car the ones from the last cars are best these protect all that inner arch area from damage and are the main reason that later cars rarely suffer with rot  around the front strut mounts