Oh yes another 1973 rhd 2.4E

[Bigfoot]

I've been talking to a local paint guy today and apparently there's somewhere in Birmingham who can dip the shell in "acid primer" and/or "normal primer"??? Advantage being the primer gets absolutely everywhere which clearly must be advantageous?? Also there are different paint methods (excuse my ignorance), do I want the top coat to be paint or laquer?

[inaglasshouse]

Hi Adam,

Your paint guy could be referring to Surface Processing in Dudley.
This page is a good summary of their process:
http://www.surfaceprocessing.co.uk/rest ... guide.html
I have no experience of them, but worth a search on here as I'm sure some DDK-ers have.

Having done quite a bit of dipping vs blasting research, and bearing in mind the (decent) state of my shell I decided to gently blast not dip and mostly forgot about these guys. But sounds like you are not mainly talking about dipping to strip paint, instead dipping to apply the new primer. Not sure if you can do the latter without the former? If a "stripping dip" is part of the deal, I'd be very wary of any process that is putting acid into the folds and seams - speak to Barry, talk sense he does.

Yours is solid (non-metallic) dalmatian blue, right? If so, I'm pretty sure you don't want lacquer, assuming you want an original-ish finish.

Cheers, Richard.

[Bigfoot]

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Cutting a long story short Ive had a fight with the laptop (emails and photobucket) and I'm almost winning, this has resulted in a future edit of next couple of posts but all ok lower down.... TBC

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Muchos work involved in building lots of the car up to establish the correct position of the new OS front inner wing, and how it relates to the A-pillar, the inner sill and the front slam panel.

This was also a good chance to get a final coat of paint on the soon to be hidden sill area. With that dry, the new heater tube could go in.

The area adjacent to the pedal box had it's fabricated repair sections welded in and tidied up, much better than it started.

[Bigfoot]

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The offside tank support (chassis legs) are missing the crucial captive nut to retain the battery strap, plus being a later version, they gained a hole that wasn't there on early cars. Both situations resolved.

[Bigfoot]

The offside inner wing has a circular cut-out towards the rear which was solid on early cars, so this is has been corrected. Also, on RHD cars, the auxiliary heater vent is not needed, so this was also blanked off as per the factory, using a templated part welded in.

[Bigfoot]

The new tank support was lacking one hole (not actually used for anything as far as I know, but even so, being correct it was added back in (arrowed).

Also the tiny bracket seen was fabricated and welded in with reference to a template.

After that, the cavity about to be hidden by the tank support was re-primed with black etch primer, and then followed by silver weld-thru primer.

The tank support was welded in, and now just awaits some cosmetic singe sided welds where the normal welder can't reach.

[Bigfoot]

Another detail: as supplied the new inner wings are missing part of the bonnet seal flange. On both sides this was fabricated and welded in.

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A-post backdate next....

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Outer sills

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Finally the second inner wing could be welded in, as could the second inner sill. The very front of the car as been left un-welded just in case I need some wiggle room later on.

Again, the jig was levelled with an engineer's spirit level and jack before welding in these very structural parts. The Celette jig does take the shape of the floor if you're not careful, so the jig gets levelled off whenever anything major happens.

[Bigfoot]

Yet another trial fit to make sure that everything will marry up O.K.

Also, offside A-post welded into place.

Outer sill and kidney bowl awaiting welding, but positions all sorted pretty much, which is where a lot of the work is.