** 26/02/23 Heading Up ** Probably how not to restore a Herald!

[Pete Lewis]

They probably only had a primer dip , with a blow over of body colour from some of the films about production that exist.

Moderns use an E coat we had a enormous tank would take bus bodies   the first in the country , lot of learning  but amazing 

stuff for box sections , , it was dug up cut up and now running in china.  Grrr.

 Not something you can replicate  in the garden unless you nick neighbours electric supply 

Pete0

[Bordfunker]

Pete, having cut open the chassis rail this afternoon, it definitely looks like the interior got a coat of black primer of some description.

Speaking of which this is the holey section that I cut out.

And the reverse side.......nasty!

Not pretty, and remember all the gunk hiding in the chassis rail?

It looks like a family of squirrels have been living in there!

Looking inside of the chassis rail itself, it's clear that the rot has been very localised, with just surface rust over those areas of the interior not still covered in original primer.

You can see the hole in the inner face of the chassis rail that appeared after I cut the patch out, and also the fact that the rust is really limited only to the very bottom of the rail, and doesn't extend into the seam itself thankfully.

This is after I had cleaned back the flange, and prior to cutting out the section with the hole below.

This is after cutting out a section of the inner face, with the new metal just tacked in place.

This was then seam welded and the lip cut back to match the bottom of the chassis rail.

Annoyingly there is also a hole in the outer vertical plane of the chassis, you can see it in the photo below.

Again the rot is very localised, so I cut out only a small area ready for patching, before applying rust inhibitor to both the inside and outside of the chassis, hence the funny colour chassis!

I have already cut out a patch for the main repair section, which is now needs final cutting to exact size before I get around to welding it in next week.

So despite yesterday's set back with the discovery of yet more rot in the chassis, it does feel like I am still making progress, albeit more slowly than anticipated.

Karl

[daverclasper]

Hi Karl. Is that at the bottom of the dip in main rail, in the dif area. If so how do leaves get in there?.

Dave

 

[poppyman]

Maybe its from the leaf spring.........................Sorry..........Could'nt resist  

Tony.

[Bordfunker]

42 minutes ago, daverclasper said:

Hi Karl. Is that at the bottom of the dip in main rail, in the dif area. If so how do leaves get in there?.

Dave

 

I have no idea as there’s are only a couple of little drainage holes on the bottom of the rail, but obviously just big enough to let leaves and crud in, but not out!

Maybe Tony’s right, they came from the leaf spring!

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

Fitted at the factory ????

[Colin Lindsay]

21 hours ago, daverclasper said:

 If so how do leaves get in there?.

Dave

 

Autumn, of course!

[Bordfunker]

I starting to think it’s the remains of some Coventryite’s baccy pouch, inadvertently left in the chassis!

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

Happy baccy???

Pete

[Bordfunker]

Might explain the slap dash welding, and dodgy paintwork!

Mine’s a 68, wasn’t that the Summer of Love?

Would make sense.

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

No its  the year I got married and bought my first new car , 

well I Loved my super Imp.

Pete

[Bordfunker]

'Super Imp' is that what you call your missus?

The weather was so cold and dank yesterday I just couldn't face the garage.

I know, light weight, fair weather restorer!

But I do have the excuse that it was my wedding anniversary, not that Mrs B would have objected.

However today dawned a lot brighter, if not much warmer, so I decided to venture into the garage and crack on with the chassis welding that I started last week.

First up was the small repair to the outer face of the chassis....

...this was then seam welded, and cleaned up with the angle grinder, but then I forgot to take any photos of it.

Next up should have been the large repair to the underside of the chassis rail, which I had started cutting out last week, seen here clamped in location.

It still needs a little tweaking, but overall it's ready to go in.

However, while sitting looking at the pics I had taken of the chassis last week, I noticed what looked like a number of additional holes in the inner face of the chassis rail....

Inspection today proved my worst fears, more rot.

This is after some judicious poking with a screwdriver.

Now that rot is not in the easiest of locations to cut out, and certainly not with an angle grinder, so I decided to break out the die grinder and tungsten carbide tip, pushing it into the holes, and opening them out until I hit sound metal.

Then I marked out the area to be removed with my welding pencil.

Couldn't have done that without the die grinder!

This hole was roughly the size of a 50p piece, necessitating a correspondingly small patch.

5 minutes with the welder, and half an hour with the die grinder left me with this.

I'll probably run another weld bead up the vertical joint between the inner face of the chassis rail and the stretcher, just to ensure it's as strong as it can be, but I'm calling that bit done.

Next week I should be able to close up the bottom of the chassis rail, leaving me with a solid chassis once again.

And yes I have checked the other side of the chassis, and unlike the passenger side it appears to be sound.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Only a couple of hours in the garage this weekend so not a lot of progress, but I did make a start on welding in the large patch under the chassis.

This is it after the first pass of the welder and a quick grind back with my rapidly disintegrating flap disc.

I need to do another run of weld around the edges, and to tidy up the plug welds, but overall I'm fairly pleased with that.

What I'm not so pleased with was my attempt to do a fillet weld around the patch that I applied last week.

I spent half an hour getting the settings & technique right on the bench before attempting the weld itself, but still ended up with this mess!

I'll have to grind it back next week and try tidying it up again. It's plenty strong as it is, just not very pretty!

Next up I turned my attention to something I've been wanting to tackle since I took it off the car, stripping the leaf spring down.

First I applied WD40 to all of the nuts and bolts, before starting to remove the 4 bolts at the bottom of the spring assembly.

These actually came out without any issues, which I was pleasantly surprised at, which then allowed me to tackle the bolt holding the leaves of the spring together.

First I clamped the bottom of the bolt in the vice, before clamping the leaves with the F-clamp, to stop the leaves springing apart suddenly.

The nut was then undone, again, very easily, and the F-clamp released, allowing me to strip the spring into it's constituent parts.

Time to break out the grinder and wire wheel...

....starting with the largest of the spring elements.

I still need to remove the spring eye bushes, but figured that would be easier with the springs cleaned up first.

Once I've cleaned up the springs with a wire wheel, I'll blast them with aluminium oxide, before giving it all a coat of paint.

That's it for this week.

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

time for bed said Zebedee

where's Dylan when you need him

pete

[Nick Jones]

Porosity in those welds suggests not enough shielding gas.

Nick

[Bordfunker]

Nick, what do you usually run at LPM wise?

Mine is set to about 11 LPM with Hobbyweld, which produces a good weld on the bench, however do I need to increase the flow rate when welding upside down?

As you can tell I’m still getting the hang of this.

Thanks

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Despite the somewhat less than balmy weather this weekend I made the effort to get into the garage and continue where I left off last week.

Before that I did though, I spent some time adressing Nick's comment on the porosity of the welds, by reading up a bit on gas flow settings.

I have been welding with a gas flow of 11 litres per second, so tried upping this to 15 LPM, which appears to have addressed the porosity issue as per the picture below.

This is after I had cleaned it all back with a flap disc. It's certainly not an invisible repair, but it's nice and strong, and solid all the way round now.

This is where the small side patch was, which just means that I have to address last week's awful fillet weld and we are, fingers crossed, done with the chassis welding.

While the welding was cooling down, which was very quickly in this weather, I returned to the leaf spring, and started removing the spring eye bushes.

Here's my usual set up attempting to remove the first of the bushes.

My usual set up not only completely failed to get the bush out, but also completely failed, stripping the thread from the studding in the process.

Time to hit it with a hammer and drift.

Still no movement, this b*gger is well and truly stuck in there.

Time for a coffee and a think.

Coffee consumed, time to attack the rubber portions with a drill, followed by a chisel and lump hammer.

Finally some progress. The central steel tube and remains of the bush itself dropped out with a few swift blows, a process I repeated at the other end of the spring.

I still need to remove the steel outer bush sleaves, but that can wait until next week when I plan to attack them a tungsten cardbide burr in the die grinder.

Hopefully by then the mercury in the thermometer will have crept northwards a bit.

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

Just put a hacksaw blade thro    the hole and slot the bush sleeve  maybe twice , 

Pete

[Bordfunker]

You mean not use a power tool?

Luddite!

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

yes its early morning exercise     save the planet 

and probably quicker

pete

[Bordfunker]

Well I tried using a hacksaw to remove the remains of the spring eye bushes, but despite making two cuts in each, neither would budge, even with serious persuasion from a chisel & lump hammer.

So back to plan A, tungsten cardbide bit in a die grinder, which soon made short work, not just of the of the bushes in the spring, but also the bush that was still stuck in the rear diff mount, leaving me with these sorry bits of metal.

You can see the amount of steel and rubber that had to be removed, from the detritus on the bench!

So with these out of the way, I turned my attention to the rear track control arms, or whatever they are called, and removing the bushes them.

The first one I tried resisted all attempts to removce with sockets and studding, and I ended up cutting back the rubber with a wire brush in the angle grinder, and then attacking it with a hammer and chisel.

Still no joy, so I resorted to drilling the rubber out, and then a few quick whacks with the lump hammer and chisel, saw both of them flying across the garage!

Onto the next one, on which both bushes popped out with my usual studding approach, with little to no resistance! Go figure!

Next up was the remaining rear shock absorber, which was attacked with a wire wheel in the angle grinder, the bushes having come out with ner a fight.

Here it is mid-clean up (above), and alonside it's mate, which was media blasted, and the two track control arms, all of which will get media blasted again, and then given a coat of epoxy mastic when the garage warms up enough.

'Is that all you've managed this weekend? What the hell have you been playing at man?'

Well actually I spent most of today re-organising the garage to create as much clear space as possible around the car so that I can continue the media blasting, while keeping the mess under control as much as physically possible, so that I now have a clean space, behind the clear curtain, and a dirty space in front of it which will be clutter free by the time I've finished.

All of which allowed me to recover another kilo of blasting grit from the various nooks and crannies!

I still need to sort out all the gardening tools, and my tat on the wall, but that will be a job for next weekend.

Karl

[68vitesse]

Looks like a proper garage.

Regards

Paul

[Bordfunker]

Mrs B was off at a crafting event this morning, leaving me at a loose end to work on the car, but not wishing to annoy the neighbours I had to start off doing something quiet until a reasonable hour.

What to do?

I made a start on cleaning and stripping down the driver's side rear hub and driveshaft, first giving everything a coat of Gunk, which was worked in with a brush, before being wiped off with a clean rag.

This left me with a cleaner assembly, which I could then start to strip down.

And a bucket of brake bits.

While cleaning the hub & driveshaft assembly I noticed this in the UJ.

You can't see it too clearly from the pic above, but there appear to be 3 gouges in the yoke attached to the driveshaft, which are not replicated on the other side, or on the other hub assembly, therefore not sure if it's damage or a mark from where the casting was cleaned up.

With the rear hub assembly safely stowed away, and the fact that it was now 11, I decided to fire up the compressor and continue the clean up of the leaf springs.

This is where I left them yesterday after attacking each one with an angle grinder and wire brush.

Before I packed up last night I gave them all a coat of rust stopper, which left me with them looking slightly less attractive this morning.

What I hadn't been able to do yesterday was clean up the insides of spring eyes themselves with the anglegrinder, so I broke out the media blast gun., and cleaned up the eyes and any other nooks and crannies that I had been unable to reach previously.

So with that lot cleaned up, and time on my hands, there was no excuse for not finally breaking out the epoxy mastic primer, mixing up a batch, spiling it on the floor, cleaning it off the floor, and then finally getting it into a spray gun, so that I actually got to apply paint!

This stuff is seriously thick, and even thinning it by the maximum reccomended 20%, left me with a fairly thick mix, which required about 80PSI to spray properly. Having said that it went on very well, so I also painted the rear track control arms and shocks. Next time I'm going to increase the thinner ratio.

But I still had quite a lot of paint left, so I thought I might as well go for it and start painting the rear of the chassis.

There is still some clean up to do on the chassis, particularly in the top hat section above the rear diff mount, but I wanted to start protecting the areas that I had already cleaned up and prevent all that good work being undone by flash rusting, and it also gave me a good opportunity to familiarise myself with the epoxy mastic primer.

That's where I left it for this weekend, but that really does feel like good progress after weeks of what felt like two steps forward, one back.

I'll leave that lot to dry off in the garage, then do the undersides of the spring leaves next week.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

After last week's dramatic progress, it was back to slow and steady this weekend.

I only managed a couple of hours on Saturday, so spent some time cleaning up the chassis welds ahead of doing the next bit of painting, and stripping off the rear track control arm mounts from the rear outriggers, and yes I did make a note of the number of shims on each one:

• DS 3 shims
• PS 4 shims

I even took photos as an extra precaution.

The brackets themselves were pretty cruddy, and included a goodly coat of rust & under seal.

These were first attacked with a wire wheel in the drill to get the loose crud off, before getting media blasted.

Note the underseal still stubbornly clinging to one of the brackets. That will have to come off before I apply rust stopper.

I also had a go at the handbrake wishbone, as like everything else on the underside of this car it was covered in cack!

Much nicer! So onto something a little bigger, the rear passenger side upright.

This needs a bit more attention from the blaster, as some of the muck was proving resistant to both wire brushes and blast media.

And seeing as I had the blasting gear out, and I was already thoroughly covered in grit, I thought I might as well crack on with cleaning up the chassis.

First up was the interior of the top hat sections above the rear of the diff.

These are quite difficult to get a blaster into, and you can't see what you are doing either, so it's a case of point and hope.

I think I'll give them one more go, then apply the rust stopper, as I don't think I'll get them much better than that.

After that, I had another go at the driver's side front diff mount, taking it from this....

....to this....

Still more blasting to be done, but for that I'll jack the chassis up so that I can get underneath properly and see what I'm doing.

Hopefully the weather will stay fine next weekend, as I'm hoping to get the chassis blasted back to the middle outrigger so that I can then paint the chassis from there back, as well as all the other little bits like the springs which still need another coat of paint.

Karl

[mark powell]

Slight drift, but hopefully the bolts holding your trailing arm brackets didn't look like this... Found when stripping down my old Midge prior to complete rebuild!