Aga Blue 67S

[MarkIII]

[MarkIII]

All the holes marked up with black dots will need to be filled, presumably these were introduced as a result of various rally modifications/additions

[Biancaneve]

It will look great once finished!

[MarkIII]

Its been several weeks since I was last able to take a trip up to Chestertons, I have been able to get the odd update over the phone from John but its always better to be able to see for your self the progress being made; and most importantly the quality of the work.
Well I was not disappointed, at first hand the car to someone who has not gone through a full restoration before looks a long way from having the shell finished, however John assured me that the car is 4-6 weeks from being finished. All of the major work has been done, all be it, it is currently roofless… so front end and front luggage /tank floor area is more or less complete, rear cross member is in and backdated, majority of repairs to front and rear inner wings are complete, torque tube end and inner membrane have been repaired, main floor is nearing completion along with the A posts.
One area which has taken more time than anticipated are the original doors, both were in pretty bad condition, one has been completed the second is ongoing.
So all in all very pleased with progress, next trip up will be in around 3 weeks to drop a whole load of parts off for trial fitting pre paint.



You can just make out the last 3 digits of the chassi number on the internal finished door

[MarkIII]

The team at Chestertons is a fairly small one, John, and I believe two other guy’s, on the next photo you can see Roy in the back ground working on my other door, Roy has been looking after my car, hes 73 and has over 50 years of experience of working on Porsches, Bugatti’s etc, along with John who is also in his later years there must be nearly 90 yrs of experience between the two of them. One of the reasons I selected Chestertons



A bit of back dating still required on the B post, but starting to take shape



Rear cross member in and backdating commenced

[jjeffries]

Very cool. If only we could do the Vulcan Mind Meld and learn these getlemen's skills. No chickenwire and Plastic Padding at Chesterton's. John.

[MarkIII]

A number of activities have been going on whilst the main body work is being completed to ensure as much as possible is in place once the car is back from paint, which will hopefully allow for the rebuild process to progress smoothly.
After several recommendations of which chrome shop to use I narrowed my choice down to two local companies. My main objective was to use a shop which was local to me so I could visit easily and take a look at their set up etc. So shop one seemed very good and they were completing a job for another local guy who was also restoring a 911, they showed me a few parts, all of which looke superb, then came the quote for my 40 something parts requiring chrome….£3k…. far to rich for me so off to shop two which was basically a 15 minute trip from home. This company had been around since the 60s, bulk of their work is commercial but the owner does support some private work from time to time. A deal was done and I left the parts with them , the cost… well lets just say less than half the price of the first shop.
So I collected the parts at the end of last week some 10 weeks after dropping them off, all of the chrome on my car from the 67 brass window frames to over riders etc, had all previously been painted either black or body colour by the previous owner. This I guess offered some protection to the parts over the last decade or so.
So the front quarter windows have been stripped one of them will need a small repair as the pin seems to have been effected by the initial chroming prep process. All other parts are looking great , a few pictures, but couldn’t be arsed removing the wrapping from each piece again just to take photo’s ended up waiting around for an hour when I collected the parts at the chrome shop whilst they wrapped everything….
If anyone is looking for chrome work and they are in the south East I would highly recommend Butterworths.

A couple of pictures of a few parts pre restoration:

[MarkIII]

[Bez1]

Nice restoration and some great pics.

I will be after a good contact regarding chrome at some point. Some suppliers here in Germany want 1000 € per door frame on an exchange basis. You have said you have had good experiences with Butterworths - is this the correct company?

http://www.butterworthsplating.co.uk/ContactUs

Using suppliers per recomendation always helps me thinks.

Cheers

Matt

[MarkIII]

[quote="Bez1"]Nice restoration and some great pics.

I will be after a good contact regarding chrome at some point. Some suppliers here in Germany want 1000 € per door frame on an exchange basis. You have said you have had good experiences with Butterworths - is this the correct company?

http://www.butterworthsplating.co.uk/ContactUs

Hi Matt

Yep that's the one, ask for John very knowledgeable guy.

Mark

[MarkIII]

So I was able to take a trip up to Chestertons on Sat morning, lets call it my penultimate trip. Good progress has been made since my last trip around 5 weeks ago. The new roof had been fitted on the Friday lots of tidying up to do but the car is finally starting to resemble a car again. John told me that a few days earlier all outer panels were on the car, as you will see from the updated pictures the bonnet and front wings have been removed to complete some final felting.
The shell and metal work is likely to be complete in 3 weeks, it will then be heading off to the paint shop.









Tunnel back in the car:



A few challenges with fitting the repro fuel tank, Dansk are the only suppliers of these early swb tanks, and even then several modifications are then needed to ensure it matches the original tank and it fits correctly. Unfortunately the original tank is not salvageable, shame but at least I have as a template for back dating the new tank.

Original tank:





Some other back dating has been completed on the B-posts and front cross member.

[murph2309]

Looking really good and v comprehensive - you must be feeling pretty excited at this stage - getting a mint shell back is a really exciting stage in the journey....

[sladey]

Great work and exciting progress

[Bootsy]

What The Slade said ^^^^

[visualfx]

Some beautiful detailed fabrication by John & Co.