Chasing the white rabbit

I'm deviating a bit from my usual on this post.  Normally my posts explain work from beginning to end.  The amount of time it takes me to complete the work is abstracted from you, the reader (oooh, I just broke the 4th wall there, I really am off the reservation on this one).  

Now that I'm completely off course on this post, let's play follow the leader.  In my last post you've seen me go down the since I'm already there rabbit hole.  I guess I wanted to outdo myself tonight.  Here we go, try to keep up...

A few weeks ago I noticed how bad the wipers looked, so I pulled them for painting.

Since I had the wipers off and I noticed a bit of surface rust on the cowl finisher, why not pull that off and peek underneath?

Looks like I'll have to prep and paint the finisher.  I wonder what the cowl area looks like?  It is, after all, one of the common rust areas on a 280Z.

Yep, surface rust in there too.  Now, as I recalled from some research, gunk accumulates in the cowl area and clogs the cowl drains (causing moisture to build up and bad rust).

Well, I have the gunk but the rust is still just on the surface.  Whew, I dodged a bullet there.  Hmm, from that same research though, I remember that the cowl drain simply dumps into the fender area.  I already had a few rust bubbles on the door, but lets look a bit closer at the fender...

See that brown line where the fender meets the rocker?  Ruh roh.  How can I tell if that's a problem?  Well, I read that pulling the fender isn't actually that hard...

...and as far as you know it wasn't!  Blog magic makes everything easy.  Check out how much decaying organic matter was inside the fender on top next to the engine.  

Well, what about that fender?  See the pile of dirt and crud behind the wheel in the wide shot above?  That was all in the fender, right where that rust line had started.  Aside from the dead leaves, dirt, and compost that was in the fender, I also found a potato farm amidst a small self-sustaining ecosystem.  As for the fender...

You can see the impact that the nature preserve had on the fender.  Luckily this was caught in time.  There will be no need for weld-in patches here.  I will also be able to pound out a dent in the fender now and repaint the lower front valence.  Why?  Because I'm already there anyway!

After seeing this, I will most definitely be pulling the other fender as well.