Time to give it up

Today began with removing the tar from the inboard section of the driver's side floor. As I went along and  exposed more of the damaged areas I realized that the second floor removed last week was the original floor. BMW used two layers here. What looked like good floor was the lower, external portion. Also alarming was the extent of rust along the top of the U-channel that runs under the floor. The damage was so bad I could see how it could contribute any strength.


While I worked I began to plan how I would repair those large holes. Obviously these would require welding. Then I spotted something along the lower edge of the smalled hole roughly in line with the gear shift. I lifted the car and looked underneath, and to my dismay I could see that this was the rear transmission mounting bracket, a U-channel welded to the floor. With so much rust damage this mount has lost its integrity, and repairing it would require some advanced sheet metal shaping and skilled welding. All this while retaining the alignment of the mounting point. Not easy.

Then I spotted more trouble. A big rust-through on the underneath floor in the area of the rear seat floor. And the tell-tale pattern of pop-rivets, indicating another cheap patch job on the rear floor. I could just make out that the floor here was also a double section, and that it served as the mounting point for the rubber drive shaft bushing. In other words, a second structural area, a load bearing point.

Already these discoveries were serious, but then I added up what I had found in recent weeks. Recall that after finishing the nose I thought the only big deal remaining were the door skins. While preparing the doors for re-skinning I found damage along the top edges, tricky to repair. Extensive rust in the kink panels, enough to make me question their ability to hold up the doors. Poorly done repairs to both fender wells. Heavy rust around the heater mount. Several poor quality repairs to the floors. Even when the body is done, I will need to redo the interior, including all of the wood. Add it all up and it comes to more than I want to take on, given how long it has taken me to get to this point. To top it off, the Lotus needs a lot of work, and has been ignored while I concentrated on the E9.

For all these reasons I have decided to abandon this project. This car has had a hard life, made worse by poor quality repairs that concealed the damage rather than repair it. Enough is enough. Time to move on.