Josef

Bouncing back and forth between the boot and the b-post here. Didn't figure this out when initially fitting it but the Steelcraft b-post / door shut panel isn't deep enough where the lock striker plate fits (which meant the door wouldn't shut no matter what I tried, and the door-wing panel gap was huge when I got it close to shutting). Fortunately that part of the original panel was just salvageable, so I had to do some re-working there later. Got no response from the supplier or the manufacturer when I e-mailed commenting on this fairly major problem though...

I really really wanted to buy a classic when I was living in Perth for just that reason, but I didn’t have anywhere really I could’ve worked on it, or any tools so decided to give it a miss…

I've redone my Herald's rear brakes completely, rebuilt backplates with that groove built up with weld, new levers, clevis pins etc. It's no surprise how poor the handbrake was before with the amount of play from the wear to all those parts.

Small repair to the bulkhead corner, filling in the front of the rear wheel arch, then on to untangling the braze-tastic repairs to the boot floor.

Inner sills done! The outer sill there was a NOS Rover branded one that showed up on eBay. Also on eBay, a NOS b-post panel appeared. If only Fittchets had had a clear out a few weeks earlier, cause I absolutely could've used that!

Repairs to the heelboard crossmember, a large chunk of heel board fabricated and fitted, and prepping for the inner sill. I used a different brand of weld-through primer here, which had terrible welding properties...

I’ve had my Herald since 2007. It’s generally always presented pretty well, but I consider it to be a rolling restoration. After the work I’ve done on the Spitfire though I can now much better recognise areas of the body that need attention, and am able to deal with them. So I’ve been poking at my boot corners which were not in quite as good condition as I had thought!

Wonderful, thanks @Colin Lindsay!

Would someone with decent original (or known to be repaired to original spec) boot corner mounting points mind posting some photos for me? Particularly looking for the shape of the thick bracket part where it usually rots away flat against the floor/chassis.

Getting the floor in, and the bulkhead adjusted. Given there was barely anything original on this side to work from the plan was to get the a- and b-posts repaired to the point I could attach the floor, and work from that.

Starting small, repairs to the upper a-post, bulkhead and heel board / rear deck area. Then on to the lower a-post (full panel this time, I had learned that lesson at least! The repair needed to the bulkhead had previously been 'fixed' by having a tiny bit of sound insulation stuck over the top of it making the hole practically invisible from the engine bay... The O/S sill I'd scrapped started to come in handy here as I was able to steal some nice long bits with pre bent right angles, I don't have the kit to make a straight long bend like that so would've had to do it in bits. Expensive way to go about it, but at least the panel wasn't going completely to waste!

I'm pretty sure from the colour and shape that I (well, they're my Dad's really) have the same set of metal shears! That tunnel is coming nicely, shame to read about another 'professional' job that was anything but though.

New Years day 2021. See, I was right to attack the passenger side too. Just look at those top quality repairs to the a- and b-posts - I actually paid someone for that. I wasn't fooling myself about being able to do little bits at this point: so it was out with the floor, and off with most of the sill straight away.

So, after four months it was time to put the car back on its wheels. I needed to turn it to be able to work on the other side. Would it start? Of course not! The engine wasn't getting any fuel, I thought at the time it was the fuel pump so cleared everything I could from the garage and pushed the car through a multi point turn (with some assistance). The passenger side still looked OK, but I was able to recognise now where there was going to be filler, and there was no way I was prepared to trust any of it...

Sill on, along with the closing plate and floor crossmember. This is actually the second sill I fitted, I got half way through welding the first one and was so unhappy with it I eventually decided to cut it off and start again. I also should've positioned the sill and wing together rather than welding the wing on first (which is what I did on the passenger side). One side done though! This was mid December 2020 after ~3.5 months of working on it most evenings and weekends.

Thanks! I think it was a mixture of not being able to go anywhere cause of lockdowns, and never at any point really appreciating quite how much actually needed doing... Until I'd ripped through one side of the car and thought it was a safe bet the other side was similar, and at that point I was half done (well, except for the doors, but see earlier point about being unable to judge how much work was needed )

Piecing together the lower b-post (previously consisted of mostly lumps of weld) and fitting the rear wing finisher.

Wing on! Along with the reinforcement bracket under the boot for the bumper stays (it was ~1.5mm steel so I'd had to wait for a bit of that to arrive). I had to cut into the leading edge of the wing to fit the door but otherwise it went on surprisingly easily.

The rear half of the wheel arch was repairable. So I got on and did that intending to use half of the commercially available repair section to do the, mostly completely missing, front half. Then decided that it wouldn't marry up nicely (given the repair panel was made of several parts welded together rather than being a pressing) so sent it back and built my own to match the outer wing.

Yeah the beige coloured ones available all over eBay are junk. I bought one and it punched a total of two holes before refusing to do any more. Took me a while to get my money back too. Extremely useful tool though so I second the suggestion!

There are some parts of the Spitfire where 1.2 mm is closer to the original gauge. The heel board and crossmember that sits behind it off the top of my head. I’d probably get a bit of both 1.2 and 1.0 mm (you won’t need masses as you’re unlikely to be fabricating large patches) and measure the panel you’re mending to pick the most appropriate!

On to the boot while I was waiting for the rear wing to arrive. Turns out these repairs were brazing (straight over rust) and I think date from the time the car was painted red. In hindsight I ended up doing so many repairs to the boot floor that maybe I should've just bought the panel. Also, a test fit of the sill, which looked OK.

With the floor fitted I was able to get on with the inner and middle sills. Also figured out the rear wing was scrap too. Whoever worked on the front of it must've had a welder intended for bridge girders or oil rigs judging by the gauge of the forrest of welding wire on the back of some of the panels. At the rear there was some badly beaten out accident damage round the bumper mount (it looked more like a golf ball under all the filler), and the lower edge was full of rot and fibreglassed in metal. Oh and someone had then welded a repair to a plate that was only attached to the rest of the car by the fibreglass!

Finishing off the heel board area, starting to weld the floor in and patching the wheel arch. Out of interest, anyone have any decent photos / descriptions of how the two rear wheel arch panels and the b-post panel all fit together? There was nothing left to tell me what was 'right' here.

With a and b-posts to attach it to, I got the floor sat in and started working on the heelboard and cross-member. That gave me some worries as there were about three layers of overplating on these parts... Underneath though the crossmember was intact except for the outboard end.