Thanks Ted, I have booked the Therapist already !!!

 

Congrats on the latest purchase, Jon! The fun just never ends.
Lin

 

How's the veneer, is it peeling or does it just need a new finish ?
From what I could see from the photo, it still looks pretty sound.

 

Ethel appears very fashion conscious. Lovely colour combination, and her undergarments (upholstery) look in good nick.
Judging by the look of the trunk, all the parts are there!

 

Very nice acquisition. I'm sure most of that will just buff out.

 

Thanks Guys, the wood is not bad, should be able to just refinish it, there are some tiny surface rust spots all around the front from stone chips which would stop this being a buff up, def needs front cross member crow's feet, front wheel arch repair, new outer sills (inside sills are in good condition !", jacking point, (at least one) no rot in the rear seat pan, the underside looks pretty good on a quick inspection, inner wing closing panels need doing.

I am sure the list will become longer !! The doors are in pretty good shape, small bit of rust in the boot lower edge, door cards are pretty good.

The top of the pancake filter is missing, as is the toolbox and cannot find the distributor yet, but there are a set of inlet manifolds and SU carbs for a MG or Triumph in the boot and part of another overdrive unit and also a pair of old stock but never used front calipers for the Jag and a clutch from another car too !

Carpets are toast as is the boot mat, but wheel well is good, and no rot in the boot at all, rear wheel arches appear good, and rear spring hanger boxes appear OK too. So all in all not too bad.

Other than some cleaning and tinkering, Ethel will need to wait until the current project is off for painting and upholstery.

 

Striped the boot lid, and cut out the rusted section at the lower edge, I had to fabricate a new lip for the inside frame, and also a section of skin for the outside.
The skin is the most difficult as you have to fold the edge on a curve and without a press with a die this is not simple, I find that but using a grinder with a cutting disc to score a very shallow line on the inside face to match the curve, you can dress the metal and it will bend at the score point as this is slightly thinner than the rest of the metal, maybe not the perfect solution, but it does work.

After prepping the area, spot weld into place, and then fold over the seam, I have a great seamer which does a great job, and leaves no hammer and dolly marks on the edges, really easy !!

Now I have to refit the boot lid and fettle the edges to fit before spraying with zinc primer and epoxy after sandblasting the inside face.

I will start the same process with the doors, I have a new skin for one door and will make up a new bottom outer skin for another, hopefully the other 2 doors won't need the same treatment, but until I strip the paint and see if there is a bunch of filler covering unknown issues I don't know yet.

 

Thanks for sharing how you did that. The seamer is very impressive. Nice work. It is amazing what you can do!

 

Thanks Chuck,

I got to start a little fettleing on the fit of the boot after the repairs.

The gaps were a little out on the tight curves, so I applied some mig weld to the edges and ground these back to improve the fit.

Little more to do before I get it in primer, and have to blast the inside face off too.

 

Nice attention to detail with the gaps. They look great. I still have to do that with the doors.

 

Thanks Chuck, I'm in the stripping process on the doors, have 2 lower skins to do on both Driver's side doors, plus some repairs to the frames, 1 door has the window frame mount point rusted out, and the front door has rust in the support brace for the lower hinge, so I will have to cut some of the bottom section away to repair this properly.

I will add more pics as this progresses.

 

I have four doors to patch- only one is pretty bad, and the rust is almost all on the skins. I have two new door skins, but think I will just use them to patch areas-either the whole bottom, or just the rusty areas. I am concerned that using a complete skin will present me with door fittment problems, and I would like to avoid that just because it would take so much time. Also as MK2 pointed out some time ago, the door skins do not cover the whole exterior of the door, so you have to weld a seam somewhere. Good news is that they are easy to weld as you can lay them out flat on a welding table and go to town. Plus, there is easy access to both sides so it makes it much easier for getting the welds nice and flat.

 

I have a complete door skin for the rear door, and I was looking at the same approach Chuck, the skin joins with the old skin at the end of the curve just below the door handle, fitment is also my concern, but this is more to do with the accuracy of the new skin as far as size is concerned rather than the actual fitting of part or all of the skin.

I will be on that early next week after I have done the couple of small patches to the inner frame etc. so I will let you know how I get on, the skin I have is from Martin Robey, and I may well tack it in position with the door hanging, and then take it off to complete the welding. I am making my own repair skins for the front doors as these are square rather than the curve over the rear arch so a simple job to make those up.

 

Any pictures of the seamer?
Was it expensive?
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You can see the seamer in action in post #207 in the last but one picture.

Astro Pneumatic Air Power Car Door Skin Auto Body Shop Skinner Installation Tool | eBay

It wasn't cheap, but I am pretty sure I paid less than this, but they are the only manufacturer I have found that do one, saves a lot of time and does a great job.

I just looked it up. I paid £80, if you look for Astro Pneumatic DS1000 you will find them cheaper than the listing above, around $130 but I haven't looked very hard for cheaper suppliers

 

That's a cool tool!
I have seen the ones that operate using your air hammer but that one would have a lot more control over the work.
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Short update on the new Mk2, I managed to get in contact with the previous owner, it was her husbands car, which he bought from his father who had bought the car in 1971 from the original owner.

It was taken off the road in 1979, and kept in a garage since 1983 with a view to restore the car, sadly the owner passed away a couple of years ago shortly after his retirement and never got to carry out the restoration.

I have been to see her, and she very kindly let me rummage in the garage to see if there were any missing bits, I came away with a radiator cowl, bumper bracket numerous bolts, and an indicator lens, she is having a clear out this weekend and was happy for me to take anything I could find rather than it going for scrap.

I will keep this very kind lady up to date as restoration is carried out, as she has fond memories of the car and hopefully I will be able to take her for a drive in it once it is complete.

I have got the Heritage cert back, and it is definitely matching numbers and in original spec. Not surprising after finding out the history of the car.

 

Excellent that you can research history of the new acquisition.
Here in Oz, we have over-zealous privacy laws which prevent any research on previous owners thru' registration authorities (read beauracracies).

 

It was fairly straight forward, here the previous owners name and address is on the Registration documents, so I could either write, or in this case I found her number in the phone directory, and gave her a call.

The 340 was a little harder, but on the Heritage certificate it states the name of the original owner and the dealership that sold the car, so I did an internet search looking for names in that area that matched, and found a matching name that owned a large business at the time, putting 2 and 2 together assuming that a business owner could most likely afford the Jag at the time, I then found that his son had also joined the business which had since sold out to a large corporation, further searching and I managed to track down the original owners son as he was listed as a director of another company, I called the company and managed to find him that way.

We cannot search registration authorities either, but with the internet and some detective work, you would be surprised what you can find out.

 

Thought I would strip the last rear door, this one looked pretty good - how wrong can you be !!!

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't get the window frame out, the captive bolt on the rear window frame leg would not clear the mounting point, and I had to force it out, there wasn't enough clearance, and I thought that the wrong bolt had been used, but the real reason came to light shortly after.

I started the flap wheel on the door, and found some filler, then more and deeper and deeper, eventually I found the metal, buried under 1/2" of filler in some places, there had been a repair to the bottom of the door where about 3" of the skin had been replaced, and a strange 3" square patch part way up the door, for some reason beyond my comprehension, it is obviously a good idea to weld in the repair sections, and then drive over the welded area with a small articulated vehicle before carefully re sculpting it back into a very presentable shape with copious quantities of filler !!!!!!!

If you have followed this thread you will know that I have found that whoever did some repair work in the past was a genius with body filler, and no damn use at all with metal !

So off with the bottom half of the skin it is, you will see that this is fairly straight forward, grind the edge with a flap wheel until you just see the 2 parts coming apart, carry on around the door for the entire area that will be removed, cut across the panel, and off comes the skin - simple.

The mount for the rear window frame leg has rotted away, this is quite common as any water ingress soaks into the fiber packers and wreaks havoc with the steel, this is an easy repair with the skin off, and an absolute b****r if it's not.

I will update as this progresses, I have to order a new skin for this door as I thought it had survived intact before today's discoveries.

Have done some more stripping of the wood too, and will post this another time.