[blackpopracing]

Wayne, I'll be careful in my reply as I dont know what was asked for when it went there. Most of the work is good, the welding is really tidy, he fitted the new fuel tank, added a towhook, built a new exhaust, replaced the A & B post bottoms, repaired the A posts where the hinges fit, rewired a lot of it and did the gutters.

Bit's I think were not so good I'll highlight later in the thread. The rodshop may not have dug as deep as me into the gutters and only skimmed over the visible rust, my gripe is they knew the rust was bad and bodged over all the holes with that fucking awful silicone rubber spray shit to 'seal' it against water. The repairs are now 10x as hard as I can't get to the metal as the silicone shit is almost impossible to budge without a stripping disc and I cant get the disc into the areas that need stripping

 

[blackpopracing]

No photos for this bit as it was just welding up more holes in the floor mainly.
I did strip out both door locks as the drivers one only worked from the outside and had been bodged with wire around the lock at some time in the very distant past.
Simple fix as a part had bent over so it needed the rivets drilled out and the bent part welded back in the correct position. Bonus was that a spring washer was missing, I looked in my box of spring washers and amazingly I had an original exact same spring washer spare from one of my old locks!

50.5 hours

Night off tonight but I did a little at work today.
This is the repaired but not assembled door lock I was talking about just now;

I made up some new repair section for the roof, that should be plenty I hope!

and I spent lot's of Phils money buying the metal bond adhesive after chatting with their tech dept.
It's strong stuff, shear strength is 22-24N/mm2 - 3200-3500 psi.

and I folded up some sections for the bootlid gutter repair. I was going to weld these in but the metal bond adhesive will be perfect for these as well - should save many hours of welding/grinding.

The scabby gutters are here, not too bad for nearly 70 years old.

 

[blackpopracing]

Phil came over the next weekend so we set to removing the engine. Once we had got the prop off and Phil had removed the heater and the gearshift while I undid the engine and gearbox mounts it then took all of about 60 seconds to remove

I left Phil to clean up the lower bulkhead section,

But he got carried away and cleaned a fair bit of the chassis as well. I then welded up yet more holes in the lower bulkhead, and Phil said to me - maybe next week we can drop the front crossmember & suspension off so he can take it away and clean it up and repaint it. Looks like my obsession of doing everything is rubbing off on him

I did then say he will end up taking off the Jag rear end and cleaning/painting that as well, as you can't do one end and not do the other!

While Phil was doing that I was stripping the paint out of the bootlid gutter and also stripping the paint & rust out of the sills.
Removable sills makes life much easier

The insides of these were treated with a good dose of Hydrate 80;

I also finished the door lock off which now works perfectly, Phil was very pleased with that as it had never worked properly for the last 30 years!

56.5 hours

 

[budetta]

Panel glue is wonderful stuff, used it on my VW panel van to fit new rear arch skin. No welding distortion! Also going to use it to fit the ali body panels to the Austin instead of rivets.

 

[blackpopracing]

Not much photo worthy in this update as it was mostly a welding day. Bulkhead is now almost done, it still needs stripping back a bit more in the corners and where the column comes out needs chopping out and new metal put in.

Then I welded up 196,000* holes in the floor so now there are no more holes left!**

* this might be an exaggeration

** this may not be true as I found another couple as I packed up!

62 hours.

 

[blackpopracing]

Next night was fabrication night. Thought it was about time we put some bits back on for a change.

I started with some 1.5mm sheet steel, cut to size with my trusty corner cropper.

Which started like this;

Then it got folded in my bench vice folder - these are so useful if you don't have one I recommend you get one as they will fold up to 4mm steel.

Which give you folds like this;

And with a bit more cropping and filing and the addition of some 5mm steel rivnuts they look like this.

These are for securing the lower edge of the dashboard, I will possibly add a middle one but we are having a central switch panel so it can wait until that is fabricated first. They were welded on the lower dash tube here;

Then I spent the next hour & a half working out how to fit the wiper motor up in the dashboard. I've shortened the bundy tube and got a mount tacked in here - this is the MkII mount as the first was going to mount off the bulkhead, but half way through I though the crossbrace tube was a better place to mount from. It needs more work and we need the proper mounting rubbers as the ones I have are perished.

This should be almost entirely hidden by the dash once it's back on.

64.5 hours.

 

[blackpopracing]

more fabrication the next evening.

Wiper mount is progressing but needs a bottom mount.

The vice folder made short work of some 3mm plate steel;

Which got welded to the main bracket. It has some rubber that will be bonded to the bottom to stop noise.
All finished and welded in.

Dash fitted back, it will only need a small cover plate fitted to completely hide it. Phil should be happy with that.

First bit of bling goes back, polished stainless bolts for the bonnet rod mount

Then we turned to this - mmmmm spaghetti mmmm

The rest of the session was spent designing a bracket fit it to mount up next to the wiper motor. It's mostly fabricated now so photos will be put up soon.

67 hours.

 

[mylesdw]

Great thread, thanks for posting and keep up the good work. I'd be fretting about all that bare metal lying about and corroding by now; does it actually not matter too much?

 

[blackpopracing]

Great thread, thanks for posting and keep up the good work. I'd be fretting about all that bare metal lying about and corroding by now; does it actually not matter too much?

Never had an issue in my garages, but it depends on how warm & dry your garage is.

 

[blackpopracing]

not too far off getting up to date in real time now. Next night more fabrication.

Fuse board mount is done - a bit heavy duty but I had to use what I have to hand in the metal bin, so it's 20 x 3mm angle with some 5mm rivnuts fitted. Backplate then bolts to these.

And all welded into the car;

Dashboard back on and it's nicely hidden;

But easy to see to check fuses if you look underneath;

Yesterdays view;

and todays version - it's the little details that make the bigger picture;

I then made a start on the boot gutter repair sections, first half stretched here;

And clamped in place - happy with that fit, I'll need to cut out the rotted section next.

69.5 hours.

 

[blackpopracing]

Bits arrived - unfortunately some were bits I did not order & bits ordered were missing. A quick phone call to Car Builder Solutions had it sorted and the replacements will be with me soon.

Bits that did arrive were the wiper motor hoop (rubber pad is on back order) and brake pipe clips. Impressed with the wiper motor hoop as it's stainless steel - a nice suprise.

Other bits were some nice adjustable door switches and a wiper motor plug as Phils was missing.

Last bit was a hazard switch which looks quite smart as its a pretty flush fit when installed.

Quite a lot of connections on the back, I suspect not all will be needed though.

I got a test peice cut at work for fitting the bootlid interior lamps;

It needed a bit of tweaking but the lamps now click in nicely;

A full panel will be made for the upper boot area with 2 of these lamps fitted with a switch. I used them in my car as they are tidy and light the boot area very well.

That night was a 'clean night' in the garage. To avoid getting dirty for once I thought I have a look at the spaghetti that pretends to be a wiring harness.

Chucked it on the bench and with a test meter started to work my way through the switches & wires to see what was connected to what. Phil had paid the previous rod shop to do some new wiring for him, while it's basically ok the crimping is complete rubbish.

Nearly every joint will pull out with only gentle pulling, wires were only squashed in with pliers He obviously does not own a crimping tool. The new multi plug connectors are pretty rubbish as well, so those will be getting replaced with proper quality items.

The wiring is basically ok, but as it's been messed with over the years it's completely tangled up, I'll get it labelled up and then disconnect everything so I can get all the runs neatly packaged and laid out in their proper sections so it all runs neatly in proper conduit with no knots in it.

I can then draw out a proper wiring diagram for it for future reference.

71 hours.

 

[blackpopracing]

Last weekend Phil came round again for a good session on the car. Not much progress to look at but we did get on with a fair bit.

Phil wanted to drop the front suspension so he could take it away for cleaning & painting. Bolts were siezed in the chassis on the drivers side but the nuts came off fairly easily so we dropped it down with the bolts still in the chassis. I'll leave these soaking for a few days with WD40 for now and I'll see if I can get some penetrating oil from somewhere. The tabs for the flexible brake hoses were in the way of the crossmember nuts, so I cut them off and welded them a little further over to give better access for reassembly.

Phil also stripped the worst of the paint off the front chassis rails and in the transmission tunnel, only the rear axle & fuel tank left to come off now and it will be 100% totally stripped. And Phil thought I was just going to give it a quick respray Seized bolts can be seen in this photo.

After that I tasked him to clean all the rubbery goo off the rear wheel arch repairs - a rubbish job, but it is his car, lol. I had cleaned up some of the boot floor around the tank sender access hole but then Phil scraped off the rest of the paint ready for me to strip it to bare steel later on.

While Phil was doing this I was working on the fact that the doors close so tightly to the A pillars that there is not really enough space for the door shut switches.

So, with some sockets and a vice some metal got squashed

which produced these - pretty pleased with how they came out!

Door switches fit good;

So, choppity chop in the A post;

And bzzzt, bzzzt sparkly thing, combined with noisy grindy thing made it look like this, noice! A little bit of filler will make it look factory.

Just got to copy it on the other side now.

78.5 hours

 

[4potHemi]

First class work with great attention to detail, but making good progress!

 

[cptpugwash]

Like your idea of how to overcome the door switch prob.
That's come out looking really neat

 

[stormbird]

Next night was fabrication night. Thought it was about time we put some bits back on for a change.

Then it got folded in my bench vice folder - these are so useful if you don't have one I recommend you get one as they will fold up to 4mm steel.

Which give you folds like this;

And with a bit more cropping and filing and the addition of some 5mm steel rivnuts they look like this.

That looks useful is it the Axminster one ? 100mm or 150mm ?


Axminster-Adjustable-Vice bender

regards Paul

ps impressive work as usual !

 

[blackpopracing]

Thanks chaps.
Paul, yes it's the Axminster one, mine is a 4 inch unit.

So on this day I was mostly tired having got up at what would have been 6am to do my Covid centre work. Got home and had some lunch and then fell asleep, lol! Upshot of that was I did not venture out to the garage till about 3.30 that day.

So, on to the other door pillar then........er...no Did I mention I'm a butterfly and like to flit around on jobs?

So......I looked at the rear boot floor area and cleaned it up fully;

Then did a bit of cardboard aided design to sort out the big hole where the fuel filler neck comes through the floor. As you can see the previous rodshop had chopped it out (rather untidily!) and just left it.

A bit of cardboard & tape later;

And transferred to steel. I folded it around a bit of tube as it had about the same radius as the boot floor.

And after a bit of work it looks like this;

I then dropped the tank out and did another trial fit, fairly happy with that so I drilled some holes in the smaller peice & plug welded it in - adding a few tacks around the edges to stop them lifting.

The removable peice fits quite well now.

What is under the removable bit is not so good it will need some work. It looks pretty bad here.

But with some cleaning back (cant get in the corners easily unfortunately) and some of the worst metal cut out it's looking better.

New metal will need to be welded into this area now.

83 hours.

 

[blackpopracing]

The next nights progress was the other A pillar mod, not as tidy as the drivers one - the metal was really thin.
Again, a skim of filler will sort it though.

Then back on to the rear filler area. Some new metal was cut & shaped ready for welding in;

Cover still fits ok over it.

84.5 hours

 

[blackpopracing]

Back on it the next night, boot gutter repair is now welded in on the left side, still got the other side to do.
Clamped up ready for welding;

And welded in.

Then on to the grotty bulkhead where the steering column exits. This has been hacked around over the years and is in a sorry state.

Looks a bit better now

Unfortunately as I was climbing between the chassis rails to template the hole, the steering column mount - balanced on the chassis rail for templating - got knocked by my shoulder, just as I had my hand splayed on the floor to take my weight. And of course the 6mm plate part had to land right on my nail bed of my finger Jeez did that hurt! The real barsteward part is I will lose the nail now

Ouchy finger

New repair section cut, needs a bit of trimmimg to get it to fit properly for welding up. That braze is going to be fun to weld near

85 hours.

 

[Taxirod]

Just saw this thread and read it all the way through, excellent work, what a mate to have, how much would all that work cost in a shop.......

 

[blackpopracing]

Turns out I should have melted a hole in my fingernail to let the blood out.

Hmmm, had I known about the hot paperclip trick I 'might' have been brave enough to try it last night. It's going to cause me problems when it comes to the sanding stages

Finger looks like this now;

Funny, the nail already feels like it's almost detached and I've caught it on lots of things already

This was the offensive offending item that fell on it;

Anyway......ruined fingers aside, back to car stuff.

New steel all welded in now, braze did mostly grind off and only caused a few spits in the welds. Had to chase a few holes as the metal is very thin.

And dressed back. The bulkhead is never going to win any beauty competitions, but with some stonechip on the lower sections it will hopefully look tidy.

Rusty bits get a dose of Hydrate 80 on them.

and then on to the other side of the boot gutter. Boot floor also got a coat of Hydrate 80.

87.5 hours