Rear Wheel Well Rust

One of the video blogs I watch said "the project you have to do before you get to the project you want to do". This is one of those. To finish up on my Miata suspension project I needed to fix the rust in the wheel wells. Had been putting that on the back burner when doing rust repair but now it had to be done.

Cut out the inner wheel well where there was rust between it and the doubler on the outside. There was zero primer or rust protection on the metal between the two. Luckily most of the outer doubler was in good shape but did have to cut off a bit and weld on a new section. Wire wheel and some paint on the doubler. Then weld on some new patches made from some sheet metal from a GT6 parts car. Keeping it Triumph original :-)

Some keen observers will notice the opening has been cut out larger to accommodate the Miata control arms. At this point I already had the suspension bits fitted for location but removed to fix this rust before I start welding it all together. Using the huge hole in the floor for access repairing the rust did make things a bit more comfortable.

Downsides Of Leaving A Project Sitting

 As I return to my project car hobby, at least for awhile, I become faced with some of the issues of leaving it sitting. Rust and corrosion on things that in my mind were still brand new but now more than 2 years old.

Opening the hood there is a bunch of corrosion and sand. It was bad weather when I moved it to the new house and the road spray carried sand into the engine bay. humm. Hadn't thought of that happening or I would have tarped the front better. Another glaring issue was the fan shroud. Didn't have a chance to paint it before the move and with the road spray and perhaps even salt, it was looking pretty poor. Luckily it cleaned up good with the wire wheel and was treated to a crude brush epoxy paint to keep that from happening again. At the moment protection is more important then pretty.