The last few weeks ain't seen much activity.
However, the A post nightmare has ended. Yes I bit the bullet and welded, cut, ground, templated, cut, ground & welded ad infinitum. + not a lot of body filler.
I must say sanding filler is not my favourite pastime. God is it boring. Unfortunately its necessary and vital to get a good look to the finished car.
So, the A post then......................see the finished result below !
This is the finished result after lots and lots of very fiddly welding in of small curved pieces of steel. Its integrity is good and the filler only hides the welds too inaccessible for the grinder.
However, its the wing join that I'm most proud of. This took some welding in of curved steel and was much easier than I first thought. In fact I pondered hours and hours on how to repair it and kept putting it off till the last moment. The filler sanded a treat and lots of offering up the wing made the join perfect.
What was a constant source of frustration is the front RH wing. The LH wing had lots of welding done on the captive nuts and a new bottom rear edge.
So I was prepared for the worse.
After venturing to the bottom of the garden and behind the shed to unearth the wing I had a pleasant surprise. The captive nuts were fine...............yipeee.....some luck at last.
Booo.................................................................. remembered the wing also had some accident damage to the front around the grill aperture.
But, thought this would be easey peasey to repair, a few whacks and job done.
Wrong, wrong and wrong again.
The area affected is in a sort of zig-zag shape, so I thought a few whacks would sent it nicely back from where it came.
Well about 2 weeks later, several bleeding knuckles, C1 compressions of the spine and picking up a fallen wing from the trusty workmate I'm somewhere near.
Panel beating complex shapes is definitely NOT easy. This was made worse by the fact that whichever way I positioned the wing it needed to be nose down ( on the floor) and tilted up about 70 degrees whilst simultaneously beating it with the precision hammer, which in turn caused the wing to fall over and/or slip sideways. I think I moved 15 yards down the drive whilst beating, and suffered at least four good bongs on the head from the wing falling.
Its back to almost as new now.
The Ironic thing is that since I'm converting to chrome bumper, this area has to be cut away and smooth pieces welded in.
The wing then has been rubbed all over, inside and out, sprayed in grey primer several times between applications of small amounts of filler.
Still, at least all the captive nuts are all ok.
Next job on the list is fitting a repair panel to the RH footwell where it joins the inner sill.
Andy from Doncaster donated this part when I bought the LH sills from him on good ol E-bay.
Even though the panel is for the wrong side I'm only using the inner 1" so it will match perfectly.
See the devil wing below, and I promise to post more often.
More soon avid readers
