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

[Bordfunker]

2 hours ago, Mathew said:

The only problem with coming to the end of a project is the compulsion to get another!

This one is a long way from complete, as once the tub is complete it will be time to re-visit the welding on the chassis, before turning my attention to the front bulkhead, which makes the tub look good.

So I reckon there’s at least another 3 months of welding to do, and that is without mention of the bonnet, which I know has a lot of filler in it.

The bonnet however can wait until next winter.

1 hour ago, Colin Lindsay said:

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

Would you have a customer in mind Colin?

11 hours ago, Pete Lewis said:

you will soon have a new car.

It does rather feel like that.

I think I must have put in about 50 patches and repair panels into the tub alone so far, most of them no bigger than the palm of my hand, and quite a few considerably smaller.

Karl

[Colin Lindsay]

55 minutes ago, Bordfunker said:

Would you have a customer in mind Colin?

No customer, just a very close companion...

Rear spring tunnel lower edge repair section, rear footwell corner repair... that sort of simple easy little panel... 

[Bordfunker]

Is it really a month since I last posted an update?

I haven't been idle, though not necessarily working on the car, as first we had Mrs B birthday, followed by a weekend away in York as a belated birthday treat for Mrs B.

That was 2 out of the last 4 weekends accounted for, with no work done.

So what exactly did I manage to get done in the remaining 2 weekends?

Nothing exciting to be fair, just a lot of welding of panels that I had already fitted last month.

Having said that, that little lot was about 5 hours worth of welding, grinding and generally cleaning up.

I also took the opportunity to fit the rear over rider support tube, using my trusty piece of dowel and the quarter panel as a jig.

Which left me with this little bit to fix.

Not sure why I didn't sort this out earlier, but it is a relatively easy fix, just requiring a small repair patch to be made up.

The patch needs to complete the lip around the boot aperture, so will need to be L-shaped in order to achieve this. 

Now I could try and bend it up out of one piece of steel, but it is far easier to make it out of two sections like these.

Ignore the rather rough looking strip at the top, it will improve in appearance.

First up tacking the boot lip strip to the rear panel piece.

Which was then seam welded along the outside edge, and then cleaned up to something a little more acceptable.

And punched out ready for plug welding in place. The tacks on the inside were further cleaned up after this picture, as the flange needs to be clean to accept the boot seal.

Test fitted.

And clamped in place ready for welding.

After which I forgot to take any more pics.

I did also take the opportunity to clean up some scars on the bottom of the rear wings.

These were simply welded up to restore some strength.

Then ground back, leaving me with this.

Much neater.

And finally a new addition to my arsenal...

I haven't had much of a play with it yet, but it should help with cleaning up some of the more obvious welds, and there are quite a few of them!

Hopefully it won't be a month before the next update.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Mat, I know what you mean about them being 'air hungry'. 

I tried this with my usual skinny coil hose and it was very sluggish, but improved massively when I hooked it up directly to the big rubber hose.

The new air tool isn't the only new acquisition on my part, as after much dithering and deliberating I decided to cough up and buy a shrinker/stretcher.

What's one of those I hear you cry? (Alright, maybe not cry exactly)

It's one of these....

Great, but what does it actually do?

Essentially it does what is says, it shrinks and stretches things, like this....

Take one piece of flat steel, which was promptly folded up into an L-shape along the black line.

This was then run through the jaws of the shrinker, the shiny chrome bits, which started to impart a curve like this....

You can see the jaw marks on the steel.

Another couple of runs through gave me this...

....and with a final run through this.

I know what you are thinking, all very interesting, but so what?

Remember this?

I need to sort out the outer edge of the spare wheel well, as currently it is distinctly wonky, so need to create a curved section in the horizontal plane, i.e. across the pic, and an L-shape in the vertical plane to form the back of the well.

As you can see my previous efforts to achieve that were somewhat lacking, and I thought rather than spend £150+ on a new spare wheel well, I'd spend slightly less on a tool that would allow me to fix it, but which will also come in handy for a number of the repairs required on the bulkhead.

That's my rationale and I'm sticking to it, and while I was at it I bought a big sheet of virgin steel to start the new panel with.

Marked up ready for cutting out.

Time to bend......

It's amazing how many radii perfectly match an off cut of scaffolding pole!

Here the steel has been persuaded into shape with the aid of a large 'Birmingham screwdriver' over the open jaws of the vice.

Overall I was quite happy with that, but did need to trim that big flange down as with hindsight, that was never going to work in the shrinker/stretcher.

Long story short, half an hour with the shrinker/stretcher and a selection of hammers and pliers, and I was able to produce this....

Not perfect, but much better than what was there before.

I used the back of the wheel well to help get the shape right, and this is now trimmed and tacked in, but as usual in my rush to get stuff done, I completely forgot to take any pics.

Overall I'm really impressed by the new tool, even if I do have a lot to learn about how to get the best from it, it has made life a lot easier, and hopefully cheaper in the long run.

Karl

[Peter Truman]

Karl is this a combined shrinker/stretcher, the ones I've seen previously have been separate tools, shrinker grabs the steel and pulls it in the stretcher the opposite grabs and pulls it out. Two biggish & heavy tools to find a home for.

Does yours have a neutral point and you can push or pull the lever creating the shrink or stretch action, if so great one tool does both great solution.

great job by the way and an impressive bit of gear so many uses. 

[Bordfunker]

Mat, I have been eyeing one of these up for almost year now, and really ought to have bought it when I was doing the passenger side rear wheel arch.

Pete, mine came with two sets of jaws, one for stretching, the other for shrinking, you just swap them around depending on what you need to do.

It’s not very big either, and the handle comes off, so it can be tucked away without taking up too much space.

Karl

[Peter Truman]

that sounds a good tool if it does both, can you advise the make pls, so I can see if I can get it locally here.

[Bordfunker]

Pete, I got mine from Frost in the UK.

No makers marks on the box or the tool itself unfortunately, but there appear to be plenty similar out on the web for less than I paid.

I have used Frost in the past so was happy to pay a bit more for peace of mind.

Karl

 

[Bordfunker]

After a week off from the garage last week, due to a bad back, my own fault, and ironically caused by overdoing exercises to address a stiff buttock (Don't laugh), I decided to head back into the gloom on the hottest weekend of the year!

I never claimed to be bright.

Now, last time I had made up a repair panel for the front face of the spare wheel well, but coming back to it after a couple of weeks, I just wasn't happy with it, and so decided to cut it out and start again.

This time I split it into two sections, the outer vertical wall of the well, and then the curved portion that transitions to the flat base of the well.

The first bit was easy...

....even I couldn't cock up forming that section.

Which then got welded in. 

First tacked....

...then seam welded.

Not my neatest bit of welding, but not helped by continually bashing my head against the spare wheel bracket (At least I was wearing a welding helmet), and the fact I kept steaming up my welding helmet in the heat!

The bulk of that was done Saturday afternoon, which left Sunday afternoon to tackle the difficult bit, namely the curved section, which curves across two planes.

As before, I initially created the curve of the transition from the floor of the wheel well to the vertical wall with a section of scaffolding pole, leaving me with a long semi-U shaped piece of steel.

This is where the shrinker/stretcher came into it's own allowing me to impart the curve across the piece of steel to create the second section of the repair panel.

This meant several hours of tweaking, shrinking, then a bit of stretching, then a bit more shrinking, then a bit more tweaking to try and obtain the best fit possible.

It is at this point that I understand why car bodywork repairs can be so expensive, given how time consuming it is, though I appreciate that I am a complete amateur, and therefore much, much,  slower than a professional would be.

Here it is tacked in...

...note a couple of very dodgy looking tacks because someone had forgotten to turn the shielding gas on! No matter as they will be ground back, and then seam welded.

Here's the view from the top.

As you can see I have cut out the previous repair section at the front of the well, and have a bit more tidying up to do before I do the final tacks and welding in of this portion.

It's a bit annoying going back and starting again, but I am much happier with this attempt than the last, and it's a good opportunity to try and develop some metalworking skills.

Karl

 

[DVD3500]

May we make jokes about being a pain in the ar$e? 😄

 

[Bordfunker]

45 minutes ago, DVD3500 said:

May we make jokes about being a pain in the ar$e? 😄

 

You might as well, the rest of my family have. 😃

Karl

[Bordfunker]

I seem to making a habit of these long pauses between updates, but in my defense it has been very busy in the Bordfunker house of late.

Firstly my eldest son and his girlfriend moved to a flat in North London, which meant a long promised trip to Bovington Tank Museum to go seem some real heavy metal, including the amusingly named Standard Beaverette!

The following weekend was then spent moving them both from Banbury to Wood Green, a journey that takes a lot longer than you would think! 

Not helped by insane scooter riders who seem hell bent of throwing themselves in front of you at ever set of lights!

Which brings us up to last weekend, which, obviously, given that we now had a 'spare bedroom', meant setting it up to act as my wife's new craft room, followed by moving a load of stuff from the living room into the new craft room rendering it unusable as a craft room!

The reason for this insanity was that I took last week off in order to decorate the dining/living room, something that we had been planning to do for at least the last 5 years.

Let's be clear, I hate decorating, but there is no way I am going to pay someone else do something that I know full well, that I should be able to do.

Cue 4 days of decorating this week, before Mrs B headed off to Sheffield to see friends, leaving me at a loose end for 3 days. What do?

Garage obviously!

But first a trip to the tip, as the garage has become a bit of a dumping ground, making it not only difficult, but also dangerous, to work in.

So now we've got the shaggy dog story out of the way, along with the rubbish, it was time to make up the last patch for the spare wheel well.

To fill the yawning chasm here.

To make matters more awkward, the section also includes three reinforcing ribs, for which I used my wonderfully clever block of wood with a rib shape carved out of it.

Clamp steel over block, making sure you have the rib where you need it, then then apply force!

I wasn't aiming for perfect, but I did do a bit more finessing before I finally fitted the panel, as I'm going to stone chip the front of the wheel well as it does appear to come in for quite a lot of punishment based on mine.

What followed was an hour of fettling, checking, fettling, checking and then finally deciding that everything fitted about as well as it was going to.

I was quite impressed by the fit I managed to achieve, which mean it was welding time!

Tacks first...

...followed by a laboriously seam welding it all, a little bit at a time to avoid heat distortion.

Overall pretty good, and only 3 pin holes. 

As you can see I have also made a start on re-welding the old repair section that I put in a couple of years back when the welder wasn't playing ball.

And here it is all welded up.

Again, I'm not aiming for perfect here, just a properly welded repair, particularly as this will be seam sealed and then stone chipped.

That and it's underneath the car, so only me and the MoT man will ever really see it!

And with that in mind, I revisited the patches that I had welded in for the outer seat belt mounts, going belt and braces to be ultra cautious.

Hopefully that will keep the MoT man happy, and the seatbelts properly anchored.

All of the above meant that I was finally approaching the end of the welding marathon that has been the rear tub, with just one little patch left to do, when this happened...

Oops, out of gas!

But it was 4.30 on a Saturday afternoon, no problem?

Problem! My local stockist was out of Hobbyweld 5, and I didn't fancy chasing around Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire looking for some, so called it a day on the welding for this weekend.

But with Mrs B not back until Monday, what to do with Sunday, other than mow the lawn, and fit the curtain rail brackets in the living room?

Nothing for it but to continue cleaning the crud and underseal from the front of the tub, which I started last year before commencing the welding marathon.

Four hours of scraping, wire brushing and wiping down with white spirit, left me with this.

And this is what the other side looks like, and what the above side had started the afternoon looking like.

I know what next weekend has in store for me, along with a bit more decorating.

It would have been lovely to have finally got the welding on the tub completed this weekend, but the welding gas gods were not smiling on me this time, so it will have to wait for another week.

Karl

[poppyman]

I have been watching the updates for long while as you know Karl, and you have the theory "practice makes perfect" is true. Your welding and fabrication skills are great and much faster... Well done that man  

Tony. 

[Bordfunker]

Thanks for the words of encouragement Tony, much appreciated.

After last week's lack of welding gas driven hiatus, I was rather hoping to get the last of the welding done this week, but a call to the farm shop confirmed that they had still not had a delivery of gas, so rather than go chasing around Oxfordshire looking for gas, I decided to focus on some more of the dull stuff.

Now I had thought that I had removed all of the dreaded under seal from the underside of the tub, but alas no, I hadn't, and in places there was a very thin layer of the stuff still adhering to the surface.

I tried white spirit and brush cleaner, but that just seemed to move it around, rather than actually removing it.

So I got a little brutal and hit it with the heat gun on max, so that the oily element of the underseal burnt off, good ventilation is a must for this, then scraping off the carbonised remains.

The tub then got a good coat of FE 123 rust stopper, which was then left to harden off overnight.

Which is where I intending to leave it for this week, but then yesterday afternoon turned out sunny and mild, and work had wrapped up promptly at 5, leaving me some time on my hands.

What to do?

Given that I have had a couple of tins of red oxide epoxy mastic sitting under my desk in the study since the spring, it seemed the time was ripe to slap some paint on.

The point of this exercise was not so much to provide a perfect coat of paint, but to cover up and protect the areas that I had already prepped in order to avoid flash rusting undoing all my hard work.

So with that in mind, rather than break out the spray gun and fire up the compressor, I decided to go old skool and use a hairy stick.

It's not quite Matt's standard on his Puma Spit, but it will do.

I would have painted more, but my workshop vacuum died last weekend, and I needed to clean up areas like the wheel arches before I could apply paint.

Guess who's Googling 'How to fault find a vacuum cleaner?' this week?

The aim is to get the underside of the tub fully welded, then painted with epoxy primer, then flip it over and make sure that everything fits as it should to the chassis and bulkhead.

I can then make any amendments to ensure everything fits properly, then the tub will be flipped again, with the chassis and tub underside getting a thorough rub down, followed by spray coats of epoxy mastic, followed by seam sealing.

That little lot should take me well into autumn, assuming no major upsets, and then it will be time to return to the bulkhead.

I'm less nervous of the bulkhead now that the welder is working as it should, and I know that I can both reliably stick two pieces of metal together, and generally shape them into an approximation of the required shape.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

We have a new addition to the Bordfunker household....

This is Olive, an 8 week old Beagle pup who we picked up last weekend from the breeder in Lincolnshire.

Which has meant the last few weekends have been spent puppy proofing the house and the garden, as we have never had a puppy since moving in here, and there were a number of small gaps in fences and under gates that needed addressing.

And given that she is a pup, most of this week has passed in a sleep deprived haze, but I'm hoping that will improve. 

It's amazing, you forget all this once they are beyond puppyhood, just like you do with kids!

So this is essentially a long excuse for a) not posting recently, and b) not getting a lot done on the Herald.

This update is therefore a couple of weeks old, as we last saw the underside of the Herald's tub part painted and de-rusted, and with the focus on cleaning up the remaining sections ahead of the cold damp weather of winter.

Cue new purchase..

It's a Norton strip disc, not cheap, at almost £12 from Screwfix, but wow! does it take the crud off!

Which is good, because by the time I had done this lot it was as bald as a Coot!

Speaking of bald, this is the state of my cup brush after attacking all the areas the strip disc couldn't reach.

I ended up with one of the wires stuck in my chin, and a rash on my right arm where they had been flying off!

I also managed to finish off that last bit of welding around passenger side boot drain hole.

Not sure whether to drill this out or leave as is at the moment.

Everything has now been stripped back, except the spare wheel well which was already painted, and so will just get flatted back, and a coat of rust stopper applied for immediate protection.

The above pic looks like a before and after view, with a bit of in between for good measure, however all of the cruddy bits have now been cleaned up and rust stopper applied.

Now I just need to find an hour or so to mix up the epoxy mastic, and give everything a protective coat ahead of the weather turning.

Not sure when the next update will be, but I do remember that puppies do grow very quickly, so hopefully not to long.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

This is our 3rd Beagle pup in 14 years, and 5th Beagle in the same period, so the behaviour is not only expected, but fully endorsed!

Love Beagles, they are all thieving, mischievous little beggars, but they are also lovely, so you end up forgiving them anything.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Progress has been somewhat limited over the last month, mainly due to our new small edition who requires constant monitoring, and has a tendency to wake up in the early hours demanding a bathroom break in the garden.

Which has meant me keeping a close eye on the unpainted areas of the tub as the temperature falls, and the humidity rises, leaving me worried that all my hard work would start flash rusting.

So having shopped and mowed the lawn for Mrs B last Sunday, I took a couple of hours to throw some paint on.

Now I had been intending to spray it on, but given the high winds on Sunday, that was immediately off the cards, so out with the trusty paintbrush and the epoxy mastic.

And my old Citroen C1 is now back on the drive, as my eldest and his girlfriend having moved to North London, have nowhere to park it, and weren't using it anyway, so it's back to Oxfordshire.

Everything is going to need a rub down to remove the brush marks, but that can wait, the main thing is that the bare metal areas are now protected.

It's amazing how much better something looks when it's broadly all in the same colour!

The spare wheel well will need rub down before I put a coat of primer on, but seeing as it has already received a couple of coats under the grey cellulose, it's not in immediate risk of rusting.

Karl

[Peter Truman]

love the car and Olive, we've had 3 Beagles, the first & 3rd definitely as Matthew says  little rips the first from Bishop Auckland and came home to Aus with us in 74, the second a real little gentleman, the best dog we've had was the last a Fox Hound, sort of big, big beagle but a real softie, enjoy both projects.

[Bordfunker]

Matt, I think you might be right, as I was going to stonechip the insides of the arches, and the front of the spare wheel well, and it’s only me and the MoT man who will ever look at the underside!

Pete, ours is very much a Beagle household. Mrs B did suggest a Spaniel, but I don’t think I could cope with the lack of evil intent.

Our first Beagle, Willow is still going strong at 14+, though not overly impressed at Olive.

We’ve also had a couple of old boys from Beagle Welfare, a 14 year old, and a 10 year old, both of which made it to 15+.

But then earlier this year we lost Rowdy, our 11 year old that we had had from a pup to an epileptic seizure, and it just hasn’t felt right being down to one dog since.

So despite the lack of sleep, chronic bityness, particularly my Achilles’ tendon, it’s good to have a Beagle pup in the house again.

Karl

 

 

[Bordfunker]

Olive continues to grow, and is now over 6kgs, up from the 3kgs she weighed when we got her 5 weeks ago!

She is no less bitey though, but is at least sleeping for longer at night now, so the lack of sleep is abating slowly.

All of which allowed me a couple of hours in the garage on Sunday applying a second coat of epoxy mastic primer.

Before I did that though, I gave the existing paintwork a quick rub down to key it ready for the fresh paint.

And then it was out with the paint gun, probably the first time I have actually used it in over a year, and not without a little concern as to whether I could still do it.

I needn't have worried, but after not using it for so long, you do sometimes doubt your own abilities.

It could do with a third coat, but before I apply that, I think I may apply the seam sealant to all of the joints, something that Triumph would have been well advised to have done in the first place.

That has restored my faith in my ability to spray paint, and overall I am quite happy with the results, but glad that it's on the underside of the car!

Karl

[Bordfunker]

I can't believe it's been over 3 months since my last update on my Herald, and that delay has very much been due to life getting in the way, notably work and a small Beagle who requires a lot of supervision.

Last time we saw the Herald it was sitting with it's tub on the dolly having just had a coat of RustBusters epoxy mastic primer.

Since then all of the seams on the underside of the tub have received a coat seam sealer, hopefully preventing water ingress and ensuing rust in the seams.

I went for coverage rather than neatness, as only me and the MoT inspector will ever see these.

And then it was time to indulge in some of my very dubious carpentry, the aim being to build a small dolly that the chassis and tub could sit on once they had been re-united.

Chippendale it is not, but it's sturdy, and allows me to manoeuvre the chassis in and out of the garage.

Which left me in a position to re-unite the rear tub and chassis to check that every thing lined up as it should.

 

First thing I noticed on lifting the tub onto the chassis was just how much more rigid it felt, compared to when we removed it a couple of years back. 

There was no flexing or creaking, it actually felt as it was part of one solid whole, not some wobbly mass composed of rust and filler.

The second thing that stood out was that almost every bolt hole on the tub aligned with the corresponding holes in the rebuilt chassis. 

What's more, with the tub and bulkhead bolted to the rebuilt chassis, the whole ensemble felt really secure, with me able to clamber over it safely, even while it was sitting on the new dolly at the rear.

You'll note I said 'almost every bolt hole', well a couple of my earlier repairs have come back to haunt me, reminders of my excess of enthusiasm and lack of experience, namely the boot out riggers.

These didn't line up worth a damn, which is probably no surprise given that I did these before I had sorted out the rest of the chassis or tub.

Close but no cigar.

Not even deserving of a fag butt!

I need to sort out the weld joining the old portion of the boot reinforcing plate to the new, but this will be a lot easier with the tub the right way up, and not having to fight gravity with a welding torch.

Now given that the outriggers were replaced before the welder was working properly, the welding was always going to be highly suspect, so rather than hack up two new out riggers, I decided to cut out the ends of the chassis rails, with the aim of rebuilding these from new steel.

One reason for going the extreme route was to remove the ugly remains of the original out riggers from inside the chassis rails.

Not pretty, and something that I should have dealt with properly the first time around.

Not to worry, it's all part of the learning curve.

As per usual with this car, there was a marked contract between the driver's and passenger sides of the chassis.

Driver's side.

Practically mint.

Passenger side.

Less minty, more crusty!

All of which brings us up to this weekend.

Now bear in mind I'm managing about an hour and a half on the car per week at the moment, progress is somewhat less than stellar, but I made a start today on the repairs to the ends of the main chassis rails.

Fortunately Santa rather thoughtfully provided me with this....

Ideal for creating a replacement U-section for the repair of the chassis rails, note sheet of 2mm steel sitting ready for bending.

I think it's only supposed to be for 1mm steel, but it coped with the chassis steel with no issue, only the operator struggling with the effort needed.

Which meant that by the end of today I had a bare section of U-shaped steel to serve as a basis for the repair sections.

Hopefully next week will see a little more progress.

Karl

[Pete Lewis]

looking good   ,  can nearly hear it running         well  you know what oi mean 

Pete

[Bordfunker]

Pete, thanks for the encouragement, but I fear it may be a little longer yet.

The aim of today's session in the garage was to finish making up the repair sections for the passenger side end of the main chassis rail, however as Eisenhower once said, 'No plan survives contact with the enemy.'.

The enemy in this instance was previously un-noticed rot on the interior of the main chassis rail where it meets the rear transverse chassis member.

Cue industrial levels of basic Anglo-Saxon, followed by walking the dogs in howling gale and a cup of tea.

There was also a little bit of rot at the top of the transverse member, but nothing serious, or difficult to fix.

While drinking my brew I pondered the following:

• Is the problem fixable?
• If so, how do I approach it?

To the first, yes, I figure it is, as long as I rebuild the various elements in the same manner as they were constructed originally, as any welds will, by their nature, actually be stronger than the surrounding metal.

So with that question answered, how?

I decided to peel back the layers of the original components until I got to good sound metal, after which I will need to build the following:

• Make up the rear wall of the main chassis rail from just in front of the rear transverse member to the end of the rail.
• Make up a new outer section of the main chassis rail from just aft of the transverse member.
• Replace original patch welded to the underside of the main rail just in front of the diff mount.

Thankfully the new rot is all to the rear of the chassis rail dip, so will essentially be fairly straightforward sections at least.

So with a plan formulated, I went back out and started cutting and grinding.

You'll have to excuse the wonky angle, for some reason Imageshack is rotating my images on an ad hoc basis.

As you can see I have managed to preserve the original end of the cross member, by carefully grinding back the remains of the old panels.

In this shot you can see the old repair cut out of the underside of the rail.

It all needs more tidying, but my remaining grinding disc was looking a little the worst for wear, so a new one is definitely on the shopping list for next week.

Quick question to the hive mind, what thickness is the metal on the main chassis rail supposed to be?

The main section looks thicker than the rear face, which looks like normal 1mm steel, but then mine has been ravaged by the tin worm.

Karl

[NonMember]

I'd expect most of the chassis to be 1.2mm (or whatever the Imperial equivalent was - 18 gauge?) with possibly some bits of 1.6mm (I think that's 16 gauge?) as needed. It might be thinner, though.

[Dick Twitchen]

12 hours ago, Bordfunker said:

'No plan survives contact with the enemy.'.

Actually it was Von Moltke, 19th Century Prussian commander.  Clearly I spent too long on the staff of the Army Command and Staff college at Camberley!