It was decided to begin with the interior as this area of the car was not complete. There were no carpets in the car at all just lots of sound proofing.

The seats came out easily as they would have been removed before, when the carpet was removed. What they revealed was a floor pan in really good order. You will have seen in an earlier blog, that around twelve years ago, extensive bodywork was undertaken as the bottom was literally dropping out of the car. That’s great for us, as it saves us a lot of time and money. This car was one of the early model’s to have the lowered floor in front of the seats for better leg room.

The boot area looks even better, in its original Opalescent Silver Blue paint. The picture above shows the boot with the fuel tank removed. Now that was another story! We are fairly convinced that the fuel tank is not the original. I believe one way of telling this is the flange size around the tank and the stiffening impression on the top. Owing to the oversize flange (where the two halves of the tank are welded together), it was very difficult to manoeuvre and remove. We had to battle for some time to do it. Putting this tank back in after the body shell is resprayed would certainly wreck the lovely new paint. There is also a lot of internal corrosion, so we will have to decide whether to replace or recondition / modify. The sender unit is missing in action too.

Originally the car would have had an ‘in tank’ fuel pump, our car has what looks like a 4.2 liter external pump mounted in the OS rear wheel arch cavity – interesting! And what’s that yellow tape hiding?