Ray,
I am very happy, that mine is not the only one with rost
Where Germany are from?

 

This is definitely a labour of love.

Kudos for continuing.

Thanks again for sharing your restoration.

 

I too have subscribed to your post Ray and will watch with interest in the progress. I hope I live long enough to see the completion! Do you have a time frame in mind.You are a brave man.

 

I live just south of Munich near Landsberg am Lech

 

My hope is that I can get the car on the road in 2013, I know this sounds optimistic but hey life is a challenge.

 

Ray, I have a business contact in Schongau. When I am there next time, I will infomr you. May be I can have a look at your work?

 

Well it would be nice to meet another person as crazy as I am!!!!!!!!!, look forward to meeting you.

 

Well some progress on the car this week, garden still not possible to work on so more time in the garage.

Time to take on the complete replacement of the RH sill both inner and outer, plus the junction with the A post and everything else that is down there. Picked up some aviation skin pins from work and there are really useful when needing to clamp the parts together with the normal vice grips.

Hardest part was welding the new floor panel with my left hand, if my right is not good yet that means my left must be worse. Anyway you can see the results in the pictures, this is just the part on replacing the inner sill and a part of the A post and the new floor panel, part two will follow shortly.

I ran a piece of string from front to ack and also to the middle also before I put the outer sill in place to allow easier installation of the wiring harness - when I am ready for thsi is a couple of months hopefully.

Part two outer sill installation will follow in a couple of weeks.

 

Nice work, Ray. That floor panel looks good to me!
Lin

 

Well with the Easter weekend here a little more time to work on my project. Although you can buy new panels for the inner and outer sills it is the little repair peices at the bottom of the A, B and D posts that are interesting and they dont make pieces for these you have to improvise.

Anyway attached are some photos with regard to the A and B posts I still have the D post to repair, all these made with a small guilotine and a small bender, vice, hammer and various pieces of metal used as formers.

My view is that if I can get a good weld in most places and take care to get this then this will be as good as the production line.

Also changed my weld gas from full Co2 to Argon/Co2 mix and this has made a real difference to the quality of the welding and getting happier now with every weld, maybe I will go over some of my earlier welding just to be sure.

 

Hi Ray,
What are you "painting" your welded surfaces with?

Lin

 

Lin

At the moment just standard auto black laquer to cover over ands stop any further rust forming, I don't know how lng all of this os going to take!!!!!!!. I plan to strip all the paint off the car when all the repairs are completed and reprotect, prime and apply the final top coat.

 

Oh, okay. I wondered if you were using POR-15 or something similar.
Lin

 

Great work there, Ray. Just found this thread. Did you mean 5 speed auto? If so what car is it from?
Go to rust.co.uk and get some epoxy-mastic for the underside and the epoxy primer for the body. You can use jotun epoxy for the chassis and lechler epoxy for the body as well.
That's what i'm planning on using when I start my XJC project. POR-15 is good stuff but is very fussy about preparation.

 

Now that I have finished the front part of the sill it was time to move to the rear. As with all these tasks you start off thinking that you only need to cut a small section out but by the time you have finished you have tripled the size of the original plan.

Anyway some photos of the rear wheel arch repair. For the first time needed to take a piece into work and use a tool from the detail shop, needed to "shrink" a radius around the "D" Post panel.

I then made up four pieces to repair the material I cut out of the wheel arch and get them all welded up and sealed.

Anyway enjoy.

 

I have used POR-15 and I highly recommend it. It is easy to apply, they do recommend their metal prep to be applied first which I did use to ensure longterm life and on another car it still looks brand new after over 7 years. I have heard many just paint the POR-15 straight onto the bare metal without issues. When you go through the hassle to sprip the undercarriage down to bare metal I think it is worth it to use POR-15. I think this is be best for rust prevention and I live near the ocean and it works better than anything else in my opinion.

 

Well its been a few weeks since my last post but i thought i would catch up with some more photos and progress an this major restoration. Anyway the last time i posted I showed you all progress behind the RH rear wheel arch and finishing that off allowed me to move forward to take on the front wheel arch and the repair to the indicator light on the right hand side as well.

my plan is to work round the car from the rear RH side to the middle and then start from the rear LH side to the middle and hopefully everything meets as planned. The only reason for this is that my double garage only allows me to really work on one side at a time so I choose the part nearest my work bench even though I can rotate the car 360 degrees I have not mastered the art of upsidedown welding yet!!!!!!

Any way some pictures of the progress.

still hopeful to have all this complete in 2013 however the clock is going faster now.

 

Keep up the good work, it's looking fantastic so far.

 

Looking good Ray. Nice work as always.
Lin

 

Great update. Thanks Ray. Would make a good feature film edited down to a few hours.