Rust proofing the A series
Now that you have spent a fortune on restoring your pride and joy for the
sake of £70 approx it would be a shame to see rust sticking it's ugly head up in
a year or so. If you are a new manta owner or an old hand the last thing you
want to see is rust. From doing a bare shell restoration on my own car I
hopefully have found all the nasty rust incubators.
To do the Job I ordered the following from
Frost http://www.frost.co.uk/
4 litres of Dinitrol 3125 Corromax
1 by 500ml spray tin of Dinitrol ML
1 Dinitrol Wax Gun
1 Gallon of Waxoyl
I decided to start at the rear of the car, the first panel to be done was the rear valance, I drilled 2 by 20mm holes inside the boot about 1/4 way across each side, where the panel goes at 45 deg to the floor this lets the Dinitrol gun get inside the double panel. After the panels were well coated I closed the holes with a 20mm grommets.
Next was the hollow sections behind both rear arches. Again 20mm holes where drilled and the Dinitrol 3125 loaded inside and as you can see from the pics some spilled out which needs cleaned :) Again 20mm grommets are to be fitted.
From there the next part was the rear arches of the car, on the A the inner skin and the outer skin get very close together so the Dinitrol ML works wonders here. I sprayed the rear arches from the boot side right back to the end of the rear quarter panel, then proceeded to get inside the car and spray from the top of the arch right back to the door, Once the ML was sprayed on both sides I redone the whole lot again in the 3125, this time doing all of the quarter panel inside the car. there is one part that is aquard to access. That is a double section right behind the door pictured below. I drilled a 12mm hole and sprayed the ML up inside both sides and put a small grommet in.
Now for one well know trouble spot the sills. To do these I drilled 3 holes on the inside of the car, My A series is an early type with no B post and has 3 sills as opposed to the later type with the B post and 2 sills inner and outer. The positions of the holes are shown in the picture below, the 3rd hole is just behind where the B post would be. With these holes and the access to the sill at the bottom of the A post the car can be completely soaked without missing any areas. if you put your hand down to the bottom of the rear quarter just behind the door u can feel the 3rd sill if your car has one MAKE sure you soak both sills, At the front the sills were well loaded and up the posts as well.
Whilst inside the car one other part well worth doing is accessing the front jacking points, Again I drilled a 20mm hole from inside the car, which was positioned near the rear of the jacking point, this lets the gun be installed quite easily using the 3125 again. Hopefully this will stop any problems at a later date with the new jacking points.
It is also worth while drilling a couple more holes in the floor that let you inside the chassis leg above the point where the crossmember bolts on, this allows fluid to be dosed into the legs along this area. The chassis legs around the crossmember are one of the worst points for rusting on the manta and take a lot of work to replace or repair properly.
Next on the hit list was to do under neat the car starting at the rear and working forward to the crossmember ALL box sections were soaked in 3125.
Its well worth putting extra protection in around the crossmember mounting points and right up to the front of the car where the box section stops around the head lights.
The front of the wings on the inside is well worth coating as the cars do tend to rust in this area , also the rear of the wing where it bolts to the car needs well coated so that any dirt and water that gets threw up cant attack the metal. From this point the Waxoyl can come out and the whole of the underneath can be soaked so that no body metal work is missed, especially around the wheel arch areas where all the muck gets threw up and sticks.
on the A series the upper front panel is worth doing as well as they tend to rust from the inside out, this can be accessed with the bonnet open and just putting the gun into the already open slots.
If planning to do the A series in this way its well worth planning a couple of days to carry out the work,