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


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re animals that can kill you, more so up north not so down south, saying that my son who lives near us has had a couple of poisonous copperhead snakes in his suburban backyard this summer caused by a new housing development behind him a bit of a worry, the trouble is by the time the snake catcher arrives there've scarpered. He'd put snake proof mesh on the bottom of the fence at the rear, then a young snake came up the driveway of the townhouses next door and thro the front fence! more mesh reqd, then they'll probably come down the 80 foot entrance drive from the street, hopefully someone will do them in from that source first.

We live in an estate of around 60 houses in the centre of a 18 hole private golf course and we back onto a 2acre council reserve and we we're the first house built and have never seen one bugger in 40 years.

Re SA's there's a lot here now in fact our old neighbor was one, nice guy but the twang takes getting used to.

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The South African accent still catches me out, as well pronouncing G’s as H’s, particularly in people’s names.

Still not sure I believe you about Australian wildlife.

No update this week as in the words of Jesse from the Fast Show, ‘This weekend I have mostly been doing gardening and DIY!’, so no progress on the car.

Which was probably not a bad thing, as I’ve just realised I’m almost out of gas, so before I make a start on the passenger side, a trip to the farm shop is in order.

Karl

 

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My eldest Grandson (Dan) Lives In the hills above Gosford (NSW). He`s a working plumber, What he hates most is when he has to go into the undercrawl of some older houses. The "critters" tend to hide there. He`s been bitten by a spider, and needed urgent medical attention on one occasion. He had a big black bugger in his garage for a long while, could never catch it. Eventually it just vanished?.

What Pete(T) needs is a Mongoose?.

Had some good runs ashore in Capetown. P-E and Durban, Weirdest place was Walvis Bay. We Berthed near what had been a Waleing Station, loads of Abandoned Whale catcher boats just rotting. Loads of scrap Brass to be had.

Pete

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After last weeks hiatus, this weekend almost went the same way, what with taking daughter for a routine hospital appointment, then a trip out to Bedfordshire to pick up another Ercol sofa for Mrs B.

However all of my family commitments were completed by midday Sunday, which meant an afternoon in the garage beckoned.

The first order of business was to finish off the few little bits and pieces left over from the driver's side boot corner, namely the boot corner aperture, which just needed a couple of welds, and the corner knocking back into shape.

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Here it is mid-clean up, but post minor conflagration caused by the sound deadening and seal sealant behind catching fire!

The boot corner welds also got a going over with my newly replaced power file.

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I'm not aiming for a seamless finish, just strong and tidy is good enough.

One last area on the driver's side that needed a revisit was a small patch that I welded into the arch corner a while back. 

Now this was done when the welder wasn't really living up to it's name, and so it was time for a revisit, so I simply ran the welder over the joint, ensuring decent penetration and thus bondage(Fnarr, Fnarr).

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Then it was out with the flap disc, and a couple of minutes of careful grinding back left me with this.

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That will need the merest skim of filler when the time comes.

That was the first half effectively complete, so time for a half time cup of tea and a biscuit, you don't that in the European Super League!

Time to get back on the pitch and tackle this.

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If memory serves, and it frequently doesn't, this was the first boot corner that I tackled, and I made a right hash of it, cutting the hole too big and the repair panel too small, and then having to weld in additional sections to complete it! 

I'd used a Chic Doig repair panel for this originally, but this time I decided to make my own, starting with this.

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I crudely marked up the raw steel to indicate the limit of the steel that would be required for this repair section. The idea here was make sure that I had a big enough piece of steel, without wasting any.

As per the other side of the car, I started forming the curve of the panel where it rises from the boot mounting to the boot floor proper, by hammering the edges of the steel over a section of scaffolding pole in the vice to start the curve off.

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The curve was then refined by beating over a smaller diameter form, in this case a large socket, until I could slip it over the existing panel.

The challenge here is that you have two curved sections coming together at the corner, and unlike the driver's side, the panel is much deeper due to my previous cock ups, making blending the two much more difficult. 

Now, if I was any good with a hammer I could shrink this puckering down to create a smooth corner, but I'm not, so I cheated and slit the corner like this.

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This then allowed me to hammer the corner over a selection of dollies and hammers to give me this.

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What this leaves you with is one section of metal overlapping the other, which we don't really want, so it was out with the mini-disc cutter again, and simply cut along the outer piece of steel, cutting away the excess.

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This was after a couple of rounds of hammering, forming, and cutting to give me this relatively neat corner, at which point it was time for welding.

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That's starting to look a bit more boot corner shaped, even if it isn't quite the same standard as the Chic Doig panel, but then there's only around £4 of steel in my panel, and a couple of hours of my time.

Two minutes with the flap disc, leaves us with this.

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At this point the panel itself is too deep, but that's what I'm aiming for as the next step will be to cut out the old boot corner, and then cut and tack this new one in before I start replacing the boot side panel.

Here it is resting in place for now, though I have since drilled out the two chassis mounting holes.

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I'll probably give that a coat of weld through primer this week ahead of cutting out the old corner.

I can't remember what state the boot corner reinforcing panel was in, but I'm sure I will soon found out, but fingers crossed it won't need the patching that the driver's side did.

At least this coming weekend is a long one, so hopefully we'll see a bit more progress.

Karl

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  • Bordfunker changed the title to **26/04/21 Second Half ** Probably how not to restore a Herald!

I`ve just seen (MY) Overlooked mistake. When I replaced the corner where the Fuel pipe Goes. (your last pic). I forgot the cut out the hole for said pipe!!. I will now have it to do retrospectively!!.😭 Hole saw job?. You don`t know the distance from the Wheel Arch and Boot edge? (approx)?

Pete

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Pete, please see pic below.

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Measurements are as follows:

Big hole 54mm

Small hole 24mm

The big hole centreline is 75mm from the boot edge, and the outer edge 95mm from the rear edge of the wheel arch.

The small hole centreline is 113mm from the boot edge, and 25mm from the rear of the arch.

Hope that helps.

Karl

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As per usual I have spent much of this weekend restoring something old, except this time it wasn't a Triumph.

Don't worry I haven't turned to the dark side and bought an MG! Quelle horeur!

Mrs B has always wanted an Ercol sofa, and we picked one up last weekend, but someone appears to have stained it a very unattractive dark brown, so obviously that needed to come off. 

Cue 8 hours of Mrs B and myself sanding and scraping off old stain, leaving us with this...

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It still needs going over with wire wool before it gets a coat of oil and wax, at which point the webbing will also get replaced.

That took care of a couple of afternoons this long weekend, but I did get some time in the garage to work on the other old relic in my life.

Last week I made up the new boot corner panel, which meant this week it must be time to cut out the old one. Chop chop!

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To make sure I got the corner lined up properly, I decided to the leave lower boot side panel in situ for now in order to give me a reference point while I welded it in place, which meant cutting around the edge with the air cutter first.

Time for a test fit.

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Looks like a slight misalignment of the body to chassis mounting holes between my homemade boot corner and the corner reinforcing plate. 

Before I did anything to correct it, I thought it worthwhile to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, so out came the WSM.

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No issues there, everything was within tolerance, albeit Triumph's very broad tolerances, so just a case of enlarging the holes in the reinforcement plate a tad.

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But hang on Karl, doesn't that mean that the holes in the corner repair panel are incorrect and not the ones in the reinforcement?

Its amazing what you forget over time, and I'd completely forgotten that I had replaced the base of the reinforcement section when I first tackled this repair a few years back, therefore I'm not 100% certain I welded it back in exactly the right place given my lack of experience at the time, hence consulting the WSM.

The main thing is the holes are where they should be, which meant I could drill out the holes for the plug welds on the corner repair section ready for welding in.

You remember I mentioned that I was getting low on gas the other week, and that I was going to get a fresh bottle. Well I still haven't got around to it because this one keeps on going with the needle hovering just above zero, but with good pressure and clearly audible gas flow!  

I know, I'm cheap!

Given that, I was only expecting to get the new panel tacked in this afternoon, however the Gas Gods were obviously smiling on me, which is odd for 4.30 on a bank holiday Monday if previous experience is anything to go by.

Anyway I ran with what I had and managed to get a large chunk of the welding done, both around the edge of the panel, and the plug welds to the reinforcement panel.

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My plug welds are slowly improving.

And that was it for this weekend.

Hopefully next weekend should see the boot lower side panels cut out and the new panels starting to go in, furniture restorations permitting.

Karl

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  • Bordfunker changed the title to **03/05/21 Chop Chop! ** Probably how not to restore a Herald!
  • 2 weeks later...

No update last week, as I was busy building a new planter for Mrs B, but normal service has resumed this weekend with a couple of sessions in the garage avoiding the rain.

Last time I got the boot corner repair section partially welded in, and started cutting out the remains of the repair panel I so poorly fitted a couple of years ago. 

All of which meant several hours of carefully cutting and grinding out the old panel, all of which revealed a number of frilly bits around the edge of the boot floor, none of which was a surprise given the experience with the driver's side.

At this point, you are probably thinking how long does it take to remove one panel, well normally not that long, but some idiot, AKA me, had decided it would be a smart move to seam weld in the edges of the panel!

Hence it all taking a little bit longer.

Not exactly the largest of repair patches going in.

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Note what looks like braze in the red circle?

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Were these panels brazed to the rear arch, or evidence of a dodgy previous repair?

Five minutes with the welder left we with one less frilly bit.

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Next up was this even smaller patch.

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Next up was chopping out a section around the boot corner aperture, after it just disappeared when attacked by a wire brush in the angle grinder.

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The black mark is to remind me where the lip on new section needs to end. 

I'll make the curved section at the back separately, then weld the L-shaped lip to it afterwards, having finally learnt that lesson, and not making additional work for myself.

After that there are two more sections to make up and weld in, but that is a job for next weekend.

Not exactly the most stellar update, but things should get a bit more interesting now that I have cut out the remnants of the old panel.

Karl

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  • Bordfunker changed the title to **16/05/21 Tiny patches! ** Probably how not to restore a Herald!

Paul, similarly I found evidence of braze around the base of the front bulkhead, however that looks like it had taken a hit at some point so who knows.

Using it to fill gaps would make sense though around the rear arch join as that joint doesn’t appear to be flanged and spot welded.

Karl

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Given the weather this weekend spending time in the garage wasn't the problem, just getting their or back without getting soaked or blown away by the wind was!

Having braved the trip down the drive, and having to put the bikes out on the drive, and rig up a tarpaulin that wouldn't get blown away, I could turn my attention back to the small sections that I had cut out last week, and more importantly replacing them.

This was the first bit, the flange on the inner wing which the boot floor side panel attaches to.

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This is a nice simple L shaped repair section, which I formed in the vice with a rubber mallet and panel beating hammer. They don't get much simpler than this.

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I used a couple of pieces of angle iron as the jaws of the vice weren't wide enough to form the entire repair section.

Offered up, adjusted, and clamped in place.

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As per usual I stitch welded the section in, as the metal is too thin for seam welding, well with my welding skills it certainly is!

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One patch down, next up the smaller patch at the junction of the wheel arch and the rear wing, i.e. filling this unsightly gap.

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Again, another basic L shaped repair section is required, but I'll spare you the 'making' pics, and skip to the welded in and cleaned up pic.

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Still a bit more work to do here, mainly where you can see the nick in the joint between the two sections. 

The issue here is putting that much heat into a thin edge, and because of the proximity of the rear arch, it is impossible to get a copper block in as I normally would to protect the edge.

A bit of thinking is required before I finish that bit, but at least it doesn't prevent me getting on with the rest of the boot corner repairs.

I then turned my attention the to rear edge of the boot that I cut away last week, and this is the first stage of a two stage repair.

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Just like the driver's side, this area was a little frilly, and would never survive contact with a MIG welder.

Good to know that Triumphs are consistent when it comes to rust!🤨

The above picture was taken part way through clean up. Given it's location I have no choice but to clean these welds up, as they will sit beneath the lip of the boot corner panel, so need to flush like this.

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The welds on the homemade boot floor panel have yet to receive the tender ministrations of the angle grinder. 

Similarly the edges of the boot floor I repaired last week received the treatment, for the same reason.

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Thank goodness for 120 grit flap discs and my power file.

If memory serves, this was the first boot corner that I tackled, and my lack of both experience, and over enthusiasm was all too clear when I took a look at the boot corner reinforcement panel.

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I had had to replace the 'foot' of the panel with a Chic Doig section, replaced while the boot floor was still in place, and I really hadn't made a particularly convincing job of it.

By this point I was keeping a close eye on the gas supply, remember I said about a month ago I was getting low, well now I was getting really low on welding gas.

With that in mind, and my dislike of welding from underneath, I clamped the remains of the original reinforcing panel to the Chic Doig replacement, closing the gap, before tacking it firmly in place.

I'll do the final welding when I flip the tub over for the test fit on the chassis, when I can weld with gravity, rather than against it.

As well as the inner join, I had made a complete pig's ear of the side of the reinforcement panel, and joining the new to the old, so cleaned up the gap, and made up yet another L shaped repair section.

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Now the reinforcement panel is not your normal 1mm steel which I usually have to hand, so I had to have a sort through my box of steel odds and ends for something suitable, which turned up an old steel shelf bracket, which was the right thickness, and ripe for sacrifice.

By now I was pretty much out of shielding gas, so quickly welded up the bulk of the repair section, and gave it a quick clean up.

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All of which has put additional strength back into this corner of the car, even if I was the idiot who partially weakened it in the first place!

Finally I test fitted the boot corner repair panels, just to reinforce the feelings of progress.

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First order of business this week will be to get a fresh bottle of gas, before hopefully moving into the final round of welding on this corner.

Karl

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  • Bordfunker changed the title to **23/05/21 Butcher! ** Probably how not to restore a Herald!

Remember I was going to get a fresh bottle of welding?

Well, went to get the new cylinder from my local farm shop yesterday, which used to be just over the road, but is now 3 miles away on the other side of town. Old bottle dropped off, new one in the back of the car.

Got home, hooked the bottle up to the welder, opened the valve.......

Nada, nothing, not even a flicker of the gauges!

Took bottle back this morning, ready for a ‘discussion’, popped the bottle in front of the sales desk, and started my tale

‘I got this yesterday......’

Before I could even finish, the sales assistant shot back with,

’Oh yeah, Nigel gave you an empty one didn’t he. He realised after you’d left!’

OK, well that made that easy then.

Full cylinder now hooked up on the welding trolly ready to go.

Apart from that, I’ve done nothing on the car today, as too busy sorting out the garden now that the rain has stopped.

Karl

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I've enjoyed reading this entire page again, as I've just obtained a more solid rear tub than the one I had previously. I'm going to try making little sections such as the lower part of the rear light sockets and the front leading edge of the tub floor, which is missing completely. My mate should have my welder sorted by now with 'proper' gas supply.

Here's a real challenge for your metalwork skills:

150B439E-1FB4-4A10-9805-92F8EE764187_1_105_c.jpg.0074dba6a19248d8e27acffe1b01a95f.jpg  FC216C8B-B6C3-47F4-9421-2BB0DCF089C8_1_105_c.jpg.68bbbd74a082834c45747fb8300f24ab.jpg

I reckon best course of action is just to replace the top? (Or cheat and cut them off the other tub?)

 

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Colin it all depends on how keen you are on maintaining originality, as replicating that shape is going to take some effort if you want accurate.

If you cut the top of that as it stands, it’ll probably be too far gone to weld around the edges, and the moment you touch it with a welding arc it’ll just disappear in a puff of smoke.

If you are not too phased about keeping it original, then I would fold up a simple U shape with flanges to give you a profile like one of the later tub mounting points.

The alternative would be to fold up a square of sheet steel to form the sides, weld in the top section, and then flip it over and weld a flange section around the lower edge.

It wouldn’t be an exact match, but it would be closer.

Looking at the original design it’s an even worse rust trap than the later design!

Hope that helps.

Karl

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2 hours ago, Bordfunker said:

If you are not too phased about keeping it original, then I would fold up a simple U shape with flanges to give you a profile like one of the later tub mounting points.

Hope that helps.

Karl

That bit has certainly helped; it's given me some great ideas. Many thanks.

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Hardwood former, Split the corners, and slowly drift the steel over the former?. when you have the shape, reverse bend the flange`s and fit corner pieces or cut and weld a full flange.?. Mine where in not bad condition, only surface rust so no issue. But had they not been I would have been tempted by a variation of Pete`s Idea and made up block`s in Alloy, to bolt right through the floor. Something I`ve already done in moving the seat belt mounting to accomodate Auto belts.

Pete

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This has been a extra long weekend for me as I had Friday off as well as today, but Friday was spent running family back and forth, youngest son to work, Mrs B to the dentists, picking up an order from Mrs B, before going back to pick up youngest from work again.

Where does the time go?

Saturday, a day of shopping and gardening, as well as dropping youngest son off to work again, he works in a vaccination centre, so I feel like I'm, doing my bit supporting a key worker, before picking him up again. 

And putting the coat rack in the hall back on the wall after pulling it down the day before. Best not to ask as I was trying to cancel the smoke alarm at the time!

Sunday was more of the same, but I did manage an hour an half in the garage tidying up various bits and pieces around the edge of the boot floor, so not very exciting, but ultimately quite vital to the finished result.

Oh, I also made Mrs B a planter for the garden, so quite DIY intensive this weekend.

All of which meant today needed to be the day if I was going to get anything substantial done on the car this weekend.

Work started pretty much where I left off yesterday, doing edgy bits, but also prepping the boot side repair panel for welding, which meant punching holes, stripping red oxide primer from areas to be welded before applying several coats of weld through zinc primer.

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It's important to remove all non-weld through paint from the areas to be welded as it could lead to a weak weld, or no weld at all.

Talking of edgy bits I had forgotten to do a couple of plug welds on the boot floor repair section, so it was out with the spot weld clamp, pulling the two sections tightly together. Fail to do this, and the weld doesn't join the two pieces, or spreads out between the two leading to a gap.

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Now previously I have done plug welds on the second lowest setting on my welder, which produces a nice strong join, but as you have seen from my previous efforts, can lead to a rivet like weld.

This time I increased the power by 50%, and wound back the wire speed a bit, which no only reduces the amount of metal going into the weld, but also reduces the amperage supplied at the arc.

The result was a much flatter weld, but still plenty strong, which should make clean up a little faster, you can see the result here at the bottom of the picture.

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Much neater. Generally, ignore the weld above it!

Another edgy bit requiring attention was the back of the boot corner reinforcement section, which I had hacked about previously. 

All I did here was clamp a copper block behind the section to be welded, leaving me with a nice clean back to the weld, and then run weld over the top.

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No need for anything special here, just make sure the weld is solid, before cleaning it up with a flap disc, leaving a nice tidy repair.

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All that then got a coat of zinc primer for protection, after which all the edgy bits were finally complete.

A test fit of the repair panel did however show up a minor issue.

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Now I am guessing that this is as a result of me chopping the boot corner reinforcement panel about to fit the lower repair section. 

Comparison with the driver's side showed that it was only about 2mm lower than that side, so rather than stress about it, I decided to file a small section out of the top of the aperture, that would be the black bit in the picture above.

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Not the neatest, but nobody is ever going to see it, and it at least now aligns with the out rider support bolt.

As per the driver's side the repair panel needed a bit of tweaking to obtain a decent fit, which meant making a series of cuts to allow the flange to follow the contour of the underlying panel to which it was about to be joined.

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You can see in the picture above where I have cut the flange away from the repair section, welding the flange to the boot floor, before grinding back the raised edge so that it was flush with the flange section, then welding it all together.

But I'm jumping ahead here as there was about an hour of 'fitting and fettling' required first, adjusting the fit, and using self-tappers to hold the panel in position, along with lots of clamps.

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It looks like there is a washer around each hole in the pic above, but it's just just where I have used a small rotary brush in a cordless drill, to take everything back to bare metal around each plug welding site. 

I probably don't need to do this with a decent weld through primer, however having had a bad experience with cheap weld through primer in the past, I'm not taking any chances.

You can see how the self-tappers pull the two panels together, keeping everything where it needs to be for welding.

Time to get welding then....

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You can see my plug welds are flatter, more like a chocolate button now, than a rivet from the Titanic. 

You can also see where the flanges need to be welded to the edge of the repair panel, but only once the edges have been ground down with a 40 grit flap disc.

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All of this will be ground back to leave a nice neat edge, but that's a job for another day.

I also started on welding up the boot side panel to wheel arch joint, but ran out of time this afternoon.

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Still a fair bit of welding and clean up required, but really pleased that the boot side repair panel is now in place, and we are drawing close to the point where the last welding left on the tub will be the spare wheel well.

However the omens for progress are not good next week, as Saturday is the Bicester Heritage Scramble!, the first I have been to in about 18 months, and Sunday is Mrs B's birthday, so the chances of garage time are slim to none.

Karl

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  • Bordfunker changed the title to **31/05/21 Buttoned Up! ** Probably how not to restore a Herald!
1 hour ago, Mathew said:

The only problem with coming to the end of a project is the compulsion to get another! Looking good but will you miss the challenge of making up sections and welding in?

How about making up sections for other people to weld in???  :)

There are so many areas that no-one seems to make panels for, and the suppliers who used to don't answer their e-mails any more...

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