Bad pic of the floorpan as it stands right now (with a lot of detritus and parts sitting on it!).
Handbrake installed with new cables, front beam on awaiting seals and front disc brake kit, and gearbox cradle attached (with shiny new bugpack gearbox front mount). Brake hardlines are also in the process of being attached. New master cylinder has arrived as well as lots of new seals, bushes, etc.

I’ve got pretty much everything I need to complete the floorpan apart from some front beam seals and the front brakes, but they’re on order.

Attention to detail is the order of the day. I’ll know what’s in this Ghia, and I want to do a proper job on it. The original gearbox bracket bolts were dropped in rust converter, cleaned up, and then I sprayed them with primer and enamel black which should protect them, plus they look good:

The gearbox bracket fitted, along with a new bugpack gearbox mount

Lots of other things, but no pics. In the pic of the gearbox bracket you can see some copper hardlines in the process of being fitted, and the brake master cylinder has been replaced with a proper OEM two circuit unit and fitted along with the hardlines up front.
Front beam has been refitted, awaiting now a seal kit, and this next week I’ll clean up the gearbox and paint it black to match everything. Then that can go on and we can get rear wheels
Then hopefully I’m expecting all the stuff for the front so in the next 2-3 weeks the floorpan should be finished and rolling!
Then it’s back to the endless bodywork…

I also got a new shift knob for my EMPI Hurst-copy shifter… it’s a real pool ball that’s been drilled out!

Seperating the outer skin and the structure of the decklid. Someone did a really bad repair on the skin, and dented the structure; so we’ll repair that first.
The doors and the bonnet came out OK though.

Rot in the spare wheel well

Evidence of welding on all the pillars?! Has the car had a new roof in the past? Maybe she was rolled over by a rhino or something in South Africa…

Some cracking around the nearside “nostril” airbox. The offside one is fine.

Another view of that airbox, this time from in the bonnet:

I think this is the worst of the damage. Some yahoo’s had a go at the offside arch with a hammer.

This is the nearside arch, in much better condition.

Some detail of the crude weld there:

Someone’s made some very crude holes for speakers in the rear shelf. Although the rear shelf is covered with a vinyl pad, I still want to repair this area.

Nearly there. Some dents now on the offside wing:

There’s also some damage to the battery tray that I didn’t photograph.

Some rot under the front nearside wheelarch:

And finally, some rot under the nose.

This is the worst of the damage. There’s a couple of minor dings and dents in other places, plus some crude welds that can be tidied up.

It’s clear there’s work to be done – far more than I realised when I took on this project. So I’d better get started I suppose… and to begin, I got some replacement panels to repair the damage under the nose. Now the work begins in earnest.

Ghia after chemical stripping and priming at Surface Processing. She’s in quite good condition under all the paint and filler, the damage to the right rear quarter isn’t nearly so bad and there’s a couple small holes here and there but overall in good condition

The little car went away on Wednesday the 20th to be chemically stripped and then e-primed!

Surface Processing are doing the work for me, and expect it will take around three weeks.

As well as the bodyshell, the doors, bonnet, and bootlid were sent away as well.

Floorpan is in pretty good condition. There’s a twenty-centimetre strip that I’ve cut out of one of the edges with a replacement piece to weld in, but apart from that… it’s in pretty good nick.
All the other bits and pieces are fine as well, which is nice.
It’s all going to be powdercoated a nice gloss black later this week!

Floorpan successfully seperated from bodyshell:

No rust on it at all, save for that which you see on the surface.

Bodyshell isn’t too bad either…

The area forward of the rear left arch was a bit dented, but Neil was able to beat it out with his madskillz. The other side needs some work however, as there’s lots of random dents and filler covering. No pics of that yet.

One thing I found when I was stripping the remnants of interior out; the original colour!

The pale blue is what the previous owner put on; the maroon colour seems to date from the car’s South African days. The white, found under the window rubber seals and under the headlining, is likely the original colour; so the car shall be restored in that colour.

The floorpan and some ancillaries are going for shotblasting on Tuesday!