70 S, RHD, Signal Orange, UK->Australia->UK

[murph2309]

This is looking great. How cool to see two cars being barry'd at once.

Keep on with the detail. Can't believe it is 4 YEARS since my shell was finished. That just doesn't seem right.

Enjoy this. It's a good stage.

R

[inaglasshouse]

Thanks Rich. Hope all is well with you.
Cheers, Richard.

[inaglasshouse]

When Jamie Lipman visited me the other week we stood around like old blokes in a shed and, among other things, looked at my shell. Pre-blasting.
At one point, he said "what needs doing then, how is Barry going to spend x hours on this?" And, when it was in primer, I could see what he meant. Looked really pretty good.








.... didn't quite turn out that way...

[inaglasshouse]

Post-blasting, here's a photo of the rear parcel shelf area looking upwards, and some wise words from Mr C:



Barry says:

This was a real surprise, as this area looked so good!

I think the shell does back up my repeated claim that once any repair has been primed, any photographs are meaningless. It's so easy to skim iffy repairs with a bit of filler before priming and photographing. ...

At the end of the day, I'm afraid photos have got to be in bare metal or aren't worth the pixels they are made from ....

Just an example.
There are quite a few areas where the situation post-blasting, with the car on the jig, is less good than I'd hoped.

Wine o clock now, I think.

[8bit-ash]

I'll be following this with great interest, keep the pics coming. I'm next in line for a barrying, I imagine that initial post blast glancing is a little nerve wracking.

[inaglasshouse]

I'll be following this with great interest, keep the pics coming. I'm next in line for a barrying, I imagine that initial post blast glancing is a little nerve wracking.

Good to have you on board....
and sorry that I have just delayed your project (by needing more work than planned).

It's true that blasting (or dipping) is when you find out the truth about your shell!
But also when Barry looks at it post-blasting (of course he spotted way more issues than I did), and when it goes on the jig and you find out how straight or otherwise it is.
In my case the shell looked really good on the face of it, so the initial estimate of hours was quite low. Now we know the full picture - I will post details and photos when I have time - it's getting back nearer to what we've seen on previous DDK cars.
Not the end of the world.

[inaglasshouse]

As mentioned (have I mentioned?) my shell turned out to be less nice than I had hoped.

To put that in context, I originally did an idiotic thing and bought it on Australian eBay.
I then had a ton of luck when the vendor turned out to be completely honest and very helpful, so a matching numbers RHD S did indeed arrive at Southampton docks, unscathed, exactly as described on eBay.
I then thought I'd had another ton of luck because the shell seemed amazingly good - loads of original metal, not much corrosion, some half-complete resto work, some very neat resto work that Barry was even contemplating keeping (unheard of).
No damage to the scuttle, which tends to be the tell-tale in the case of a front bump
Seemingly original rear panel, which tends not to survive a rear end bump

So let's summarise what turned out to be wrong with it.
I should point out that the vendor made absolutely no warranties other than RHD S, matching numbers with CoA. So none of this is sour grapes against him - I knew there were risks in buying unseen from the other side of the world.

[inaglasshouse]

Status summary:

Corrosion: slightly more than I thought, but not much.
Parcel shelf and inner sills less good than they looked.

Still very good in this regard.

[inaglasshouse]

Status summary: Back end

Really not bad.

Rear screen jig fits quite well:


Rear of shell is a little low, implying that any previous work was not jig based:

[inaglasshouse]

Status summary: Rear inner wings and Torque Tube

I knew the previous torque tube end repairs were poor, and would be re-done:


Torque tube itself is OK. More pitted at ends than expected.
Good end repairs will sort this out.

Fit to the jig is not too awful:




The bad news back here is old buckling and ugly repairs to the inner wings:





All of that needs unpicking and properly fixing. So there's more work than expected to the rear inner wings / "chassis rails"

[inaglasshouse]

Status summary: front pan and front inner wings

I knew that the front pan etc had been repaired, and had planned with Barry that these repairs would be coming out (see panel list - already bought all of those bits).
I didn't think it was quite this agricultural, but anyway:


The main problem up at this end is that, either as a result of poor front end restoration, or more likely as a result of trauma, the front end is twisted.
One side is about 10mm higher than the other:















There are also various areas of corrosion / damage repair to the front inner wings.
We had hoped to save the inner wings, but it now seems likely that new front inners and a-posts are the most sensible option.
Panel cost of that is quite high, and of course it takes more time.

[inaglasshouse]

Status summary: front screen area

Not great:
[

[inaglasshouse]

Of course, a noisy voice in my head is saying "arse!"
and
"that's another 8 grand on the car"
"arse!"

But the more rational voice is saying:
Best to find out now. It's all fix-able.
and
I'm very glad it's on a jig, with that jig being wielded by someone properly expert.

[inaglasshouse]

I'm sure quoting myself is the height of narcissism.
Here's what I said a few days ago:

We had hoped to save the inner wings, but it now seems likely that new front inners and a-posts are the most sensible option.

So the first work package included straightening things up, and assessing the front inner wings in more detail.
One of the things that led us to worry about the salvage-ability of the front end was the state of the front suspension mounts. They had been hacked about pretty badly, presumably to get the front suspension to fit despite the mounting points being misaligned. So on the jig they went.

To quote Barry, findings were:
Both of the Macpherson strut top mountings are pretty battered, and the offside one has been ground down, plus one of its clamp plates cut down.
Now actually, I don't think the inner wing itself was out so far as to justify this wanton bodgerism, so I wonder if the upright itself was bent, and to a degree, this is what is trying to be corrected here?
... seems like a plausible theory.
Since I'm not using the uprights (struts) that came with the car, I don't much care whether they are bent. In fact, better if that's the problem not shell twist.

This is what I mean by hacked about:









And this is how the mounting points looked on the Celette: not great, but not as disastrous as I had feared:

[inaglasshouse]

Moving to the back end, here are the "before" pictures of the engine mount points, relative to their correct positions on the Celette: