My '72 911T

[911hillclimber]

Only 4 hours!
Well done to you, lot of shapes there to bring together.
I take it the tube is in trouble on the one side?
Be at Barry's soon.

[Gary71]

Only 4 hours!
Well done to you, lot of shapes there to bring together.
I take it the tube is in trouble on the one side?
Be at Barry's soon.

Cheers, yes it’s the tube, it’s got a hole in it where the bush backstop used to be. I’ve got the big machined repair tubes from Restoration Design, but it will be Barry’s call how this is repaired.

The bush backstop is completely gone! The remains dropped out the tube when I rolled the car on its side.

[Gary71]

This morning was fun...

Just doing some gentle angle grinder based wire brushing and there was a big bang from the front and the shell rotated.

With some horror (as the shell was on its side) I spotted the welding on the frame had failed and the circular section that connects it to the body had slipped revealing the shell being supported by about 2mm of partially sheared tack...

With more adrenaline than I’ve known for a while and not breathing near the shell I managed to get the engine crane in position and ropes on just as it snapped.



It was being held on by the paint

You can see where the final weld snapped at the 1 o’clock position. The only other evidence is the bit about 10 o’clock.

I’ve now set the welder to kill and repaired it, also going back over most of the other critical welds. Not sure it’s 100% penetrated, but it must be more connected than before!



So now I’ve just about stopped shaking I can get on with some metal work!

PS. Derek, please don’t feel bad, no harm done and it wasn’t your fault. It looked strong enough to roll a ship, but I guess not!

[Lightweight_911]

Glad no harm was done - other than an overdose of adrenaline !!!

.

[Gary71]

It could have destroyed the shell as it was still firmly attached at the other end so would have twisted the back end and slammed the shiny new front wing and quarter panel into the floor.

I was knelt inside the shell when it moved so it would have trapped my legs on the roof if it had dropped.

It wrote off my day working on the car as I couldn’t concentrate anymore.
I’ll start again next week!

[jtparr]

Yikes...!,,

[Derek]

Bloody Hell, that was a close shave !!!
Derek

[Gary71]

Another day, another big hole, another patch. At least today I can see progress, front end underside is pretty much done

I’ve put three patches into the front compartment floor, the big one you can see here and a couple of little ones. It’s only a single skin so easy enough to fix where it’s gone thin/holed due to water sat inside.

[911hillclimber]

Surpries come now and then!
Never, yet, had a bad garage incident, but you always have to check but I would have been shaken n stirred too.
Still, the progress looks good. Are you the next car into Barry's after Darren's?

[Gary71]

To be honest I’ve not officially booked anything, just mentioned September in passing. I’ll see how it goes in the next few weeks.

I’ve got a new role at work and doing that and the old one at the same time has seriously hampered progress.

Garage time is hard to find and weirdly it doesn’t seem to fix itself when you leave alone for a week

[jtparr]

And yer doing “arty farty” black and white photos....with a hint of colour ....get you big boy.....

[Gary71]

Not deliberately, I’ll blame my incompetence at using the Photoshop app

[Gary71]

These are better!

[Gary71]

After a easy day on the front I decided to stop ignoring the elephant in the room and get back to the rear corner and floor flanges.

First job was to patch a big hole in the heater tube that was above the jacking point tube.



Then I got bored and pulled the heater tube out under the torsion bar so I could see what was going on properly. It was almost rusted completely through so this wasn’t hard!

The further I dig under here the worse it gets. I think it was one good bump away from separating the tube from the inner wing. I’ll be needing that big machined repair section for this.


Time for a bit of flange:


The inner walls of the sill and heal board are coming together. The sill carries on past the heal board so this panel is longer than it looks. I’ve stopped for today now before having to do the 3D shaping of the inner sill, or maybe I just chickened out!

[sladey]

Nice work Gary. When I saw the heater tube pic I initially thought it was the torsion bar tube!