byakk0

Continued work on the handle holes... Dressing the edge. I hit it with primer so I could highlight the highs and the lows. I knocked the highs down quickly with a 36 grip flap wheel on my angle grinder, and finished off the round with a file. Afterwards I removed the primer in the low spots with a wire brush on the grinder, then filled the lows with weld. and started the process again. It may need a little filler, but very little if any.

Thanks. Having already done the drivers side i one what i was doing, but still stressful for sure. Pics later, but I cut the handle holes today. At first I thought I cut the main hole offset by 1/4", but I was good after all.

measured the door handle and lock holes, bit the bullet and cut the door lock hole. Thankfully it lined up. I started with a 1/2 bit and used a dremel and file to complete the shape.

on the driver's side door you can see the lower corner of the door stick out just a little. I've seen worse. I may need to remove the door and do some adjusting like I did to the bottom of the passenger door. The passenger side sticks out a little also, at this point it's almost negligible. I set about replacing the A-post filler panel. I removed this from my car many years ago, knowing I'd re-use it, at the time I painted it with poor-15, leaving the edges bare for welding. The aftermarket rocker panel doesn't fit quite so well, so it needed some adjustments. Back when I removed the filler panel I wouldn't have known how to make the adjustment, but things are different now. You can see at the top how the rocker comes up short of the A-pillar by at least 1/4" With the filler panel held roughly in place. You can see how much I need to move that lip. Bear in mind the rocker is welded into place all along the top, so all adjustments need be done right here. You can see the guideline I drew where I intend to cut. I wasn’t sure which way to go, cutting a slit and fitting a triangular piece of metal or just roughly make a cut down the center and cut a piece completely off. I opted for the latter, as I figured it would be easier to work with an oversized piece of metal and then just trim to fit. Welded it up Test fit the filler and ground down the welds (mostly), threw on some primer. If you look closely the filler panel no longer perfectly fits, so it need a little adjusting. Thank goodness for self tapping screws, vice grips, and body hammers. Plug welded the holes as I adjusted it and moved the screws and vice grips. This is just the final product, before grinding on the welds like a madman. And of course, after grinding…

you will...I keep saying one day myself. Then I try my hand at something new--and buy (or make) a new tool.

So true. On top of that, I'm doing it all myself, but I don't want it to look that way That said, the photo's hide a lot of flaws 😎

Thanks John. Means a lot.

Nearly got the pass side door skin completed. Having seen photos of many spitfires and GT6's with the door protruding at the bottom I knew I wanted to avoid this, but upon initial inspection I was afraid I too could fall to this rebuild malady as try as I might the rear lower corner of the door was poking out. As I played with it today I realized the minor amount on the lower corner was in the way just enough to prevent me getting the door door to properly fit--I'll come to that. But for now, here we go with the pics. My first quandry: I discovered the bottom of the door to be bowed out. The corners nearly fit in place correctly but the center of the door protruded much more. Here I have the door upside down and the edge next to a straight edge. The good news is, back when I put the new skin on I only loosely folded the flanges over so I could adjust for fit later. I tapped it down the rest of the way and straightened it out. I rehung it and marked the added rod where I would need to trim it in order to achieve a 3/16" gap. Here I have it trimmed, which I did in place with a cut-off wheel on my grinder. I then marked the rest of the edge so I would know where to add more metal or remove some. The corner  below the latch needs a little removed. You can see how it was getting hung up, as I mentioned previously. All the extra metal added. Just need to trim away the excess from the corner Checking fit once again. I have enough removed. From this angle you can't see the gap along the bottom, and the door bottom no longer protrudes very much. Sorry, it's a little fuzzy. I finished welding the corner back together and ground & filed the rest of the edge straight. It still needs a little fine-tuning, but here you go. Painted a nice primer-green color to match the rest of the car (for now). Plus the uniform flat finish makes seeing the gaps easier than the black and red panels. And finally a distance shot. It's finally starting to come together. At this point I have nearly all the metalwork completed. I just need to weld the lower bit of the rocker in place and dress the welds in the rear wheel arch. Come to think of it, the front valance needs to be completed as well.

I had a lot of welcome unexpected time in the garage today. I got the passenger rear wing all welded in place. Ignore my finger in the shots-sorry, The top of the wing where it meets the door was a little high even though the body line in the door and wing match. Additionally, the crown on the door was a little lower than the wing. I've already got the door re-skinned, and moving that crown will be tough. I tapped the top leading edge of the wingdown and it caused the welding flange on the B-pillar to buckle, but it did bring the crown down a little so I knew I was heading in the right direction. To prevent the buckling, I cut reliefs in the flange. With a little more effort the crown of the leading edge of the wingand the trailing edge of the door now match. You can see in this diagram what I needed to do, red showing one crown and blue showing where I needed to move it. I then turned my attention to adjusting the door and getting the gap set correctly. I have the top edge of the door and the body line matched up with the bonnet and the quarter panel but the gap is terrible, so I'm going to need to make some major adjustments. To start I need to fill the gap at the top. Holding the rod in place Tacked on and trimmed. I cut it a little short, but no worries. I'll just fill with weld. I also need to adjust the gap on the lower corner and along the bottom, but this is going to require removing metal from the corner of the door and moving the rocker panel down a little bit. More on those jobs later when they happen.

Made up some rear interior panels today. I don't have a set, so I made a paper template, and with various photos and measurements  I was able to get them close enough.

I typically only have long glove and my helmet, short sleeves, pants (rarely shirts) and whatever shoes I have on. I should get some proper leathers... Some day

Depends on the videos. Metaltipsandtricks is a great channel for beginners, not only does he explain things quite well, he is the only series on YouTube I've found that actually films the wiring with a welding lens filter so you can actually see the puddle and not the typical bright flash. As for my garage assistant, she hasn't yet learned to enjoy the loud noises and runs back into the house when I tell her I'm going to run the grinder. She's nearly 3, so I presume it will be a while yet. I've never quite gotten her teenage brothers much interested.

I think Abby did more on my car this week than I did. While I worked on a side project she busied herself. First off she discovered the holes for the tail lamp wires and decided to poke small items through. Guess if I ever hear phantom noises in the backend quarterpanel I'll know the cause! She also discovered the phillips bit fits in a phillips head screw. Something else caught her attention and she left the bit positioned as pictured above. Soon she moved on to the drivers side. I didn't realise I left the marker in her reach. As for me, I finished welding the top of the pass side QP and around the tail lamp. And some 40 grit on my long board made quick work of the upper sail panel, cutting right through the layers of orange filler and paint. The dent in the middle is unfortunately of my own doing a few weeks ago when I was trying to get the tailgate to fit properly. Let's just say a rubber mallet was the wrong tool.

Thanks. That means a lot, however the camera hides a lot! It's just my dogged determination to do it myself, making sure I do it as correct as I can--partly because I don't have the $$ to spend on someone else doing it, and partly because I want to proudly point at it and say "I did that" I'm very much an amateur, flying by the seat of my pants, getting my info from online forums such as this one, youtube, and frequent calls to my brother who at one point did this for living. I also like the various rebuild shows and pay attention to the quick snippets that sometime show welding and metalwork techniques.

Strapped Abby and her carseat into my truck and headed off to swap out my empty gas bottle, only to realize halfway there I left the bottle at home. >_< Anyway, I finally got the major metalwork on the back end wrapped up. Needs some finishing, but everything lines up fairly well. Just need to grind the welds smooth. Now just to complete the pass side rear wing and tend to the door gaps...

Thing about leading. Getting the supplies is not cheap, but so far I've only looked at Eastwood. I may go the route of aluminum filled body filler instead, but I'm still open for other places to source the lead filler from.

Thanks. I had my share of unclear how-to's--that and I'm a trainer at work, write specs sometimes, and do a little novel writing on the side.

Here you go. Backing/attachment card for the handbrake gaiter. Original construction looks to be about 3/32” hardboard construction. It consists of 2 pieces, a C-shaped one that mounts to the front of the handbrake tunnel and a straight one that mounts to the side. I’ve tried to photograph the original as well as I can but the as you can see it has deteriorated. Mostly it has broken right at the spots the metal mounting tabs on the housing itself poke through the backer. I reconstructed the backer out 1/16” plywood. This plywood happens to have one side faced with melamine (something I had on hand), but really anything would work. I just went with this as it was thin enough plus the multi-ply vs hardboard may prevent similar deterioration as the OEM one. Anything much thicker will need be sanded thinner. These are the approximate measurements of the one I made. Easiest method to get it fine-tuned is make a copy in some stiff paper and lay it over the 6 mounting tabs and push the paper over the tabs (you may need to straighten the tabs). I forget the size of drill bit I used. Just use one of appropriate size. Adjust the inner and outer dimensions as needed. I then transferred the measurements to the board, cut it out and drilled the holes. Then I test fit to the inside of the housing, making note of orientation. Final assembly I inserted the gaiter and pressed the tabs through the vinyl. You may need to mark the locations and carefully cut slits in the vinyl so the tabs will poke through. I used contact cement on both the vinyl and the backer. With the vinyl in place, insert the backer pieces. I clamped them together, in place, using C-clamps. You’ll want to protect the new vinyl on the exterior with something so the clamp doesn’t mar it. Once the glue was dried I removed gaiter and stapled the backer to the vinyl. I just used a common Bostich hand stapler with a 9/16” staple. I held the piece down on the edge of the table and stapled it such that the staples went though the piece but not into the table. The staples go all the way through, and then I just bent the protruding legs over. At this point I reinserted the gaiter and had to clamp it in place, and then use another c-clamp to bend and flatten the retaining tabs. At this point you can tell why the thinner backer the better. Just remove the clamps and stand back admire your work. 

Thanks John. I can take some more detailed pix of the backing and do a write-up on it here for you, including measurements. I found it is actually slightly less than 1/8" hardboard. I just used a thin plywood panel as I had it on hand and it will hopefully be stronger and have longer longevity than hardboard. as far as filler goes, I've removed a lot, and surprised to find much of it is quite unneccesary. You see the orange? It's about 3/16" thick across the entire top and not a single dent, aside from self inflicted wounds. Not sure what the PO was thinking there. Must have been a bondo sales rep. The dollying skills, well, you get there. I figure I'll be using some filler in the end, so I may as well have a go at fixing it as best I can. I've certainly minimized the amount needed.

Sounds good. I thought as much, just had to address that stray though. 😀

Thanks for the primer. It certainly helps. I wasn't aware of the tallow on the paddle bit. Watching George Barris do it, he doesn't explain any of that. He just sucks on his cigar and schmears the lead down like its cream cheese on bagel. 🙂( Must be breakfast time or something.) Sounds like test panels are in order. I have plenty of those! Would repurposing lead wheel weights (melting into long sticks) be sufficient or is it better to buy the pre-formed sticks from the various supply houses?

Thanks guys. Abby was wanting to write on it. I made the mistake of lettering her doodle on the door with a sharpie once-the primer I have on it now is coming off later down the road as it is just a protective layer, so I don't so much mind. She quickly changed her mind when she saw the longboard. In a nutshell, and from what small amount of research I have done up to this point, lead filling is basically smearing the flux on, melting the lead in place, and then spreading it around like putty to where you want. Anything to it beyond that I may be missing?

got much much closer this week. First of all, this is how it looked back in 2011. This is what I uncovered years prior due to a rear-end accident. In fact, it looks much better at this point as I had done a lot of reshaping in an attempt to keep from having to cut out any metal. 2012 I fashioned a repair panel with my benchtop English wheel Which got me to this point I did some more digging this week and discovered the reason for the passenger side lower corner of the tailgate sitting high. Bear in mind this is with the rubber seal installed. Previous attempts I did not have the seal in place. An idea running through my head for the past few weeks has been to put in some spacers between the hatch hinge and the roof of the car, to bring the corner of the tailgate down, so I gave that an attempt. I have heard of the springs breaking if put under the wrong stress so I was crossing my fingers I wouldn't break mine. However, I have heard of this being done so I was cautiously optimistic. You can see the two washers I used on each bolt. Well, that didn't go as planned. I didn't break the spring--thank goodness there. All it did was cause more pressure when I latched the hatch, and it made a loud pop when I released it. The corner was still lifted. Back to square one, and I had to remove the washers. But then I discovered the culprit was the rain channel itself. At first I though I'd need to bend it down, so I made an attempt with my door skin pliers. I didn't accomplish much beyond buggering the little flange that sticks up, the bit the seal fixes to. It did tell me that if I wanted to continue with this particular attempt, I'd need to get another cheap channel-lock pliers like these and modify them to fit the rain channel. Fortunately I didn't need to bother as I discovered the flange needed to bend more outward. The seal was coming in contact with the wrong part of the hatch causing it to bind up. So, I tapped the inside of the seal flange, flaring it outward a few degrees. Then install the seal and test the hatch. Success this time!...well, nearly. I got closer. So I kept tapping the flange inward and retesting the hatch until I got it close enough. In the mean time, Abby tried her hand at bodywork. Contour gauge, a sheet of sandpaper, and my longboard. So, that bit sorted properly I  was able move on to completing the metalwork on the backend-well, nearly complete. Due to my oversight of not using the seal when I first welded the new panel in I had it too low, ie the hatch sits too high in the middle compared with the emblem panel. You can also see the hatch corner and how it now sits nearly flush. I then cut the slit I made the other day longer on both ends, adjusted the shape, and started stitch welding it back together. I truly ran out of gas in the bottle this time, and I only had 2 spots left. I completed this about 3 am, and all I dared use was my metal file so I could at least check the contour. Much nicer. Later in the morning when everyone else was awake I finished grinding the welds flush. All that remains is the two 1" spots. The big question now is, should I try my hand at lead finishing or load the sucker up with bondo?

What about running a double walled pipe through the crossmembers?

That would make sense, John. Guess I'm not much of a frame engineer. I tend to fly by the seat of my pants more often than not. I'll wait and see how you solve the problem. Making another aluminum shell will be fascinating to watch again, should you go that route. If I lived closer I'd come run a camera for you to get some good videos of the master at work.   But, alas, Idaho is a little far for a quick jaunt.