A further 'prodding' reveals the extent of the rot.... the Jacking points aren't supposed to be removable, for instance! At this stage, the car is stripped to a bare shell, sound-deadening removed, and then mounted on the spit so we can heat and scrape the underseal away in preparation for blasting.

Blasting does not reveal any rot we were not aware of (for a change!) but does show the true extent of the damage. We have left some areas during blasting as there is no point blasting panels that we know are being replaced anyway!

Ok, on with the metalwork. We start with the offside inner wing, 'a'-panel and footwell area.

Meanwhile we've started stripping and preparing some of the panels.....

.....And blasting/painting suspension & subframe components.

Ok, back to metalwork, and this time it's the nearside getting the attention. We have a new GM 'A' panel for this side as the rot was pretty extensive in this area.

New inner wing goes in.....

.....and infill pieces made (between inner wing and bulkhead)....

....... and we are left with a big pile of old manta to sweep up!

Next area to receive some attention is the famous Manta chassis rails! These are cut out one at a time, whilst jigging the mounting points, and then new rails fabricated. These consist of a 3mm inner section, with tubes welded in for the subframe mounting point, and seperate outer skin which sits over the top. Templates were made from a very good rail we keep in storage for just this kind of eventuality! The surfaces between are given a good dose of corrosion resistant primer, something that never happened in the factory! (they were dipped, but somehow the primer never seemed to get to this part of the chassis rails!)

Meanwhile we carry on with panels!

WIth the rails complete the floorpans are ready to be replaced. We carefully trim the repair sections to size and butt-weld them in place. With the welds dressed back, the repairs will be almost undetectable.