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So, with the shell stripped of all but a handful of components, its time to start to strip the underseal off to see just what sort of shape the shell is in.

Using nothing more than an old paint brush, a scrubbling brush and some rags, combined with copious amounts of Cellulose thinners, the paint began to reveal itself. First to be done was the engine bay, although the original seam sealer took a bit of a hammering, the resulting surface was pretty much flawless. No rust along the back of the bulkhead, no rust under the master cylinders, and surprisingly, no rust at all behind the subframe towers.

The inner wing on the drivers side was also found to be totally rust free.

So, it was onto the drivers side wheel arch, the underseal on here was particularly thick andof an unusual consistency. It has of a sort of matalic paint constitution. As it disolved in the thinners you could see bronze coloured metal flakes in the underseal. This made it particularly tricky to remove, but with an hour or so's scrubblig and rubbing, the wheel arch area looked like this. If anyone knows what this underseal actually is, I would be interested to know.

As you can see above, even the tricky front part of the toe board where it meets the sill had nothing more than a tiny amount of corrosion, certainly nothing that required more than a lick of paint.

Encouraged by my progress I continued onto the front valance, this had obviously been repainted under the metalic underseal, but with some more scraping & scrubbing it came out very well indeed. Once again, when did you ever see a full skirt front vallance with NO RUST!

So after my first evenings hard graft, the front end was starting to look reasonable. The main problem is that I am writing this about 8 hours later and I still feel a bit drunk having absorbed so much thinners through my skin & lungs. Oh, and my entire house stinks of the stuff too. Thankfully, I have a very understanding wife, who pointed out it was only going to be for a few more days. I Hope!

More of the same this evening, the passenger side inner wing and toe board got the treatment. Much more tricky than the drivers side though as the radiator grille made a beautiful trap for great big thick blobs of underseal. Under the seal, I was surprised how many areas had never seen any red paint in the factory. I always thought it was 90's Minis that were skimped on paint wise.

Then it was onto the near side rear wheel arch via the sill. The glued on trim strip came off fine after a good soak with thinners leaving a thick layer of rubberised underseal as opposed to the hard metalic stuff experienced elsewhere. This came off much easier leaving a sill seam that was clean & shiny.

The rear wheel arch, was however, a different kettle of fish entirely!

It had a very thick coating of metalic underseal all over it to a depth of about 1/8" over most of the surface. This cant easily be scraped off so the only thing to do is scrub it wil thinners, it disolves easy enough but goodness me it takes some time! Below you will see a picture of this strange underseal. I have never seen it before, but it certainly did the business.

So, by the end of the evening the car was clear of underseal from the drivers side wing round the front & the engine bay, through the near side wing down the near side sill. The rear wheel arch and rear vallance were also clear of all gunk.

Next its the drivers side rear wheel arch and sill, then on to the glue inside the car.

Oh, and while I think about it, I am glad to report that I managed to seal the holes in the garage that allowed fumes to get into the house. So we wern't in too much danger of asphyxiating in our sleep last night.