OK boys and girls plump up your cushions, another picture heavy update is coming...
I think I might have mentioned that Barry is running two restorations in parallel but is now on mine to the end....
42. Offside dash end and screen pillar base.
This area needed some attention as you can see from the 'before' images. The vertical dash end had taken a battering and the actual pillar had been poorly repaired. Once Barry had stripped this away it was clear that the sunroof drain would have been very unlikely to have got water out of the car
The first attempt at forming a repair section was close but a bit small and the shape wasn't quite there.
Attempt number two was pretty good and Barry was able to tweak it to where he needed it to be. By comparison, the new vertical bit of the dash was rather easier!
43. Trial fit trials..
At the end of the last phase I showed photo's of the front with much welding done. Barry had left the welding of the new inner wing until later, as he wanted to trial fit the whole front end of the car (both sides) before fully committing to the inner wing position.
These are a nasty panel to get right as somehow you need to reconcile the strut top position, A-post position, centre sill height, outer wing height (and relationship with the scuttle), outer wing fore and aft position and front panel position in relation to the scuttle gutter. Plus, outer wing to bonnet gap. If you factor in a/ that these modern inner wings are of awful quality with many parts welded on, in incorrect positions, b/ an old car with previous accident damage and repairs, c/ and old door and d/ a new wing that may, or may not be shaped perfectly, you can end up with a real head scratcher....and we did.
After quite a while of trying various options Barry, in the end, elected to set up his external measuring rig. Apparently he hasn't used this for a while because the sill clamps used in tugging the cars interfere with the measuring rig. It would obviously be sensible to be able to tug and measure at the same time, so he took a brave pill and cut down the sill clamp brackets (he'd paid £1000 for the full set) and some other parts of the clamps. It definitely looks a bit odd, but at least the two systems can now work at the same time.
The external measuring rig overcomes one problem found with many car jigs, that of measuring the upper areas of the outside bodywork and getting inside the car to measure internally. As you can see in the pictures a carriage runs on two rails. This carries two vertical pointer holders, and one horizontal one. Finally, there is a pair of pointers that can be placed in different positions, as required. The main rails are aligned to the main jig base to an accuracy of just under 1mm in-out, up-down over the length of the whole jig and everything is very simple to calibrate.
The beauty of the system is you can simply run down both sides of the car and compare them. Similarly, you can measure and record the position of any part (let's say the A-post door hinge holes) in three dimensions, record it, and then replicate the same when a new part gets fitted. Usually, any errors quickly show up making it extremely effective. The final shot shows the measurement of both dash end heights.
The various battles Barry was having with this section originally pointed to the whole front bulkhead being twisted very slightly (i.e. higher on one side than the other). In fact after checking on the jig it was found to be fine, so this theory could be 100% discounted. Previously, and before making the mods described earlier, he would have had to jury rig some way of measuring out of the car, down to jig bed height, then back into the jig, so along, down and along again. So if you're chasing say a 3.5mm error and actually find that error, you'll always wonder whether you've found zero error on the car and 3.5mm error on your measuring setup. Similarly, even if something seems to measure the same, there's always the niggle it was simply two errors cancelling each other out. Anyway, Barry's pleased to have his rig up and running again and indeed it did the business on my shell because he was able to trace about eight very small discrepancies totting up to a couple of tricky problems. Once spotted things could be corrected and life could go on ...easy really
44. Trials fits..continued
So following that rather taxing section the outer body alignment got well underway ...
45. Quarterlight fixing bolts
Before the shell went off to Barry I had spotted that the captive nuts in the 'B' pillar were buggered, but this wasn't a section Barry was intending to cut out or change as a matter of course, so was causing a little concern. However, quite by chance he spotted that two of three problem threads were because of sheared screws rather than stripped threads.
These were the smallest and most awkward extractions using the welder he has ever done, but pleasingly his 100% success rate with this method has been maintained. That just leaves one stripped thread to tackle.... I'm sure he'll manage
46. And back to the offside 'A' pillar and dash end.
Barry says this looks better in real life and the area that the new A-pillar base is sitting on will come out later. As ever it's sensible to leave as much used metal in place for as long as possible, and ratty as it may look, it still holds tons of information.
There's some tidying of welding to do as well, but for now he'll concentrate on getting that sunroof drain sorted, but I've been warned it won't be pretty but should be very effective.
47. Offside front inner wing and sill welded.
Front inner wing welded, inner sill prepped and welded in, and new areas for front of rear inner wings fabricated, although still need shaping to fit the compound curves of the inner wing. The green machine is Barry's Pullmax and he used it with some tooling he made to form the 'pressing' that this area requires.
The scabby looking assembly at the back of the inner sill is just an impromptu 'jig' to capture the position of the inner wing flange. With the old metal cut out, it would be very easy to lose that information and have real trouble placing the new metal back in the right position.