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

[Bordfunker]

Thanks Dave I might go have a look at that, as the metal on mine is pretty thin to attempt welding on.

 

Karl

[dougbgt6]

There's a Radio4 programme called "I've never seen Star Wars". It's all about weird people who haven't done things everybody else has. ( Lewis! Stop sniggering at the back!)

 

I've never been to Ikea, what is it?

[Bordfunker]

 

I've never been to Ikea, what is it?

You'll be telling me you've never seen Star Wars next!

 

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

Snigger....me l go to Ikea just to have their meat balls it anoys the Mrs.

Just a dutch oven, keep the duvet tight round your kneck .

 

Doug You need to get out more , they sell lots of flat pack, home ware and gadjets that actually work

The meatballs certainly work. And you can sit all day and keep refilling your coffee

Walk round all day and go gome with some coat hangers,or a glass squeegee

[daverclasper]

Or the free oddments/damaged stuff they put out at ours. 

[Bordfunker]

I finally got back from Malaysia early yesterday morning, but the effects of jet lag meant I didn't feel much like working on the Herald until today unsurprisingly.

Before I went away I tidied the garage up, and got my eldest son to give me a hand lifting the bonnet onto the roof of the Herald, getting it out of the way, and reducing my opportunities to bang my head on it!

This has made a big difference in terms of access, as you can see from the second picture, and allowed me to continue working on the passenger side of the chassis.

This is the bit I like least, spending hours with wire bushes, stripping back paint and rust to bare metal, and then treating it with Kurust, which is bad enough on the bits which are easy to reach, but is a complete pain in the arse when it comes to the dumb irons and the various sticky out bits of the chassis.

This is where I had got to after a couple of hours.



I hate cleaning out the rears of the dumb irons! Did I mention that already?



I also removed the starter motor to improve access to the chassis, at this rate there's going to very little left attached to this car!

Some previous owner decided it would be great idea to cover the chassis and bulkhead in a black under seal type paint, which is impervious to wire brushes and stripping discs.

Apparently white spirit can shift this stuff, so I know what I'll be trying tomorrow!

I'll also continue the clean up of the front bumper support, the ends of which are looking a little tatty, as you can see from the pic below.



I think these may need a bit of tidy up, and the application of some weld beads, so I better get practising with my newly acquired mig welder.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Following hot on the heels of yesterday's activity, I decided to have a go at removing the under seal with white spirit, which I must admit I was somewhat sceptical about.

This was my starting point, under seal applied liberally to both outrigger and bulkhead.

First up I doused the area with white spirit applied with a brush, and allowed it to soak in for 10 minutes or so.

I then attempted to remove the under seal with a wall paper scraper, but it just wasn't cutting it, so I tried a wood chisel instead.

Immediate results, which left me with this in under half an hour.



It seems my skepticism was misplaced, and half an hour after this, and with some effort with the stripping disc I had this.

Unfortunately this also highlighted some holes in the front outrigger that weren't supposed to be there.

 

 

These had been covered by under seal previously, and the box section of the out rigger was full of leaves and dirt, which had to be blown out with a high pressure air line, and these probably contributed significantly to the rot here.



Before I attempt a fix the holes in the out rigger I'll remove the passenger side sill, it's damaged anyway, and check the condition of the side rail. No point patching up the end of the outrigger if the side rail is toast, which I don't think it is.

I think next weekend maybe spent practising my welding skills, and probably the weekend after that and so on!

I'm glad I bought a welder capable of handling chassis gauge steel, all part of my cunning master plan to try and make myself more self sufficient, particularly as son no.2 is off to Uni this September.

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

I can see a tub removal thread appearing Ha !

[Bordfunker]

I can see a tub removal thread appearing Ha !

I want avoid that, having had to do that on my previous Herald, and it never went back together again after that!

 

Also I always heard that any outrigger replacement is best attempted with the tub on for alignment purposes, and I am rather hoping that I can get away with a patch on the outrigger for now, as the bulk of it is solid.

 

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

they were never right when new  were they ??

 

if you weld a rail or outrigger on in situ  you need to have a plate stretcher over the top and tacked inboard .as you cant weld the top face.

 

the question is do you make the chassis fit a wonky body or make a wonky body fit  to a straight flat chassis

all down to preference

Pete

[Bordfunker]

It's a Triumph, so I'm aiming for wonky chassis and body!

 

Karl

[daverclasper]

Hi, and great resto thread, thanks Karl

 

Interesting this body stuff

 

There's a good Vitesse body resto article of a maybe typical small chassis Triumph, online, written  by, I think, Willow Triumph. Took ages apparently, partly due to previous work and poor fitting replacement panels "shortening/extending panels hours of fiddling, there's no rules on this sort of job".

 

So, unless starting from a scratch rebuild and spending many, many hours, I guess it's a case of accepting some poor panel fit.

 

In some "buying a small chassis Triumph" articles, it suggests, "some time" to sort this out. Not sure if this is the norm, more a Rubic Cube with some/lot's of fabrication involved? .

 

Dave  

[Bordfunker]

I'm not aiming for a concours finish Dave, so I can live with the odd gap that may be out of tolerance.

 

I think you have to accept that the Herald & Vitesse are real 'bitsa' cars, rather than the all of a piece monocoque structures of many of their contemporaries, but that's why we love them, as it also makes them easy to work on.

 

I finally screwed up my courage and broke out the new mig welder yesterday and spent an hour setting it up and practising on some sheet steel.

 

It wasn't great, but I did manage to join two pieces of steel together, so more practise is in order before I attempt a fix on the chassis.

 

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

its easy  do you want bird Sh!t or blow holes  last time i used mine i welded the wire to the  nozzle   never to go again 

till i get a new torch head and that was with a separate wire feed transformer and added brackets to support the wire feed rubbish assy.

it sits sad in the bottom of the cupboard patiently waiting ......for what .....

   

they had girls doing mig at our place , i mean girls   if you had a weld problem you chased the foreman .

 

Pete

[Bordfunker]

I have managed both bird shit and blow holes this afternoon!

However I have now fathomed the power settings on my welder, which were not at all intuitive.

I started off by cutting out the rotten portion of the outrigger with an air powered cutting disc, which left me with this.
 

Which in close up looked like this.

Everything looked fairly solid and therefore ready for a patch to be tacked in, so I used the section cut out as a template and simply scribed around it on some 2mm steel sheet, before cutting it out with the cutting disc.

I then set about welding in the patch, today's aim being to simply tack the patch in while I practise my seam welding, however the best laid plans and all that...

First up, I couldn't get a welding clamp into the outrigger to support the patch, and I hadn't thought to buy a welding magnet, so I ended up using a magnetic tool tray to hold it in place, crude but it worked.

Long story short, patch welded in, but it turns out the lower right hand edge of the hole in the outriggers were too thin and I ended blowing holes in them, see below. Not pretty!

 

So tomorrow I will cut it all out again, making sure the edges have sufficient meat on them to weld to.

Not a particularly productive afternoon, but I have learned a few things which I can apply to my next attempt.

Karl

[mishmosh]

its a tricky art, as you have discovered.  Lower power and slower I suggest. Obviously it will find any thin steel , which is why people always used to plate for the MOT.

[Bordfunker]

I did think about plating it, but would prefer the neatness of butt weld, and without creating a double skinned area which could be more prone to rot in future.

 

If I could get behind the patch an overlapping repair could be seam welded on both sides, but I just don't have the access for that.

 

Still, all part of the learning curve.

 

Karl

[mishmosh]

sorry I wasnt suggesting plating, merely explaining why it happens. 

[Pete Lewis]

One trick with gas welding is to use old wire coat hangers as it melts and flows so easy on old metal

 

which doesnt help much with mig

 

Adding a seperate feed motor supply gave more stable wire speeds it doesnt dive slow on striking.

 

pete

[Bordfunker]

Mishmosh, don't apologise, as I said the thought of plating the patch did cross my mind as it would have been a lot easier.

 

Pete, I think I just need to grind the edges back a little further until I hit full thickness steel, which should then give me something to weld to.

 

Not sure I'd have a lot of faith in the steel used in coat hangers!

 

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

was Triumph steel any better  ???

 

ha 
 

 

Pete

[Bordfunker]

That depends, as I know BL bought a job lot of steel from Fiat in the 70s, which I believe were used on Dolomites.

 

Explains a lot!

 

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Following on from yesterday's exploits I cut out the patch I'd attempted to weld in yesterday, and then cut back to good metal.

 

I then cut out a new patch and attempted to weld it in.

 

To be honest, it went better than yesterday, with the power turned down to minimum and the wire feed turned down to 4.

 

3 sides welded in fairly well, but the side nearest the centre of the car kept blowing through.

 

It looks as if the rot goes further than I expected, so I can see me cutting out another section, and welding in another patch next weekend, at least then I'll have my new welding magnets to hold the patch in place.

 

The reason for the rot is the ton of muck that I had to clear out from the back of the out rigger, mainly mud and leaf debri, which looks like it has been there for years.

 

Karl

[Bordfunker]

This weekend hasn't seen a great deal of progress due to getting up late yesterday, then having to go get my new glasses, and then having visitors today, so work has taken place in short bursts.

One of the jobs I dislike most is cleaning up parts prior to painting. I know it's essential, but it is bloody boring, but well suited to being done in bits when you have a spare half an hour.

Focus of my clean up activity was the passenger side engine bay valance, which unlike its opposite number, has not succumbed to the dreaded tin worm, and responded well to strip discs and wire brushes. [

 

URL=https://imageshack.com/i/pme93vZrj][/url]

 

This vision of shining beauty took me about an hour and a half over yesterday and today, and has since received the customary coating of Kurust, which means it should be ready for etch primer next week.

With visitors safely out of the house and Lincolnshire bound, it was time to bite the metaphorical bullet once more, and try sorting out that outrigger.

First job, cutting back to good metal, which left me with this.



Next up was creating a card template, and cutting out a repair section from fresh steel.

This was then held in position with one of my new magnetic clamps.[

 

URL=https://imageshack.com/i/pnoOm2gqj][/url]

I really can't praise these magnetic clamps enough, they make welding so much easier, leaving me with a neatly tack welded repair.



Idiot notes on patch are essential for me!

And here it is welded in.

 

I appear to have found good metal at the top of the patch, and where it joins to the original patch and the centre of the outrigger, but despite appearances, the metal at the bottom keeps blowing through.

Next week will therefore see more cutting and welding, though I may just cut out the two patches, grind back, and then put in a single larger patch.

The upside is that I am starting to get the hang of welding, and the repair itself appears to be good and strong.

Happy days!

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Checked the welder today and realised that I'm almost out of welding wire.

 

I think I know I'll be buying this week!

 

Karl