[blackpopracing]

Being a bit bored without a project car to build I thought about building another. Problem is I dont really have room for 2 cars. I had been mulling building a 1930's Lanchester (small one with a Duratec engine) when a friend with a Pop wanted his painted after having some repairs done at a rodshop after being on the road for almost 40 years.

So I offered to paint it for him as long as I could fix his deformed rear wheel arches ( I offered to do these 20 years ago, lol). This thread is a bit behind real time so updates will be fairly fast for a few days.

It has arrived!

And tucked up in its new home for the next few weeks.

Phil will bring over the wings, bonnet and a few other items in the next few days.

We had a poke around and found a few extra holes that will need welding up but in general it's fairly sound.

I'm off out to spend the first chunk of his money on sandpaper and other items now.

 

[blackpopracing]

Soooooo, went out to local paint factors to get a load of supplies and they are closed for the forseeable due to Covid - bugger!.

Looks like I'll have to search for mail order supplies then.

I do have some supplies so I made a start, first 3 hours on it produced these results.

The bodyline around the bootlid hump on Phil's car had been blended in when it was first built back in the 80's but Phil wanted it restored. Its all covered in filler here;

So, out with the hammer and a blunt chisel and start to chisel the filler off, top done here;

And then the sides;

A LOT of sanding later got the top of the hump looking like this. I'm not sure what it was painted with back in the day, but the basecoat is like concrete!! I'd be tempted to leave it but there is surface rust under it so I want to treat the metal before I put any paint on it.

I then applied a coat of Hydrate 80 to kill the rust, this will be sanded back prior to primer.

And we have a body seam again

And the amount of filler removed just from that area;

One of the unexpected ares of rust was here, al least I'll get to play with my new welder

 

[chevrolet50]

I see this over Charlie’s a while back,recognised the registration plate straight away.remembered it from when I was a child! great to see it still around.going back to the original paint??

 

[blackpopracing]

Yes thats the car. Paint will be a new modern colour.

 

[blackpopracing]

Not such a lot of progress at this point, I did my stint at the vaccine centre then did shopping on way home.
Mid afternoon Phip came over with the 4 wings and the bonnet. All the wings are fibreglass so in general they will not need too much work. Fronts need a bit of reinforcing under the light fitting area as this is thin and has cracks around them. Some minor work on the front edges where the gelcoat has chipped but hopefully that is it for those.

Rear wings are in good shape - except I will be chopping them up so they fit over the tyres properly - detailed coverage of this in future updates.

The bonnet appears to be perfect! no rot at all along the central hinge (they all rot there normally) and no cracks on the curved edges where they normally split. There might be one tiny crack, or it might just be a crack in the paint as it does not appear to be on the inside of the metal. Excellent news as these should only need taking back to bare steel & painting hopefully.

I continued to work on the rear hump while Phil swept the inside of the car out and removed the front sheet metal. All Covid safe as we had the door open and the extractor fan running and were at opposite ends of the car. We have also both had our first vaccine jabs.

Further investigation of the rotten A post reveals its a little worse than we thought - when the car was first rodded it had fibreglass covered on the inside of the scallops - sadly the water collected in the scallop and was trapped behind the glass, so it rotted through.

You can see the fibreglass on the passenger side in this photo;

With a bit of heat from the heat gun the glass went soft and popped off fairly easily - this is the offending piece. You can see where all the rust is from the stains.

and the A post where it was stuck to;

Chopped most of the rust out here - but more metal will have to go to get rid of all of the rot.

Interior is pretty sound but the floor needs rust treatment;

And it has suffered a bit over the years from many seat changes and placements, so a multitude of holes to weld up.

There are many more holes in the bulkhead and other areas that will need either welding or some stainless bolts put in to make a feature of the hole if access to weld is not practical.

Car looking a bit naked with front metal removed now

The front grill shell is also in very good shape, needing only a little panel beating to dress a couple of dings out of it.

I really need more supplies to do much more work on it so work may have to wait a few days for those to arrive.

In the meantime I'll try to photo & document more of the car and panels so you can all see what work will be required over the next few weeks.

Progress on the rear hump for today was this section, no nasty surprises thank goodness. It has has a new rear valence under the bootlid a few years ago - this appears to have been done very neatly with very flat welds - so that's good to see.

 

[blackpopracing]

Small update at this point, I had got in from work & did an hour on it. I discovered what the white concrete layer was now - P38 filler.

All the surface rust is under this filler - this is why I maintain water should never go near bodywork until a gloss coat is applied. This was obviously wet sanded years ago and rust has set in from that. To be fair - it's lasted 30 years or so, but as you can see from the photos its perfect steel where no filler went on.

and how it looked 30 mins later.

The front wings are currently on the hardstanding, walking past tonight I spotted a few stress cracks along the wing bead - I think I will end up laying a couple of extra layers of mat over the entire surface of the inside of the wings to stiffen them up a bit as the glass is fairly thin.

 

[blackpopracing]

Another 2 hours were done that night, I dressed the dings in the front grill back, the big one needs a bit more planishing but its fairly straight now.

More rubbing down on the rear hump has this area bare metalled and treated with hydrate 80 on the rusty areas

There is a ding in the rear valence which has also split thr return, difficult to get behind it to dress it out and I'll have to weld the split back up.

And because I like to jump around a bit on stuff I had a go at the bulkhead to see quite how many holes there are to fill. Stripped a bit back to bare metal & treated it, found some horrors in the wiring that I'll have to chat with Phil about, hes had a lot of it re-wired by the chap that did the repairs but I'm not very happy with it, its a bit of a mess.

 

[choppedblownpop]

Thank you for posting, top stuff

 

[blackpopracing]

Moving on, things that arrived were,

sheet steel
primer & sealant
fibreglass resin & Acetone
DA Sander.

Unfortunately the suppliers missed 1 litre of high build & activator out of the box, emailed them, so hopefully they will rectify that asap.
Primers;

Sheet steel - I cut this at work on the guillotine into useful sizes so it will be less cutting at home.

And punched a load of discs out of it for welding up all the holes in the car.

DA Sander, I have a cheapo one from Lidl that I picked up a while back, but it was struggling so I thought I'd treat myself to a proper professional one. Arrived next day and boy does it work well! Quieter, less vibration and strips the paint about 20 times faster. Happy bunny

It only took a few minutes to strip this bit back with a blunt pad (waiting on new pads to arrive)

And the lower valence is now in bare metal.

sanding back for the area to be welded reveals the 'Rainbow Pop' paint scheme from the 90's. I'll get Phil to send me some photos of it showing how it used to look. Hole is getting trimmed out more for welding.

And the big hole is now welded up. I decided on a rear plate rather than a flush panel as it's in a tricky area to grind smooth so it's easier to weld in a backing plate and put a skim of filler over which will be far easier to sand to the correct contour. There is still the smaller hole to the left of it that needs repairing as well. I'm very happy with my new welder - it made welding this thinner metal an absolute breeze, really controllable, far easier than my old welder. The extra line of weld on the left is because I should have had my glasses on, lol!

Stripping ther bulkhead back a bit more has revealed many, many, many more holes under the filler The 4 big holes were filled with filler only. I see a lot of welding in this area in the future!

So far, 11 hours of work. I'll add the hours at the end of each post as it will be interesting to keep track of how many it will take.

 

[blackpopracing]

More parcels arrived today, 25 litres of gunwash and some polystrip discs.
Polystrip discs make light work of removing the paint, but it's a bit noisy with the angle grinder so I'll have to be careful with the neighbours.

Could not resist having a quick go with the polystrip discs on the bulkhead, they rip the paint & filler off pretty fast. The results look like this...........not sure there should be all those holes there though.............

Oh dear

I think I'll cut the whole panel out above the swage line near the base and all around the curve at the top. It will be less work to replace the entire panel than try to fill the holes and get it flat again.

Had a chat with Phil tonight and he is going to go for the replacement roof insert, good call as it will stop all leaks forever and save the gutter repairs needing to be done. It will just need a really good clean back and rust treatment now. He was also ok with replacing the wiring loom, this will make life easier for repairs with all the wiring gone and also mean completely trouble free motoring when it's finished.

 

[mygasser]

wouldn't it be easier to cut that section of bulkhead out and weld in a bigger flat piece? less distortion, less welding, less filler? it's what i'd do anyway.
glad to see you busy again, neil.
edit:- doh! you posted while i was typing

 

[blackpopracing]

Progress tonight,

With the new polystrip discs removing the paint is now pretty fast. First though, as a favour to Phil as he wanted to see the old paint job again I carefully sanded just the top layers of paint off the door and wiped it down with a bit of thinners. This is how it got the nickname the Rainbow Pop.

Cracked on with the rear 3/4 panel tonight. Stripped some of the wing mounting flange which 'appears' to be in excellent condition. They usually rot like a 'child of unwed parents' here so I was quite suprised this one looks rust free. Hmmmm.........quite a lot of filler in there with more braze.......hopefully it's sound but just lumpy metal under the filler.

The B post repair panels done by the rod shop before it came to me look tidy and should only need a skim of filler over them.

The hatched area is what I think I will replace, I'll cut the blank at work tomorrow on the guillotine and put a fold in it on our folder, then it will just need trimming when I have it at home.

Well Phil, too late to change you mind now

Looking at the loom more closely after chatting to Phil, it may be salvagable as the fuseboard is a good one so I might just get Phil to strip it out of the car completely and then maybe just go through the cables and splice new wires in properly where needed, and the re-route it all with proper sheathing and terminals.

We can make a judgement once it's removed from the car.

13.5 hours

 

[blackpopracing]

wouldn't it be easier to cut that section of bulkhead out and weld in a bigger flat piece? less distortion, less welding, less filler? it's what i'd do anyway.
glad to see you busy again, neil.
doh! you posted while i was typing

We want to keep the original look bulkhead - also this thread is a few weeks behind real time so you will see soon the results.

This was brought to me as a quick respray job, but I said I would do the entire car free of charge as long as I had free reign over what was done to it. As such I have to keep myself in check as much as I want to cut everything out and replace it, that is not the remit of the task.

 

[blackpopracing]

Got a few photos of it back in it's heydays, as it was first done back in 1979;

And then in 87 Phil had it repainted in the rainbow scheme;

It won 'Best Paint' at the Donnington indoor show in (I Believe) 1990

 

[mygasser]

but will your ocd allow anything less than perfection? and don't say he wants it gloss black
i prefer the '79 paint job to the rainbow one.

 

[blackpopracing]

Bulkhead steel cut roughly to size and folded to match the original;

I had a night off as my hands are suffering badly with chapped skin and some abrasions from sharp metal & polystrip disc. It removes skin faster than paint - just in case anyone was wondering!

 

[blackpopracing]

Neil, It's hard to not get the angle grinder out and cut the entire floor out, lol! Phil's getting far more than he expected or ever dreampt of

 

[blackpopracing]

Phil popped over again and dropped off some parts. The main one was the new roof insert which he had collected that day.

I then gave him a list of tasks to do, removing the door glass in both doors, stripping the wiring loom out of the car, removing the electric fan from the radiator as it had just about chafed through the fins ( I hate through rad fixings and will make a proper frame for it) and we discussed several ideas about battery relocation,3rd brakelights and foglights, and some interior ideas about the dashboard.

I stripped out the wiper motor as we are going to relocate this inside the car so we can have a clean bulkhead area. I also decided we would take the engine & gearbox out as it will be less work to clean & paint the bulkhead, and easier to mask up the car. It will also make it easier to clean & paint the engine.

Car is pretty bare now the loom is removed, it will make working on it a lot easier.

Now there is only one hole in the bulkhead

I made the gaps a bit too big around the panel, so it will be a challenge to weld it in it's tacked so far but my welding helmet is not working properly - it's fractionally too slow to auto darken so I had to stop as I was getting blinded by it. I split the casing open & I think it needs new batteries - I'll try replacing them tomorrow but otherwise I'll buy a new helmet.

Bulkhead is mostly stripped of paint now, the rest will have to be done by hand as I cant get any machines in the corners.

I stripped a bit of the A post and the bottom corner of the door - this looked like it needed a new corner to the door as the paint was bubbled and its a common rust point on Pops - but it's all good steel under the thin layer of filler - suprising but in a good way!

20 hours.

 

[geof]

Looking good, you do like a challenge

 

[blackpopracing]

Looking good, you do like a challenge

I was bored without a project Geoff.