I was working on the top of my 1966 and thought it was going to be an easy job, but noooo! When I bought the car last August, I was told that it has a bad hydraulic line to the top cylinders and that there was a new hose kit included with the car, among other parts. I started to get into replacing the hoses by pulling (very easy to do) the back seat out. What I found was a soaked area under the seat with a puddle of oil. I don't normally use kitty litter IN the car:
A right mess was under the seat and will take some time to clean up.
I could see that the hoses looked fine but there was oil on the cylinder itself. I have never tried to put the top up. knowing that it has a leak. As I removed the cylinder on the pass side, I could see that it had marks on the OD, and once removed it was quite obvious what was leaking and that it had been tried to be repaired with JB Weld in the past.
This wound won't be fixed with JB Weld epoxy even tho it does say weld in the name, or a bandaid.
This damage led to some pondering and figuring how this could happen. Upon studying the mount area I begin to see that the whole mount has been torn out in the past and has had a seriously bad bodge of a repair with nuts and bolts. This pic is from the trunk side.
Moving along to the seat side this is what I see.
This doesn't look good!
After more inspection, I see the huge crack to the left of the mount.
This will require a welder to make this repair. I'm a fair welder but a very good grinder
My daughter is a real gearhead ( building a hot rod 911) and an excellent trained welder. When the weather gets a bit warmer and we can get this area stripped down and reinforced, I will put new cylinders in.
I wonder what caused this damage to the car body?
