Does the interior need to be removed to weld the sills?

ChrisM

ChrisM

Well-known user
Apr 12, 2007
198
0
Berkshire
Hi Guys,
Does the interior need to be removed to weld the sills?

I was planning to visit my parents in Glasgow at Easter and maybe get my Cougar back on the road and bring down South England. It has been sitting in my parents garage for the majority of the past five years. I got my Dad to take the car down to his local MOT station last week where it failed for:

Rusty rear sub-frame,
Rusty near-side sill,
ABS and Traction Control light permanently lit,
Off side ABS ring missing from drive shaft, (Probably the reason the ABS and TC lights are on)
Hand brake efficiency.

I was advised that the rear sub-frame would need a cleaned up when it MOT's 2 years ago and I never did anything. The ABS ring and lights should be an easy fix. The hand brake is probably seized cables. It was the sills that surprised me. I haven't seen them myself so I don't know how extensive the problem is.

Chris.
 
Wow! Blast from the past :) been a while! :)

The sills are becoming common place for Cougars everywhere in the UK recently. Seems a regular moisture trap. If it's in the rear half, I'd pull the quarter card to fire watch. In the front half, depends how bad it is. You can get away without stripping the interior out. That said, someone like yourself that is confident with the old spanners could have the interior out and the carpet up just to be on the safe side.
 
Yeh its been a while since I was on the forum, almost as long since I last drove the cat. I moved back to the UK about a year ago, and life has gone so quickly that I'm only just finding the time to put into the car.
My Dad was looking at the old MOT certificates and the car has done less than 5,000 miles in the past 5 year. Its shame a really, a good car rotting away.

I think the rust in the sill is at the front where it meets the wing, when I'm back at Easter I'll need to inspect that and the subframe to see if the car is worth fixing. If its getting fixed, I wouldn't be doing the welding, so in order to speed thing up and save a bit on money I thought of pulling back the interior and perhaps removing the passenger seat.
 
If it's the front end of the sill, be aware! When i was doing doppleganger with the waxoil, i pushed the probe in the access hole under the front arch and came up on the first obstacle which was a block of foam. As is the case at the rear, this is probably a cause of moisture retention in that area but also not nice if your welding. Find out if you have foam in there by simply pushing a probe/screwdriver into the access hole. The foam will be about 3" in.
 
I've not got the time to fix the Cougar, so I'm taking the bolt-on mods off the car to sell separately and selling the car for Spare or Repairs,
(See the For Sale Sections)

A few weeks ago I bought myself a new toy;

BMW Z4 3.0si Sport:

20140416_193247.jpg



Hope you'll all agree that its a nice Cougar replacment.

Chris
 
I've never driven one so have no idea what it's like to live with, but anecdotally at least I hear that it's great fun. Apparently the handling is very entertaining.

Not as handsome as a Cougar though. ;)

I'm guessing by this time you've researched the heck out of it, but in case you haven't, make sure the roof motor is dry. That seems to be the only major fault with them, so can't say fairer than that.
 
Thanks Jamie, Yeh Mako I read the roof motor can be a problem if the drain holes arent cleaned at its service.
All its previous services have been by BMW so hopefully its been done. I've also got 15 months warranty on it, which give me some piece of mind.

My daily driver is a LR Freelander TD4, the Z4 will be my weekend car and a bit of fun in the summer evenings. The Z4 wouldn't be very pratical to live with, although its boot is bigger than some convertables I've seen.
 
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