blue 71' wagon

[Legoman27]

I've poked around here long enough, so I figure I should share my project

This is the day I got the car in 2018, on 5/11 no less
mostly complete, rust everywhere you'd expect and astroturf for carpet, but it ran
off the road since '99 if the window sticker is to be believed, so definitely needs work

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I ended up driving 3 hours back and forth from school to home as often as I could to work on it

managed to fumble my way through a carb rebuild on my apartment coffee table

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brakes had seen better days, so they got an overhaul

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rebuilt the front calipers, replaced rear cylinders
new brake master, clutch master, clutch slave, and pads front & rear

we also replaced a lot of the door and glass seals

got a replacement hood & hatch. I think they were shipped freight from IL?

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Most of my work up to this point was to douse everything in as much POR-15 as I could get my hands on
I knew I wouldn't be able to work on the car a lot so I just tried to stabilize things as best I could


we did cut out / replace some of the rust

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for the most part it really became a guinea pig to learn paint prep

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it really was starting to look pretty alright

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shortly after this I finished school, got a job, and everyone moved so things stagnated for a while
This is where the car sat for the next two years - with no paint on the rust patches that were put in

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[RONSLYCHUK]

Your wagon looks to be in decent shape. They are getting hard to come by. Keep up the good work!

[Legoman27]

just three weeks shy of two years later, I went to retrieve the car

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more stagnating - changed jobs, got married, house took priority, so it became a shelf for a while, but it was indoors now

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in my spare time I play with 3d printers, after a lot of trial an error, I was able to make a new hinge cover

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finally started working on it roughly another year later
the tree it was parked under hadn't been particularly kind to the roof
ended up with a nice hole in my fresh paint too, though that rusted from the inside

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ripped down everything that was left of the headliner, welded in a patch and did some rust treating
everything covered in more POR15

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Driver's side floor pans were up next

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[Legoman27]

Inner rocker got some help too

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If I were to do it again, I'd probably change a few things, but for my first time doing anything like this I'm pretty happy with the results

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Driver's door needed some work

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waffled on it for a while, but ended up deciding to just replace the whole rocker

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some of the welds aren't exactly pretty, but they get the job done

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got the driver's side completely bolted together for the first time since I've owned it

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[Legoman27]

Turned the car around to the passenger side, this is where the half finished patches really started to bite me
A combo of open, unpainted holes, squirrels storing their dinner, and the heat really didn't do me any favors

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lots of rust treatment stuff along the way here

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Rather than reuse the crusty outer skin, I opted to make a new one

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And the corner brace too

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[Legoman27]

Passenger rear floors needed some help - and I think my welding is slowly getting better

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Recently I removed the passenger outer rocker

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and I've slowly been working on the passenger front floor pans

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That should have things up to speed for the most part
I was able to get ahold of an L20b a few months ago, but it needs machine work

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[Legoman27]

Your wagon looks to be in decent shape. They are getting hard to come by. Keep up the good work!

Compared to some of the other projects I've seen online, I am pretty regularly surprised that this car isn't more rusty

[gooned]

Great job saving a Goon, love it.

[Legoman27]

got a few patches in today & sprayed most of a can of self etch

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[RONSLYCHUK]

Good choice on replacing the rockers because rust never sleeps!

[Legoman27]

got the floor pan mostly wrapped up
there's another few holes I'll need to patch after I pull the engine / trans

starting to get the rocker mocked up to go on

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[Stu]

Great to see the project making progress. I love the wagons and glad you are bringing this one back.

[Legoman27]

slow and steady right?
rocker is attached to the car now, but still need to do the spot welds on the bottom

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the next daunting chunk of rust to fix -
I recently found these pinholes under the dash in the cowl. wasn't particularly surprised, given all the leaves that liked to get through the vents and turn to mud
I'll have to see if I can get my hands on some evapo-rust gel

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[Legoman27]

busy week,
got the rocker fully attached
finished both end caps
grafted two fenders together
and rebuilt the passenger side hinges

some trimming and grinding left to do here and there, but it's back together

I have enough good pins to put together one set of linkages, but the rest are junk
anyone have a good DIY solution for the smaller pins? found a few on ebay, but $70 seems rather steep.
could tap things for an M6 bolt but I'd like to avoid that if I can

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I'm particularly happy with how this piece ended up

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