READER’S STORY
ME AND MY RESTO
For Stephen Lea, his search for perfection was always going to win out…
This MKII GLi was given to me in December 2016 by the bloke that had sold me my Cavalier MkI 18 months previously. He'd seen the restoration that I'd done on the MkI and basically he wanted the same for his MkII, so I took it on. It was a runner to start with, but then I laid it up and prepared for battle.
On the surface of things it didn’t look too bad but the rear arches, sills, rear quarter bottoms and rear valance had previously been ‘repaired’ just by riveting panels over the rotted-out originals and then covering the lot with filler. Not good, and other similar repairs were done everywhere. The closer I looked at it, the worse it got.
The tear-down was a long and detailed process, unpicking individual spot welds on the rusty front valance was typical. I was aiming for a factory-fresh finish so it needed to be done right. With up-top repairs ongoing I loaded the shell onto a spit to get the underbelly sorted. I did the underside in three sections: back end to rear footwells, then the floors, then the whole front end and engine bay. Plenty of dirty, noisy tedium!
I realised as I took the doors off that all the reference points for the inner rear valance/inner rear quarters/inner rear arches were fresh air. I need to fit the outer panels in a quick-release style so I could use them as reference points for fabricating the inner panels, so I made a start by cutting down the replacement rear valance then using cleco fasteners to hold it in place.
Arch enemy
The nastiest moment came when I had to contemplate how I was going to tackle the cacophony of corrosion that was the offside rear arch. Again, due to a complete lack of arch lip reference points on this side, I made a start by getting the front part of the outer arch trimmed and positioned. That gave me something to work to when rebuilding the inner arch/tub.
Meanwhile everything mechanical was stripped, thoroughly cleaned and painted. All suspension joints, bearings and bushes were replaced. The engine received a clean and paint, as well as new gaskets and seals. All bodywork was primed and blocked several times, leaving it ready for a professional painter to just apply the colour coats. All the while I was collecting parts to put
This c 2023 compet your is Cla back on, and I even managed to get hold of a brand new set of GL Win wheel trims! As well as factory Stephen diagrams I took pics of what it the rotte inner w should all look like before I got offside he stuck in to make sure it would template look right when done, and as the transferr
restoration neared its end these the old fro became invaluable. wasn't rus
Eventually the Cavalier was to use orig discar finished after a final push, a good few months of serious work
