Bordfunker

Looking at the quality of the new mounting plates I’m not surprised most seem to be missing their nuts. Never nice! So I’ll just source some new nuts and weld them on once I’ve cleaned up the plates themselves. Just need to find some more mounting plates to make a full set. Karl

No chance of flies today, or at all this weekend, given the torrential rain. Well not in Oxfordshire at least. Which has at least meant some time in the garage, as there was no way the lawn was going to get mowed, not without a submarine lawn mower, and I couldn't be arsed to go to the tip. During the week I'd had a sort out of my many boxes of bits and pieces that have come off the car to date, which unearthed one of the body to chassis mounting plates which I had cut off the car due to it being seized. So I thought I'd kick of with something that I've frequently read about, but hadn't had an opportunity to actually try, namely welding a nut onto the seized bolt to aid removal. An old Nyloc performed the task of sacrificial nut. Nice big blob of weld, which left the Nyloc smoking and glowing cherry red, which just left the cutting of the un-threaded portion of the bolt. Which then allowed me to wind out the remains, leaving me with another chassis to body mounting plate to add to my motley collection. According to the WSM I should have 4 of the large mounting plates, but I only have 1, which is probably not surprising given that the chassis was missing a number of mounting bolts when I took the body off! With the welder warmed up, and my eye in so to speak, I set about finishing the arch repair patch, by cutting the slots that would allow me to create the required curvature of the lip to meet that on the arch repair section. Each of the slits was then welded, leaving me with a rather snaggle toothed looking piece. Not pretty, but a quick buzz with the angle grinder to remove the unwanted sections, left me with this. Much more presentable, and now almost ready for fitting. But before I can even think about fitting the patch, I needed to first cut out the remaining rust around the base of the B-pillar. There's a flange at the base of the B-pillar, which is spot welded to the closing plate which runs between the B-piller and rear arch, and I first needed to drill out the spot welds to release the flanges. I then cut away the B-pillar flange, as well as what was left of the closing plate. Note how cruddy the metal to the right of the mounting bracket looks in the pic above. Rust had got in between the two sections, but thankfully the bulk of it superficial only, however water had obviously pooled at the base of the B-pillar inside the car, as there was a rust hole behind the flange next to the mounting bracket. Which meant cutting out the perforated section, during which, due to my ham fistedness, I managed to damage a perfectly health body mounting bracket. D'oh! I could have kicked myself. Nothing for it but to weld up the cuts. By this time I had to wheel the tub back into the garage as it had started raining again, and I really didn't fancy electrocuting myself with the welder! And this was the cut that had caused all the trouble in the first place. All of which meant another repair section was in order. Now I could have just folded up an L-section to plug the gap, but that would have been incorrect, as the left hand end of the patch needs a joddled section to accommodate the closing panel joint. I therefore made it in two parts, welding them together to get this. Note joddled edge to the right, which goes in thus. It needs further trimming before final fitting, but that can wait until next week, following which I can start making up the closing panel. All in all it is a slow and laborious process, but now that the welder is working as it should, and I can therefore obtain predictable results, I can actually enjoy the process. Did I mention that I am a glutton for punishment? Karl

I don’t particularly want to kill the spiders, I’m just not keen on sharing my working space with them. So it’ll probably be a case of hoovering the little buggers up, and then chucking them over the fence! Karl

I went with belt and braces. I used Loctite 5980 sealant. Anyones guess how it will hold though as it’s still sitting on the shelf awaiting completion of the chassis. Karl

Poor harmless spiders my arse! We’re loused out with False Widows here, and they are not nice! I’m not generally bothered by spiders, but False Widows I just don’t like. Tony, as for being able to find stuff, I did actually box a whole load of parts and spares up, but rather cunningly have attached a list of contents to each box! I even managed to find tools that I’d forgotten I had! Karl

It's been a fortnight since my last update, and after the weekend of plumbing, the following weekend was spent doing more DIY, just this time in the garage. Like most of us, I struggle with enclosed storage space in the garage, as grinding out all the rust on the Herald, creates a load of dust and crud which gets everywhere. So, when Mrs B alerted me to an old kitchen base unit and wall cupboards being offered for free on our local market place, I was all over it. It got even better when we turned up to collect it, as it came with a couple of metres of old melamine worktop as well. So, despite best intentions, last weekend was spent fitting all of this, and filling it with all of my stuff, most of which needed cleaning first. Note orderly storage of spanners, which just needs me to write the sizes under each hook for ease of location. All of which freed up space on the shelves, for my various tool boxes which had previously been scattered around the garage. Note little chest of draws which was another score on the local Facebook market page, and which is now full of various sized washers and screws from the car. So that was last weekend, nothing done on the car, but storage sorted, and as part of the fitting of the cupboards, I ended up with a new cordless drill/driver! Result! This weekend was a bust in terms of Saturday as I was busy decorating, but after walking the dogs, and mowing the lawn, hopefully for the last time this year, it was time to hit the garage for a few hours on Sunday. Again I spent the first couple of hours doing more tidying up as I needed to move the compressor so that it was accessible. This tidying up lark takes forever! First job was to cut out my previous attempts at repairing the lower front of the arch with a combination of angle grinder and air powered die cutter, and to fabricate a repair section. Now, I did make a start on this one night last week, cutting out, and forming a rough patch, but this needed a lot of finessing as this is a complex shape to replicate. An hour of hammering with a variety of hammers and dollies, as well as grinding and filing left me with this. I know it doesn't look that impressive, and ignore the rough edge of the flange, this will get cleaned up when the arch repair goes on, as well as cutting the top section down to size, but it fits nicely, and it's generally the right shape, more later. A bit blurry, but it illustrates the curves inherent in this patch. But it's missing one curve, the one that matches the curve of the arch, see the black line in the pic below. The black line is where the arch lip sits, so next step will be to cut a series of slits in the flange, bending each one to create a series of flaps which form a curve. I can then weld the flaps into one continuous profile, which matches that on the arch edge. By the time I'd got to this point, it was too late to consider welding, so I took the grinder to the base of the B-pillar, as I knew it was hiding a multitude of horrors, and I wasn't disappointed. Flaky! Ground back carefully, the mounting bracket is in fine nick, pity the same can't be said for the bottom of the B-pillar, which is decidedly crusty. More investigation will be required next week to work out what needs replacing, and how I'm going to go about doing it. But at least I now have a nice clean, and well organised garage in which to work on the car. Karl

Tony, they are definitely a ‘Marmite’, and you either love independent minded, opinionated, loud but affection dogs, or you don’t. And they are not backwards in sharing their opinions, particularly if they feel you don’t like them. Mrs B’s niece has the same issue, she’s a cat person, and Willow knows that, so just barks at her every-time she visits. Fine with her husband as he loves dogs! Karl

Just to further the thread drift, we’ve got two Beagles, and have had 4 over the years, and they’ve all been thieving little sh1ts! We had the gas man come to read the meter in our old house, which was under the stairs. Meter man enters cupboard and gets down on hands and knees with his torch, trying to read the meter in the recesses of the cupboard. Enter one Beagle, who proceeds to follow meter man into the cupboard, stops, squares herself up, and then does the most tremendous bark. Meter man promptly bashed head on the underside of the stairs, and emits a stream of oaths. Mrs B struggled to apologise, while keeping a straight face, as the Beagle ambles off, content that she has done her bit to protect the pack. There are so many stories like that over the last 13 years, but I wouldn’t have any other breed. Karl

I always liked them, but then I think I understood what Fiat were aiming for, a roomy 6 seater in the same footprint as a normal hatchback. The Mk 2 version looked so dull when compared to the original, but then I’m a sucker for the ugly under dog. Karl

I’d be inclined to return it and get a replacement. If that is just the same, then you’ve got nothing to lose in cutting it to improve the fit. Hopefully the replacement would be a better fir. Karl

It’s galling to think that the most expensive purchase I have ever made is more poorly constructed, and comes with a shorter warranty than a new Hyundai! Even worse, it appears to be the norm across the industry. Karl

Thanks all, good to know I am not alone in suffering bodges in the house as well as in the garage where I’ve come to expect them. The sad part for me is that this a new house, and we are the first people to live in it, so all ‘bodges’ are the work of so called ‘professional’ trades people! As our house is on an estate that is still growing, Mrs B put up some pics on the estate Facebook page, and tagged Bovis Homes! She had a phone call this afternoon from you know who offering to cover some of the repair costs. I do love Mrs B’s evil side sometimes. From the comments we received from other residents, it appears this level of bodgery is not unusual. I do hope any prospective buyers check the Facebook page before putting down a deposit. Karl

Apparently it's not just previous Triumph owners who can bodge repairs, as I rediscovered this week after Mrs B highlighted a wet patch of plasterboard in the downstairs loo, not down to poor aim on my part! My heart sank at this news, as although our house is only 5 years old, it has suffered a litany of woes, many of them plumbing related, and this news almost certainly signalled the end of my plans for the weekend. I wasn't wrong either, as Bovis, in their ultimate wisdom, chose to fully box in the toilet cisterns, and associated pipework behind the toilet, with no access for maintenance, cue cutting out of much plasterboard to reveal this. Last time I checked, and I appreciate that I am not a plumber, but gaffer tape wasn't a recommended way to repair a leaking soil pipe. This was done before we moved in 5 and a half years, so was done as part of Bovis' rectification work prior to us taking ownership. To add further to insult to injury, I had to use an angle grinder to remove the screws that held the pan to the floor as they were both bent in an attempt to get them in the misaligned holes, which then required re-drilling in the correct place. Of course that meant drilling holes in the tile floor, which none of my existing drills could handle, and thus lead to the purchase on a very expensive, (£18), Erbauer tile drill, which made short work of the holes. Would definitely recommend one of these for the toolkit. Looks like it would work on spot welds as well! All of which took up the bulk of the weekend, and lead to me getting absolutely nothing done on the car whatsoever. Thank you Bovis, said no one ever. So more whinge than update I'm afraid this week. Karl

Unfortunately that is often par for the course these days, but at least these panels are available new for our cars, even if they are a bit rough around the edges. No doubt if they were better finished they’d be more expensive still. Best of luck with sorting it out, and I’ll be taking notes as at some point my front valance needs replacing given that it’s a loose cohesion of rust and fibreglass patches. Karl

That looks bloody brilliant! Very nice. Karl

Colin, the bottom the engine valance on my Herald was exactly the same when I started poking around. Triumph built yet another perfect rust trap with that design, mine was full of impacted mud and crud and had rotted from the inside out. Given the valances propensity to rust, I think a fibreglass one is a great idea! Karl

Did wonder whether this was an issue with the new forum software release, as being an ex IT Change manager, the finger of suspicion will always point at the last code or setting change for me. Either way, I have managed to get the images to load by utilising a direct link, rather than the usual forum URL. Thanks Karl

Just realised that the photos aren’t showing on my I-Pad, not sure why as they were visible when I posted on my laptop. Will have to have a look in a moment. It was a definite eureka moment when I worked out the torch was faulty, and it wasn’t that I was too dim to operate a welder. Welder is a Clarke 150 EN Turbo, so a well known make with a good track record, but mine must have been a Friday afternoon special. Karl

Mrs B bought me this book for my birthday, I had asked for it to be fair, as I hadn't been entirely happy with my efforts at welding, and thought that this sounded like a good read. The author restores Jaguar XK120/150s for a living, and the standard of the welding illustrated in the book is truly astounding, which caused me to further question my efforts to date. Try as I might I have been unable to replicate that text book tack weld, of which the above volume is replete, and which is the fundamental of good welding. Consequently I spent much of my week off practising my welding and tweaking variables like wire speed, power, gas flow etc.. All to no avail, they all looked like cack, and were far too hit and miss. Below is a picture of a set of test welds that I performed on a grid divided by the various power settings available on my welder, see the top 3 rows. All either seem to be porous, or blowing holes in the steel, or both! Now porosity means a lack of welding gas being applied, but I knew that the gas was working fine, and there was plenty of it, so why the issue? Cue half an hour experimenting with the welding torch. Now the way that a welding torch is supposed to work, is that the trigger has 2 positions: opens the solenoid which provides the gas, starts the motor which feeds the wire, and opens the circuit for the welding arc. The way mine was operating was the complete opposite, with the gas only starting to flow after the arc had been struck, which meant that rather than the arc being struck in an environment that had been purged of oxygen by the shielding gas, it was being struck in a normal air, hence the porosity and propensity to blow holes in everything. Stripping the torch down revealed that the contact for the arc had been incorrectly assembled, and was in the wrong position. Once reassembled correctly I gave the torch another go. Immediate improvement, and delivery of a text book tack weld! Which now raises the question as to whether the torch has ever worked properly, probably not, and therefore I will need to revisit all of the welding that I have done to date. Arse! Still better safe than sorry, and most of it should be just grinding back the original suspect welds, and going again with a known good weld. All of which meant I didn't get a lot done last week, but I did manage to get a couple of patches in this week. First was the one at the rear of the arch, which I folded up and shaped, before welding it all together into a single section. And then cleaned up and ready for fitting. Before being welded in. Next up was a smaller less complex section. This is probably my best welding so far, which isn't saying a lot, but once ground back it actually looked quite presentable, not that any of it will be visible as it will be hidden behind the arch repair section. So where am I with the arch lip repairs? The red ringed section was done before I sorted out the welded, and looks like pigeon poo! It will therefore be cut out and replaced as I have blown holes in it. The yellow ringed sections were done after, but while perfectly serviceable, took far to long for me to achieve a decent result. The green ringed segment was the last piece that I did, and which I am pleased with, not just because the welds look OK, but because I had the patch made up, welded in, and cleaned up in 30 minutes, which hopefully bodes well for future progress. Karl

Dave, not sure I've broken the back of it, as I still have the bulkhead to go, and that's worse than the tub. However today's efforts have moved things forward, a bit. In spite of the weather, or maybe because of, I spent most of the day in the garage, starting the repairs on the inner arch lip. First item on the list was to offer the outer arch repair section up to see how it fits. Overall pretty good, but it will need trimming and fettling as the curvature in one part of the arch is a little shallow, when compared with the unmolested driver's side. At this point I broke out the air powered cutter and cut out the rotten sections of the arch lip, of which there appear to be many! The lip on the remaining middle section in this photo will need replacing, but I'll do the two sections either side first so that I retain sufficient datum points, and keep the rebuilt lip in the right place. And a big chunk out of the front of the arch. I managed to get one section welded in after lunch, but it was in all fairness a very straightforward L-section which went in with little trouble, being a simple shape to fabricate, and easily accessible for welding. The same could not be said of the section at the front of the arch, which required a more complex patch to be made up, utilising various hammers and dollies, before being welded in. All went well at first with the welder on the same settings as for the previous patch, however instead of producing nice neat welds with plenty of penetration, I just started blowing holes all over the place! What had looked like sound metal turned out to be rotten, and no manner of playing with welder settings or using a copper block behind the weld to dissipate some of the heat, could stop the metal just evaporating in front of the welding torch, so nothing for it but to cut out a larger section until I reached good metal. Which in turn meant making up a another repair section. Two to be exact, as the first attempt started to split as a result of me overworking the steel, so this is take 2. Still more work to do before it's ready for welding in, but that is where I left it for today. So roughly 5 hours of work, 2.5 patches in, and another 3.5 to go before the inner arch lip is fully repaired. This could take a while. Karl

Pete, Tony, many thanks for the encouragement. One of the reasons for re-starting work on the chassis and rear tub is a desire for some real progress towards getting behind the wheel again. I really did enjoy driving the car before I took it off the road, but it always felt fragile, not because of its age, but more probably because of the rot in the chassis and body, as well as the fact that several of the body to chassis mounts were missing! Therefore I’m really looking forward to driving the Herald when it’s fully sorted. The arch repair panel turned up today, and tomorrow is a car day, so will make a start on the arch and lower rear wing repairs. Thanks Karl

Having stripped the last of the underseal off the passenger side rear wheel arch, it's time to address the rusty wheel arch and the lower B-pillar area as these are distinctly rough, completely perforated in a number of areas, and with rust between the panels. You can see in the photo below where the welded seam has blown due to rust breaking out between the two panels, and which affects the entire join between inner arch and wing. So this afternoon was spent drilling out the spot welds in the wheel arch lip, guided by a rough sanding which left paint in the dimples left by the spot welds, well that was the idea anyway. I managed to find most of the spot welds, but a few alluded me and had to be attacked with a wood chisel and lump hammer. This allowed the two panels to be separated, and the wing lip cut out. As expected the return lip on the inner arch was a little the worse for wear. So while I already have the wing arch repair section on order, I am going to need to patch the inner arch first. And while the angle grinder was out I attacked the base of the B-pillar to rear arch section. Again, although I already have the repair section for the outer panel, I am going to need to fabricate the vertical closing panel which sits behind the wing, and to which one of the body to chassis mounts is also welded. I've got a week off this week, and a couple of full days to work on the car agreed with Mrs B, so hoping to make some real progress. Karl

My local garage has done me a deal in the past on tyres for my modern because they needed to clear aging stock, but then they knew that I was 25k a year, and therefore would have worn them out before they got old enough to be an issue. Checked the tyres on the Herald the other month, none match, and they are all over 10 years old! Good job the Herald’s going nowhere soon. Karl

Following last week's significant progress, this week's was somewhat less impressive, but important all the same as it saw me tackling something that I had been putting off for over a year now; removing the last of the underseal from one of the rear wheel arches. Now removing underseal from the underside of the tub last week was fairly straightforward with the scrapers that I have to hand, but they are all straight, and are therefore of limited use in the confines of the wheel arches which are anything but. Being the sad obsessed individual that I am, I was lying awake on Monday night considering this conundrum, and came up with a plan for a more suitably shaped implement with which to remove the aforementioned underseal from the arches. Half an hour with tin snips, angle grinder and some sheet steel left me with this. I used a template gauge to get the curvature right, so the blade conforms almost perfectly to the curvature of the wheel arch, and while it might not change the world as some tools have, it's made my life a lot easier this weekend removing the last of the crud. This is what I started with... ...lots of little bits of underseal stuck in the various folds and ridges of the arch. Use of the hot air gun and the scraper got me to this. Which was followed up by vigorous attack with the angle grinder to leave this. The apparent snails trails are from my latest acquisition, a mini-belt sander, which was great for reaching into all those nooks and crannies the angle grinder can't reach, as well as for some of the more stubborn patches of rust as here. Overall the bulk of the arch on the passenger side was in good nick, but will need a portion of the return flange rebuilt when I sort out the frilly arch edge. So like I said, not a great deal done, but a hurdle overcome as the driver's side arch was tackled last year and just needs a going over with the angle grinder, so that is arches de-undersealed! Karl

As you can probably tell progress has been somewhat patchy of late, focussed on some of the smaller items such as dashboard and wiring loom. The dashboard and loom are now complete and boxed up and set aside for safekeeping, and work continues on filling and sanding the steering wheel. However I have been feeling a distinct lack of progress lately, despite all the work done on the dashboard and loom etc., so wanted to tackle something substantive from a restoration perspective. Consequently I have spent the last couple of weekends focussing on the rear end of the chassis, where some of my original welds needed work, not because they weren't strong enough, but more from an aesthetic view point as they looked a bit rough. Not a lot of photos of this as I think we all know what a weld looks like. This is the rear of the passenger side outrigger and reinforcing gusset. This was repeated for all of the welds on the rear half of the chassis, and then the cleaned up areas received a coat of weld through zinc primer for protection. At this point I was planning to paint the chassis in epoxy mastic as a prelude to top coat, but due to the need to store a couple of mattresses which have now become surplus to requirements, and the subsequent loss of garage space, I have had to move the tub outside for the time being, albeit firmly sheeted over, which made me think about completing the clean up of the underside. Regular readers may remember that some imbecile had, at a date unknown, decided to coat the underside of the car in thick black underseal, cunningly missing all the points that would have most probably received most benefit from underseal! Cue much scraping with heat gun and assorted scraping implements. Looking pretty crusty under there! Some areas had been cleaned previously and then treated with rust stopper. But these were going to need a return visit with a wire brush and the rust stopper ahead of paint. There was plenty of crud stuck to the various protrusions on the underside of the tub, which from this shot, appears to have never received a full coat of either primer or topcoat! No wonder these things rusted! So two days of working with a selection of both rotating and manually propelled wire brushes, left me with this. And look what I found stuck inside one of the chassis mounts! Both had to be chiseled off, so firmly were they rusted to the mount. What I also found were more perforations, in this case on the forward edge of the tub floor where it overlaps the rear end of the front footwell pressing. No real surprise as the corresponding lip on the bulkhead needs new metal letting in as well. With as much done as I could face yesterday afternoon I applied a coat of FE-123 to all of the exposed areas. As you can see from the last pic. I've still got more clean up to do with rags and white spirit to get the last of the underseal off, but I figure another weekend should have the underside of the tub ready for paint, following which it will be time to break out the welder and fix the following: Lower rear wing between B pillar and rear arch on the passenger side, I've already got the repair section for this having done the driver's side last year. Passenger side rear wheel arch, both the outer lip and inner lip will need repairs, the former with a repair panel, and the latter with sheet steel. Front lip of the tub floor where it meets the bulkhead, which should be a simple repair given that it's a flat piece of steel. Finally I need to make a decision on whether to replace the tread plates, as it looks like they have rust between them and the floor pressing which needs addressing. All of which actually feels like tangible progress. Karl