You obviously have no experience of this. Lancia suffered from rust no worse than other cars at the time. Their reputation was a construct of the tabloids.

Ill tell that to my fabricator mate who is currently working on a monte for a customer and has been going at it for months now and reckons it hs more new steel in than old, im sure it will mke him feel better :-)

I won't post the picture I prepared again for fear of being an attention whore :-) but look at the start of the All I Want for Christmas thread

Don't be coy WCA! go for it!

Back in the 70,S Fiat did a deal with the General Tito resulting in the Yogo Zastiva (Fiat 500) amongst others part payment was in steel. The steel was used by the Italian car industry but it was a lower grade than it should have been. I first saw the result of this in 1985 a 1984 Alfa saloon with rust holes starting to appear!

Lol. Montes are pretty little cars aren't they. I had a couple and they had great handling.
But it'll be almost 40 year old now so you have to expect rust on a car of that era. I maintain that all cars from that time suffered badly - how many good condition Escort Mk1s, Marinas, Cortinas, or even BMWs or NSUs (became Audi) are there left without major restoration?

The story about steel is an interesting one (though it was a deal with Lada rather than Yugo). In the 70s a friend worked in the steel industry and told me how Volvo and SAAB (which had better reputations for corrosion resistance than most) bough thinner but otherwise similar quality steel to Brutish manufacturers but their method used better preparation and higher quality paint than others.
In your Alfa story, they must have prepared the car for painting with an oily rag.

OK, Italians weren't great in the late 60s and 70s but others weren't much better either !
At least they've sorted it now

Fiat licensed the 124 to Lada in 1966 and the 127 to Yugo in 1978. My 1975 Alfa Sud fared significantly better than a workmates Beta (the car that caused Lancia to pull out of UK) but the daily mirror and that's life were certainly guilty of very poor reporting practices.

I remember all the flack that Lancia had back then, as did Skoda. I worked in a Ford accident repair centre in 1991 and was amazed how many rear quarter panels and front wings we changed on 2 year old fiesta and escorts due to perforation corrosion. Most of it was due to poor assembly processes during shell construction. Zinc coatings were brought in to eliminate this on the faces that came together and were spot welded.

I also ran my own shop for nearly twenty years and saw plenty more corrosion issues on Mercedes, where complete floor pans were replaced and we are talking about cars still in warranty. In 1998 I had a load of factory guys call from Volkswagen to look at issues on LT35 panel vans, they were shocking.

Poor quality steel is not so much of an issue these days, but was prevalent in aftermarket non genuine parts, where salt tests proved they were way sub standard.

Landrovers are pretty poor too for corrosion - go look at a defender around its lower door area where the aluminium skin is being corroded by its steel door frame. These have been sorted by galvanised frames, but it took years before being addressed.

That's a good insight Mark.
No wonder we're keen for Tribute to cover our cars in fibreglass!

Rust is allways an issue, Datsun became Nissan to overcome their reputation for rust, Landrovers I've owned two, alluminium and steel causes corrosion due to disimeller meterials / chemical reaction and water, from college memory there were cars in the 60's that used a positive (12v) earth through the chassis and these suffered more corrosion.

My 2002 LR Defender is as rotten as a bowl of 10 day old Saskatchewan Lentils. Even these guys couldnt save it eh, http://www.krown.com/contact-us

Even the mighty Porsche had terrible corrosion problems in the seventies with a number of water traps built into the body design of the 911.

They tried to address this by galvanising only the panels that were affected, which made the problem ten times worse due to the above mentioned dissimilar metal galvanic corrosion. It was only when they started galvanising the whole caboodle that they got it sorted.

I worked for british steel around that time. Some plants produced good quality steel but the stuff destined for car panels was driven by cost and had high impurity levels.

An example of quality was my mid 50s land rover, you could scrape the paint off after 50 years and the steel was still shining, it had less rust than my 8 year old defender.

More work on the SWB front end. Power steering cooler will need replacing with something more compact, as space is an issue with the new from end panels.

http://i39.tinypic.com/k2fek0.jpg

http://i43.tinypic.com/s3hhj9.jpg

http://i39.tinypic.com/2eyw9bs.jpg

http://i39.tinypic.com/5nvxon.jpg


Just another day in the office:

http://i40.tinypic.com/2qx40oy.jpg

X77 GTO.....with an mgb rear screen....?
Which one's that then...!!??
And the Daytona rep at the back...You gonna do one of those tooo...??!!

OOOOOOoo, thats interesting, Daytona in the back ground, looking forward to see how that one progresses, much loved car :)

Ollie MGB rear screens are the way forward! or is that backwards:nod: Geoff.

I'd be wary of using the SWB model on the pillar drill as a template because their proportions are altered from the real car to suit their smaller size. Unless you're going to stamp Mattel underneath too :-)

Cris's place looks like a real Alladins cave of interesting things.

As for the Daytona in the background. Will it be Z3 based ? I have seen an MX5 based Daytona but it just didn't have the right "looks"

Looking forward to see the next update.