The Spitfire that just needed a tidy up...

[Josef]

After stumbling across Colin Lindsay's Herald resto thread (and thus remembering the TSSC forum existed!) I thought I'd start sharing my Spitfire progress as I've been taking a lot of photos for documentation, and to share with some car-inclined colleagues. Given I've been figuring out what I'm doing bodywork wise from other people sharing what they're up to, I also want to post in the hope it'll help someone else figure out what that rusty tangle of metal is supposed to look like. There's a bit to catch up on though!

 

So, lets rewind to summer 2018. After around 10 years of owning my 13/60 I was finally permanently back in the country after several periods abroad and wanted to finally find myself a Spit Mk3. After a lot of looking about I got a call in response to my want ad in the Courier. A Mk3, club member owned for 20 years, with overdrive, never driven if there's even a hint of rain, bit tatty, could use a tidy up. Ohhhh, sounds pretty good I thought, and took it too much at face value when viewing. The wiring was pretty horrendous though, which should've been a clue to the standard of previous work... Anyway, I bought it, drove it home from the midlands to the north east and set about tidying bits and bobs (including replacing fuel hoses that said 'suitable for regular and unleaded fuels' which gives some clue to their age!). Doesn't look too bad in the photos right? Though you might be able to spot the wonky bonnet lettering, another clue. I pottered on with the various jobs I was identifying, till I decided to fit some inertia reel seatbelts, and that's where everything started to unravel. I didn't like the look of a patch to the wheel arch where the mounting point for the belt reel would have to go, so took it to a local classic restoration specialist to get an idea of what work the wheel arch would need (not the person I would've usually used, as they were extremely busy). Really went downhill from here... TBC

I will note that I firmly believe the club member PO I purchased it from had no idea what a nightmare this car was, and would probably be horrified to find out.
 

[Colin Lindsay]

11 hours ago, Josef said:

After stumbling across Colin Lindsay's Herald resto thread

Stumble out of it again, quickly... it's not called 'embarrassing' for no reason.

Get yours back on the road in record time and embarrass me even more. I know where you are with that lovely little Spitfire; my first pride and joy 'fully restored' 1500 just 'needed the door gaps adjusting, simple job' in order to make the windows wind all the way up, so I took it to a local bodyworker. His advice was to scrap it...  Pride wouldn't let me, and that's where it all started. Knowing that you've done more for it than previous owners does give a certain pride. Keep us posted!

[Steve P]

Nice Herald,is it Valencia?,it looks a bit metallic.

Steve

(Valencia Vitesse CV)

[Josef]

@Steve P Yep it's regular Valencia, and has generally been well cared for at least since 1979 (by the last owner who I bought it from in 2007). Currently undergoing some minor surgery to redo some rotted out plate-over repairs in the boot corner.

@Colin Lindsay too late I've read all of it! You have made huge progress, and it's genuinely good to see what people are up to even if stuff's not yet quite finished

Anyway, so with the carpets out (half the rest of the trim was absent anyway) the picture was pretty grim. There were bits of tube welded along the inner sills, brazing, pop rivets, expanda foam, silicone sealant, stuff welded on top of things that were barely held to the car themselves. The restorers said they could handle it though and did a whole load of welding, I visited periodically, had a poke around with the garage owner at one point and we put a screwdriver through the inner wheelarch that was made mostly of fibreglass, the other side was the same, cue more welding. May as well fix the dodgy looking repairs on the bonnet while we're here as we're going to have to go to paint I thought. So I bought some panels, and then more panels, in the end everything except the bonnet top and tubes needed to be replaced. Then came the saga of paint. It was painted once, and looked great, except the garage spotted a pressing crease in the front wing, so that needed filling and re-painting. Then the painter was ill, then the wrong colour paint was supplied and applied to the car (twice). I eventually got it back, cleaned the workshop filth off the engine bay and started fitting it up. Then took it back to the garage as there were fish eyes in the paint, and they'd fitted a fuel pipe that leaked from the rear and where it passes through the chassis at the front. At this point COVID was in full swing and the painter was shielding. So they had to subcontract out the repaint, to someone who did a rubbish job, and threw in a free short and melt of the wiring loom (which I had previously fully refurbished) for good measure. So that got repaired - badly it turned out, it didn't fit behind the dashboard and fouled the back of the refurbished speedo, denting the case and making the needle hit the glass (easily fixed though, I popped the dent back by hand). Finally, I got an acceptably painted car back around July / August 2020 (note I did only pay for the first of the resprays). Right, time to put it all back together again then.

Errr. Well. Now I finally had it back and was thinking about trim. But in the meantime I'd been watching a YouTube series on a GT6 restoration (https://youtu.be/2wDppdi7DjA - really worth watching if you're doing any sort of bodywork on a Spit or GT6 for the first time), and bought a MIG so I could learn to use it filling in the badly placed holes for the seat runners. So now I was familiar enough with what the body should look like that I could see the repairs to my sills and floors really didn't look like they were supposed to. The moulded carpet set I'd bought I was sure would never fit well over them for one thing. Hmmm. So I pondered and poked around the bodywork wondering what to do, then managed to put a screwdriver through a bit of the drivers side sill that hadn't been replaced. Great. I sure wasn't about to pay anyone else to fix this given I was now around two years in and had spent a good bit. I started to really look at the visible repairs on the drivers side interior and didn't like what I saw at all. Here's where it went downhill again...

 

[Josef]

Before anyone gets too excited at the shiny paint...

Well there's a hole in the sill, that a-post doesn't look great, might be multiple layers in the floors. Eeek. Floor'll have to come out then. Ah, that middle sill has half an original top, and a bunch of small plates welded over it making up the bottom half (plus bits of expanda foam still kicking around). The amount of weld and extra layers here meant I spent days just cutting. (Also at this point I, naively, but perhaps understandably given the preceding difficulties, thought I'd be able to manage these repairs with very minimal paintwork required.)

[Pete Lewis]

think the pub is looking more feasible 

all small beginning's end up maximums   

keep going it will all turn into smiles 

Pete

[Josef]

Yep, the pub might've been a better option at the point those photos were taken... I can't remember quite how COVID locked down we were at that point but I wasn't going anywhere much besides the garage anyway.

I chose a nice easy introduction to serious welding on a car, replacing the lower a-post without removing the outer sill. And I decided to try and retain some of the original panel, again in a desperate effort at minimising hitting any of the painted exterior. So was welding with my head jammed into the footwell, often left handed (which is not my dominant hand). Fabricated the upper a-post repair section with a former for the square section aperture cut from a block of wood, a very small vice, a hammer and a newly purchased shrinker/stretcher that was my only 'proper' metalworking tool at that point. Welded that in left handed too and am amazed at how well it came out.

 

[Josef]

Next I made things hard for myself again by replacing the bottom of the b-post with the rear wing in place. Started undoing poor repairs to the wheel arch. The missing chunk of outer-inner rear wheel arch there was a bit of steel so thin it felt more like aluminium, and wasn't attached to the outer wing at all. Got some paint on the exposed bits of chassis too 

[Josef]

With a and b-posts to attach it to, I got the floor sat in and started working on the heelboard and cross-member. That gave me some worries as there were about three layers of overplating on these parts... Underneath though the crossmember was intact except for the outboard end.

[Josef]

Finishing off the heel board area, starting to weld the floor in and patching the wheel arch.

Out of interest, anyone have any decent photos / descriptions of how the two rear wheel arch panels and the b-post panel all fit together? There was nothing left to tell me what was 'right' here.

[Peter Truman]

Nice Job well done

[Josef]

With the floor fitted I was able to get on with the inner and middle sills. Also figured out the rear wing was scrap too. Whoever worked on the front of it must've had a welder intended for bridge girders or oil rigs judging by the gauge of the forrest of welding wire on the back of some of the panels. At the rear there was some badly beaten out accident damage round the bumper mount (it looked more like a golf ball under all the filler), and the lower edge was full of rot and fibreglassed in metal. Oh and someone had then welded a repair to a plate that was only attached to the rest of the car by the fibreglass!

[Josef]

On to the boot while I was waiting for the rear wing to arrive. Turns out these repairs were brazing (straight over rust) and I think date from the time the car was painted red. In hindsight I ended up doing so many repairs to the boot floor that maybe I should've just bought the panel. 

Also, a test fit of the sill, which looked OK.

[Josef]

The rear half of the wheel arch was repairable. So I got on and did that intending to use half of the commercially available repair section to do the, mostly completely missing, front half. Then decided that it wouldn't marry up nicely (given the repair panel was made of several parts welded together rather than being a pressing) so sent it back and built my own to match the outer wing.

[Josef]

Wing on! Along with the reinforcement bracket under the boot for the bumper stays (it was ~1.5mm steel so I'd had to wait for a bit of that to arrive). I had to cut into the leading edge of the wing to fit the door but otherwise it went on surprisingly easily.

 

[Josef]

Piecing together the lower b-post (previously consisted of mostly lumps of weld) and fitting the rear wing finisher.

[Gully]

Huge respect for all that effort on a car that you bought believing it was generally sound - I would have hit despair early in the bodywork process!

Great job,

Gully

[Josef]

2 hours ago, Gully said:

Huge respect for all that effort on a car that you bought believing it was generally sound - I would have hit despair early in the bodywork process!

Great job,

Gully

Thanks! I think it was a mixture of not being able to go anywhere cause of lockdowns, and never at any point really appreciating quite how much actually needed doing... Until I'd ripped through one side of the car and thought it was a safe bet the other side was similar, and at that point I was half done (well, except for the doors, but see earlier point about being unable to judge how much work was needed  )

[Josef]

Sill on, along with the closing plate and floor crossmember. This is actually the second sill I fitted, I got half way through welding the first one and was so unhappy with it I eventually decided to cut it off and start again. I also should've positioned the sill and wing together rather than welding the wing on first (which is what I did on the passenger side). One side done though! This was mid December 2020 after ~3.5 months of working on it most evenings and weekends.

[Josef]

So, after four months it was time to put the car back on its wheels. I needed to turn it to be able to work on the other side. Would it start? Of course not! The engine wasn't getting any fuel, I thought at the time it was the fuel pump so cleared everything I could from the garage and pushed the car through a  multi point turn (with some assistance). The passenger side still looked OK, but I was able to recognise now where there was going to be filler, and there was no way I was prepared to trust any of it...

[Josef]

New Years day 2021. See, I was right to attack the passenger side too. Just look at those top quality repairs to the a- and b-posts - I actually paid someone for that. I wasn't fooling myself about being able to do little bits at this point: so it was out with the floor, and off with most of the sill straight away.

[Josef]

Starting small, repairs to the upper a-post, bulkhead and heel board / rear deck area. Then on to the lower a-post (full panel this time, I had learned that lesson at least! The repair needed to the bulkhead had previously been 'fixed' by having a tiny bit of sound insulation stuck over the top of it making the hole practically invisible from the engine bay... The O/S sill I'd scrapped started to come in handy here as I was able to steal some nice long bits with pre bent right angles, I don't have the kit to make a straight long bend like that so would've had to do it in bits. Expensive way to go about it, but at least the panel wasn't going completely to waste! 

[Josef]

Getting the floor in, and the bulkhead adjusted. Given there was barely anything original on this side to work from the plan was to get the a- and b-posts repaired to the point I could attach the floor, and work from that.

[Josef]

Repairs to the heelboard crossmember, a large chunk of heel board fabricated and fitted, and prepping for the inner sill. I used a different brand of weld-through primer here, which had terrible welding properties...

[Josef]

Inner sills done! The outer sill there was a NOS Rover branded one that showed up on eBay. Also on eBay, a NOS b-post panel appeared. If only Fittchets had had a clear out a few weeks earlier, cause I absolutely could've used that!