Ivan's coupe: seeing RED

[Ivan141]

Last weekend I had some spare time, so I decided to see what was behind door nr.2 (Step right up).

Again, what I found was not pretty. Sadly no before pictures of the door, but the inside skin was clearly rotted away at both corners, and the bottom seam had a bit of surface rust all along the length of the door.
This is what it looks like after prying the seam open (have perfected my technique for that, although it cost me the skin on my fingers).

Detail of rear corner:



The seam (note: you see nearly nothing of this before opening it up).


So it was out with the angle grinder, and I took out just the lower portion of the inner door skin (the bit that's wedged in the seam).



Look how pretty that metal was:


Cleaned up a little (using a combination of the angle grinder, an attempt at spot-blasting, and an application of phosphoric acid solution):




It could have been cleaner, but it looks worse in the pictures than it does IRL.
I put some Brunox rust converter on it and finished off with a layer of zinc spray.

I've prepared a repair panel but ran out of time to do any welding, so that will have to wait till next time. One thing's for sure, I'm not touching the outer door skin this time..