Above is LHS the worst one, seen here before scaping and wire-brushing
Along the lines of ?caveat emptor?, here are extracts from the car?s accompanying documentation when I bought it 10 years ago.
From the owner who had the work done :
? thorough renovation ?? to exact ?.. body original specification ?? only lead-loading ?.. all panels shaped and matched by hand ??. perfect fit and gapping ?.?
From the dealer :
? undergone total restoration to the most exacting standards ??.. fully documented ??. mint condition in every aspect ????..?
The copious underseal and paint underneath the car made it look brand-new, and in almost every respect the car has turned out to be true to hype. (Underseal in French is often referred to as "Misery Cover")
It?s taken me 10 years to find the truth, and the work mentioned was done almost 25 years ago, but now that I?ve found where the ?new? meets the ?old? it?s been a bit of a shock, bearing in mind that the car has been dry-stored since, has almost never seen the rain, and has done about 5.000 miles at most since 1990.
And appears to have been soaked and injected with Waxoyl .......
LHS still, after a bit of wire-brushing
I thought the rear LHS radius-arm mounting looked a bit flakey, and indeed once the under-seal was scraped away you could see that this was where the work had stopped ???..
RHS in better but still pin-hole or two in surrounding metal
There don?t seem to be any horrors elsewhere ? the box sections above, seen with a probe, have surface rust but are soaked in Waxoyl and look strong, and the surrounding metal is appears as-new.
Changing the whole rear-floor traverse that carries the radius-arm mountings is obviously the only real solution (is it the whole floor in fact ?!) but has anyone attempted an intermediate/temporary repair of an area like this ?
Am tempted to plate/gusset from under the anti-roll-bar mounts (plug-welded) down to the back edge of the radius-arm plates, short-circuiting what is obviously very thin.
