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

[Bordfunker]

Thanks Pete.

Mulling it over today I’m inclined to leave any body repairs until I’ve flipped the tub over, as I need to check the condition of the wheel arch to rear wing, as both seams look like there’s rust between the two panels.

In which case I may end up drilling out the spot welds, and either replacing the arch, or more likely just cleaning up the rust and then welding the two panels back together again.

I’ve also worked out that I can fit both the car and the tub in the garage if I turn the tub sideways, which will save storing it outside, while I work on it.

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

we tipped the rear tub with rubber mats for the overiders  and pit props to hold the body front end to the sky   its was quite stable

pete

[Colin Lindsay]

Did that myself with an Estate tub which leaned against the wall for about five years, with no problems. There were no overriders fitted so I had to take care not to damage the tubes.

With an earlier restoration I made a cradle for the tub and bulkhead, allowing the rolling chassis to fit in underneath; just two lengths of 2 x 4 with supports of the same, screwed to the wall on one side but just nailed to the crosspiece on the other. That saved an entire car-sized space.

[Bordfunker]

I’ve already got a piece of very thick carpet underlay set aside for when I tip the tub over.

I won’t be taking the overiders off, I’ll just tape them over for now.

I did think about propping it up against the side of the house on the drive, but figure that if I can fit in the garage out of the weather, I think that’s a better option all round.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

It's been a couple of weeks without an update, mainly because all I managed last week was to remove the driver's door.

This was pretty straightforward, aside from the removal of that bloody rivet on the door check strap. Why could Triumph not used a clevis pin?

Luckily I picked up an air grinder from Lidl the other week, which allowed me to grind the top of the rivet away. Well worth the £12 it cost me.

This week the aim was to get the tub off the chassis, with only 4 mounting bolts to remove, two over the rear spring, and two at the rear of the driver's side out riggers.

However before I could do that I had to remove the handbrake cable, simple right?

OMG what a faff!

I spent yesterday making up two pairs of heavy duty chocks, as I didn't fancy working under the car with my existing set up, and a jack block as the lift height on my trolley jack doesn't get the car high enough to utilise the top settings on my axle stands, and I needed all the room I could get to sort out the hand brake cable.

With yesterday taken up with playing chippie rather than grease monkey, today I set about jacking the car up to a decent height, and setting up the axle stands, leaving me room to get underneath properly.

Now, I'd done a bit of thinking on this, and decided to drop the prop shaft to improve access to the handbrake compensator.

Not really a hardship as I need to replace both the gearbox rear seal, and the nose seal on the diff, so it was going to happen anyway.

I did remember to mark up the prop shaft and gearbox & diff flanges so as to retain the original orientation when it's time to reassemble it all.

After which the handbrake compensator came out without a fight, I removed the two bolts over the spring, and ground out the two on the driver's side.

It was at this point I found out one of the ones on the driver's side wasn't actually attached to anything!!!

This was just the first of a number of bodges that would come to light.

Then it was time to remove the tub, and store it along side the chassis, allowing room for working on the underside.

It's a bit of a squeeze, but it works. Just!

With that off, I set about the chassis with a wire brush in the angle grinder, which gave me this.

The lower rail has been cleaned back, the upper just brushed off, but it looks pretty good, with no serious rust.

Now did I mention bodges?

Here is the passenger side rear out rigger.....

So much for fully seam welding the out rigger to the main rail.

The driver's side one is the same, if not worse as there is a 4mm gap between the lip that fits over the main rail, and the rail itself!

I then had a go at the rear saddle that sits over the diff, which also showed no serious corrosion, just a lot of very flaky under seal.

Needless to say I was fully kitted up with face mask, goggles and ear defenders while doing this, as even with the garage door open there was a ton of dust swirling about.

Which also meant that the garage was bloody freezing!

By this time I was starting to lose all feeling in my feet, so had a quick go at the underside of the tub.

The wire brush in an angle grinder really does make short work of old under seal and paint, which is good news as there's loads of it!

I know what I'm doing for the next few weeks!

Finally a shot of the rot at the base of the B pillar between the pillar and the rear arch.

It looks awful, but should be a fairly straight forward fix, which is good as I need to do both sides.

I think I will end up stripping the rear of the chassis down completely, and then cleaning and repainting it all, and refitting with poly bushes, much like I did the front end, after which I should be left with a solid basis to work from.

Karl

 

 

 

[Pete Lewis]

Ive got aload of new unsed air tools , nibler,  cut off disc , shears and suchlike next time im banbury way to see my sister

I could do with good homes for them if youre interested

Pete

 

[Bordfunker]

Pete, that’s very kind of you, I’m always interested in more tools, as I’m a great believer in the right tool for the job.

Though generally I’m the tool doing a right job of it!

At the moment I’m planning a wooden frame on castors that I can pop the tub on, so that I can move it in and out of the garage.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

In a repeat of last Saturday's woodworking binge, I decided to build a frame for the tub to sit on while I repair it.

The idea being that the frame with the tub on can be wheeled in and out of the garage to allow me to work on the chassis as well.

This will hopefully free up some space in the garage, as it's getting a bit tight in their with everything in pieces.

I had to liberate the timber from the pile set aside for Mrs B's new flower beds, so I have some making up to do!

It does rather look like a large bed at the moment!

There's still some work to do to add a central brace to support the tub better, but that'll have to wait until next week as tomorrow I'm off to the NEC for the Practical Classics show.

Which means hopefully next week, with both sons home from university, they can help me lift the tub onto the frame.

Karl

 

[Bordfunker]

Both sons are now back from university for Easter, so no shortage of muscle to lift the rear body tub onto the frame.

Here it is, with the tub flipped over and placed on the cross braces that I added to the frame yesterday afternoon.

It's actually quite a nice height to work on, and here it is doing what it's supposed do, wheeled over the chassis in the garage.

Note blue tarpaulin for those days when I need to wheel it out of the garage, but it's raining, which it appears to have done a lot recently!

Now at this point in the weekend I had expected to have removed the out riggers on the passenger side, however yesterday afternoon my angry grinder decided to go 'phutt', with a cloud of grey smoke and a nasty grinding noise!

I've never dropped anything so quick in my life!

Luckily it's still under warranty, so tomorrow it's going back to ScrewFix for a replacement!

So with that off the menu, I decided to drain the brakes, and remove all of the pipework to the rear of the car along with the fuel line, as I don't fancy waving a welding torch near the fuel line, empty or not!!!!

Also out came the handbrake cable, with me carefully removing all the nuts and fixings in order to thread it through the quadrants, before realising that it was frayed in the middle, and fit for the bin only anyway!

And to add insult to injury, the frayed portion managed to dig itself into my hand! Owwwwww!!!

Everything on the front bulkhead has now been disconnected, including the steering column and loom, which just leaves the mounting bolts to be ground off with the new angle grinder.

With that lot done, I decided to have a look at the rear tub, specifically the rear arches and the area behind the B-post.

Now I knew this area was a bit rotten, no shock there, it's a Herald after all!

Note the bubbling.

This was attacked with a strip wheel in the power drill......

That vertical strip is a cut through the filler to the metal beneath, a whopping 5mm below the level of the paint on top!!! 

Whoever did this didn't even try to patch the holes, just slapped filler on.

It was like this over the entire section, but after half an hour, I was left with this.

Nothing I wasn't expecting, and the repair panels are already on order from Paddocks.

While I was there, I decided to take a look at the passenger side rear arch as well, as it was showing signs of corrosion, and possible bodgery, if that's a word.

Where the outer arch lip is folded over the inner arch lip, corrosion has got in between the two and blown the joint, so remedial work will be required here.

Here's an overall view of the underside, you can see where the under seal has started to peel off, taking the paint with it, and leaving patches of bare metal.

Looks like I might have caught this just in time, before terminal rot set in.

The good news is that I've got the rest of the week of, so plenty of time to make some headway on the Herald.

Karl

[Stuart R]

I like the "bed-frame". I might have to do similar for my Herald Convertible.  How heavy is that rear tub, an easy lift for 3?

I got through three angle grinders for my Herald restoration, but at least they managed to last beyond their warranty period!

What I'm enjoying about your resto is that nothing seems to be in pieces for too long - hopefully it'll be ready for some summer motoring.

Good Luck,

Stuart.

[Bordfunker]

You should be fine with 3 of you to lift the tub, I had the 2 boys, MrsB and me for the lift today and it very easy.

I’m hoping the frame will help speed things up by allowing me more flexibility in what I can work on.

MrsB won’t let me have it in bits for too long, so the aim is to have the chassis welded and painted over the next couple of months, and then the boys can help me put the tub back on when they’re back from university.

The aim being to get the car back on the road for summer, then use winter to sort out the rest of the bodywork, and then respray it all next spring.

Well that’s the theory at least!

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Currently I'm waiting on a full set of out riggers to arrive from Chic Doig, which should happen on Thursday with a bit of luck.

In the interim it's time to start stripping back the chassis, and measuring up so that the new components go back in the same place as the old.

And below are some reminders of what the 'old' looks like.

This is the driver's side rear outrigger, not welded on top, and with the remains of the old out rigger left in situ beneath!

Here's the driver's side outer rail, again not welded on top, and not even looking like it fits a Herald properly.

And here's the other end of the driver's side.

This is supposed to be the joint between the front out rigger and the chassis side rail!

What a complete bodge job!

How this car had an MoT is beyond me.

This is the middle out rigger on the driver's side after I had shifted the bulkhead.

As you can see it has a number of holes in it that aren't supposed to be there, which perversely makes me so glad that I bought a full set of out riggers for the central chassis section.

What I didn't buy, and I should have, was the driver's side boot out rigger.

Oops! A new one is now on order, which is good really seeing as this one is no longer attached to the rest of the chassis.

Removing that without a rear tub in the way was so much easier than when I did the passenger side with the tub in place.

Before I removed the boot out rigger I made sure that the chassis was level, by letting the air out of each tyre until the bubble in my little spirit level was dead centre.

I then introduced my handy measuring stick, which I will be using to check a number of key dimensions across the chassis as I reassemble it.

This has a series of holes drilled through which correspond to the key dimensions, which will come in handy later.

With my old, and very defunct angle grinder swapped for a shiny, and fully operational, new one, I set to removing the rear passenger side outrigger.

And here it is all cleaned up and ready for the replacement.

There are a couple of gouges which will need a bit of weld, but no hardship considering how much welding I have ahead of me anyway.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

With Parcel Force scuppering my plans to replace the main out riggers this week, I turned my attention to what I could do, namely, the driver's side rear boot out rigger which I had ordered from Paddocks, rather than Chic Doig.

Given that this was the driver's side, I had to remove the exhaust, but surprisingly it didn't put up any resistance.

Next up was removing the remains of the 'tongue' from the original out rigger which was stuck in the rear of the main chassis rail, which was achieved with an angle grinder and my faithful combo of wood chisel and lump hammer.

Here's the offending 'tongue'...

...and the nice clean rear end of the chassis rail.

There was a ton of crud in the main chassis rail, which I blew out with an airline, before applying a coat of rust stopper.

Before I could consider attaching the boot out rigger I needed to remove the tow eye from the old out rigger, and weld it to the new, which went swimmingly well.

Welding is definitely getting better and easier.

No excuses now, time to fit the out rigger itself, using my Heath-Robinson approach.

Here it is, all set up, and awaiting welding, but all nice and level, and correctly spaced.

Time to waive the welding torch at it all.

Although I don't have the out riggers, I decided to continue with removing the rotten out riggers on the passenger side, starting with the middle one.

Much work with angle grinder, utilising a variety of discs, as well as wood chisel and lump hammer.

Next up was the front out rigger, same drill as the other two.

Still a bit more work to do there, particularly on the underside, and around that forward bracket, but that can wait until the out riggers themselves turn up.

And an overview of this afternoons work.

Finally a view of my ever increasing collection of rotten out riggers.

Not as much progress as I would have liked given the week off, but still feeling like good progress given the state of the chassis.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Progress on the Herald has been non-existent over the last fortnight due to taking youngest son back to university last weekend amongst other things.

Therefore I had great hopes for this weekend to make some significant progress on the chassis rebuild, which meant Saturday was spent cleaning up the remains of the front passenger side outrigger with an angle grinder and brand new 40 grit flap disc.

This meant releasing the rear gearbox mounting, and gently jacking the gearbox up an inch or so to allow access to the upper chassis rail to remove the remains of the weld.

The underside was straightforward in principal, but rendered hard work by the need to hold the grinder up to the underside of the rail, while trying to ensure that the spume of sparks were directed away from me!

All of which left me with this.

This was after it had been treated with Fe1-2-3 from Rust Busters, which looks and smells like Kurust, but comes in much larger quantities at a lower price.

Unlike Kurust it dries very dark grey.

The middle out rigger mounting had already been cleaned up, but just needed a coat of FE 1-2-3, here it is drying, ahead of a coat of weld through primer.

So far very impressed with the Fe 1-2-3 as it dries quickly and provides a nice matt surface to apply primer over. I couldn't resist daubing some over the rear of the chassis where I had already taken some of the loose rust off.

Next up in the preparations was applying a coat of weld through primer to the areas of the out riggers which would be welded.

Of course part way through I ran out, and had to make a dash to Halfords for another can!

With that lot left to dry, the question was what to do next?

Nothing for it but time to attack the dreaded under seal on the underside of the body tub.

This is the inside of one of the rear wheel wells!

The rest of the underside was little different, requiring vicious assault with a wire brush in the angle grinder.

This was after a couple of hours work.

Good progress, but very noisy and very mucky, therefore I think I may invest in a heat gun to see if that is any quicker at removing the stuff.

I also had a look at the driver's side B pillar to rear arch area, and yet again, signs of the dreaded filler.

To be fair the filler was as nothing compared with the general state of that area.

Distinctly frilly!

And in glorious close up.

I'll post Sunday's instalment later, where you get to find out whether Karl actually got any welding done.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Time for Sunday's instalment of this classic saga!

I spent yesterday morning and a chunk of the afternoon at the Bicester Scramble, which has grown considerably in size since I last attended, and as a result didn't get into the garage until 3.

With all the prep work done on Saturday, it was time to start attaching the new out riggers to the main chassis rails, however before I could do that I had to manhandle the bulkhead back into position as it was going to act as a jig for the front and middle out riggers on the passenger side.

With that in place, and following half an hour of swearing and cursing, trying to get it all lined up, I switched my attention to the rear outrigger.

Here you can see my ever handy measuring stick, with holes drilled at correct centres, acting as a mini-jig.

With the rear out rigger you obviously have the rear suspension link to accommodate which acts as a further means of ensuring the correct alignment.

As ever my F-clamps have proved a godsend, holding the out rigger in place while I attached the suspension link.

Next I attached the front out rigger, which was held in place by the mounting on the front of the passenger foot well, and supported on a scissor jack to ensure that it was at the correct height, and level with the rest of the chassis.

I didn't bother with a photo of this, as it was barely visible in the gloom of the engine bay.

Having tried to keep the middle out rigger in place, and failed repeatedly, I instead fitted the side rail, bolting that in place on the front and rear out riggers, and then sliding the middle out rigger in.

It all sounds simple in principle, but as anyone who has done this knows, as you adjust one element to get it straight, it throws out one of the other components, therefore I spent about an hour and a half manoeuvring components, often with the aid of a lump hammer, until I was happy that everything was aligned.

However I figure this is time well spent as no one really wants a wonky chassis, and this will hopefully prevent that.

With everything lined up I rolled out the welder, and started tacking in all of the components until everything was held in position.

Time to start seam welding.

'Clunk wirrrrrrrrrrr'

B*gger out of wire at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon!

Nothing for it but to go mow lawn.

New 5kg spool of welding wire has duly been ordered, so I will return to the fray, welder in hand next weekend.

I have to say how good these Chic Doig out riggers are, both in terms of fit, but also in the thickness and overall quality of the steel, far better than the ones that I have been cutting out.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

It's been a busy weekend in the Bordfunker household, with a trip to the cinema on Friday night to see new Avengers movie, very good if that's your cup of tea, followed by a trip into Oxford on Saturday night to see Dara O'Briain at the New Theatre, preceded by a spot of dinner in a local eatery, which has all meant that I only managed to get into the garage today!

Having woken at the crack of 10, I decided to try and get the welding finished on the passenger side of the car, an aim that was almost scuppered by the fact that the 5kg spool of wire I ordered last week still hasn't turned up, apparently I can expect delivery on Tuesday!

Thankfully Halfords had a 0.7kg spool in stock, which has saved the day, and meant that I spent the best part of the day in the garage, welding torch in one hand, angle grinder in the other.

Last week I'd left the new out riggers tacked into place, so now it was time to weld them all in properly.

The front end.....

....the result of several hours effort, how I hate welding upside down, and in glorious close up.

All cleaned up with a flap disc in the grinder to smooth off any rough edges, of which there are many with my welding style!

The rear got the same treatment, including the reinforcement plate between the side rail and the rear outrigger.

As usual my welding is functional rather than pretty, however it has withstood me standing on each corner and bouncing up and down, so is a lot stronger than what was there before.

Speaking of which, here is the front out rigger freshly removed from the driver's side.

This was after I had emptied it, as before there was about 3/4 of an inch of compost in there, though luckily it does not appear to have harmed the main chassis rail.

I mentioned in one of my previous posts about the general state of botchery on this car, and this illustrates it perfectly.

This is the end of the front driver's side out rigger, with the bit that attaches to the side rail, held on with nothing more than an L-section piece of steel tacked into place, and then daubed in under seal!

As you can see from the rear out rigger that the front one is resting on, they may have replaced the out rigger with a shiny new one, but then rather than painting it, they simply slapped on more under seal!!

No wonder the car used to vibrate like hell at speeds above 50, the chassis was probably flexing continuously!

Still, it just reinforces that replacing all of the out riggers was the right thing to do.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

It's a long weekend with glorious weather so what else would you do but hide away in a garage with a 50 year old car an angle grinder and a welding torch?

Thankfully Mrs B, being of Hibernian/Celtic descent has an aversion to the sun and heat in general, which means she likes to stay in during the hotter part of the day, allowing me to work on the car in the afternoons.

Last week I had got to a point where the passenger side was al welded up, so nothing for it but to repeat the whole exercise on the driver's side, having removed the bulk of the out riggers and side rail last week, first task up was removing the remains of the old out riggers.

Usual drill, cutting and flap discs.....

...rear..

...middle..

...front...

...leaving me with this, a nice clean central rail.

The central rail had a couple of minor nicks in it, which looks they are a remnant of when the out riggers were last replaced, so these were welded up ahead of me applying a coat of rust passivator followed by a couple of coats of weld through primer.

That was Saturday taken care of, which set me up nicely for Sunday's activities, namely putting the new out riggers on.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the driver's side was much as the passenger side, as I used the rear suspension arm and my trusty measuring stick to get the rear out rigger in the right place.

As you can see from the photos above I had swung the bulkhead onto the passenger side of the chassis, now being confident that the passenger side would support the weight, however to get the front and middle out riggers in place it needed to be swung back into position and bolted up in order to act as a jig for the driver's side.

There then followed several hours of aligning the new out riggers and tacking them in place, followed by seam welding the tops of the chassis.

I am still amazed at how long all this work takes, with constant cross checking and adjusting to get everything sitting just right, which I am hoping will ensure no nasty surprises when it comes to replace the rear tub.

One mistake I did make, was when cutting off the driver's side front out rigger I managed to slice through the reinforcing plate that secures the front of the out rigger to the main chassis rail.

However given what a pain it was to clean up the one on the passenger side to get the new out rigger to fit, so although I will need to make up a new piece in sheet steel, it will probably work out easier in the long run.

You can see the evidence of my inattention in the photo below, apologies for the poor quality, taken using the flash in the back end of the garage.

And that was Sunday done with! Where does the time go?

Most of today was taken up with a trip to the garden centre, leaving just a couple of hours to refit the bulkhead, firmly bolting it all in place, good to know it all still fits properly, and the jacking the back of the car up to allow me to start welding the undersides, of which I managed woefully little, so the chassis odyssey will continue into next weekend.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

After last week's marathon welding session all that was left this weekend was to finish up welding the middle and front out riggers where they meet the underside of the chassis, and to create and weld a new reinforcement patch for the join between the front out rigger and the main chassis rail.

I thought I would start with the difficult bit first and fashion a new reinforcement patch out of a piece of 3mm plate that I had been keeping aside for just this type of job.

First up was to create a template to work from using the tried and trusted CAD method. That's cardboard aided design!

This was then transferred to the steel and a start made drilling out two holes which will then form the radiussed intersection between the two diagonals in the middle of the patch.

It was it this point I realised two things:

• this was a very tough bit of steel, and thicker than I normally work with,
• my drills are as blunt as (Insert expletive of choice).

Which meant that I spent the best part of an hour spent drilling out the pilot holes before switching to the step drill for the final sizing.

Fortunately the step drill is new, and made short work of even 3mm steel.

The diagonals were then simply cut out with a 1mm cutting disc, and then all the rough edges dressed with a flap disc.

I forgot to take any photos of the finished patch, but here are a couple of shots of it in situ, excuse the welding.

Pretty it isn't, but it's very solid as it needs to be.

The fold was created by sticking it in the vice with the template, hence the diamond pattern on the template, and whacking it with a lump hammer until the correct angle was achieved.

Not technical but it works!

With that done it was simply a question of getting under the car and welding the final sections of the out riggers to the main rail.

And as if evidence were needed, the remains of the old out riggers ahead of a trip to the dump.

And that is pretty much it for this weekend, not very exciting, but it does at least mark the end of the chassis welding after almost a month of weekends, which means it time to turn my attention back to the passenger side A-pillar and the rest of the bulkhead.

Here's where I left the A-pillar, a mass of holes as I attempted to drill out all of the spot welds.

Fortunately I have bought a brand new spot weld drill, so hopefully this will prove a little easier, the plan being to drill out the welds around the base and lower 6 inches, and then cut across the inner pillar to release the section covering the rot.

And talking of rot, the flange which bolts down to the middle out rigger will need some work.

I have feeling the bulkhead will reveal more rot over the coming weeks, but if it didn't, it wouldn't be a Triumph!

Karl

[Bordfunker]

My fears about the rot in the bulkhead have proved justified with regard the passenger side A-pillar.

Following my experiences with my hopeless collection of drill bits while building the reinforcement patch the other week, I invested in a range of new drill bits from ScrewFix, and promptly set about removing the bottom of the passenger side A-pillar.

Starting with this...

...to this...

...looking a little mangled, but revealing....

It's not pretty!

Even less so in close up.

The metal around the body mounting point was paper thin over much of the area, so I ended up having to cut out a large amount of rotten steel to get back to decent metal that I could weld to.

This is with the bulkhead tipped over allowing access to the underside, which highlights how the rot has spread through the double skinned section at the base of the A-pillar, which has now had the top skin removed so that I can ensure that it is entirely rot free before I start welding in fresh metal next week.

Everything will get a thorough wire brushing ahead of that, followed by a dose of passivator and weld through primer, after which I will have to fabricate a repair panel from sheet steel.

Karl

[Anglefire]

Karl, slightly off topic so apologies for that - but is related- 

not particularly this video as such, but just Arthur Tusk in general. His repair work is amazing. Not sure if I’d want to drive some of the cars due to the metal fatigue- but still 

[Bordfunker]

I’ve seen some of his work before, very impressive reconstitution of a car, not sure I’d want to drive in one afterwards though!

I do hope you’re not suggesting my repair techniques are dodgy in any way??

 

 

[Anglefire]

No not at all!  

[Pete Lewis]

reminds me of back to my jigsaw patched Apost and the new floor pans that dont resemble this section for the mount 

mind you i had a 59 948 in 65 and  that had no front mounts or floor /sill/a post / side rails  left   and only 6 yrs old 

it was a complete rot box  in apline /mauve...  looked nice in the dark ..... never buy a car in the rain 

first tee shirt for that one 

 

Pete

[Bordfunker]

Pete, hopefully by the time I’ve finished it won’t look like a jigsaw, but I know exactly what you mean.

I think if I’d known about this rot before I started on the front corner, I would have been tempted to replace the full footwell and the associated side panel with the mounting brackets from Chic Doig, but hindsight is a wonderful thing so I’ll continue with the jigsaw approach for now.

Interestingly, I’m not convinced that there was a mounting bolt in the mounting bracket under the A-pillar, as it doesn’t fully line up with the mounting hole in the new rail, and looking at the driver’s side, that has a misshapen mounting hole where a bolt has been forced through the rail into the mount, indicating that it didn’t line up properly before.

The bulkhead mounting points all line up perfectly, but before I do weld up the new mounting brackets I will be replacing the rear tub on the chassis as a final check that I haven’t inadvertently welded the chassis rails out of alignment.

Fortunately both sons are home this weekend so muscle power is available for the lifting.

Karl

[ahebron]

Wow great work.

A tip that was passed onto me by a car painter was that once you have used your wire wheel to remove the paint or whatever back to shiney metal go over it again with 80 grit scourer before coating.

His reasoning was that the wire wheel polishes the bare metal once the coating has gone and the scourer breaks that up allowing the paint to adhere better.

It sounds logical and I have no idea if this is true but was prepared to give ago as it was only a couple of minutes work and after seeing the coating the previous painter had put under my car peel off due to gravity it cant hurt.   I completely stripped the underside of my car back to bare metal then recoated it  and did the same chasing the spider rust below the powdercoated chassis. This was on a body that had never been fitted to the chassis since painting 5 years ago. Chassis was powder coated at least 20 years ago if not more.

I have some photos somewhere.

Adrian