Since I couldn't make any progress with the body on my own I spent a couple of weeks cleaning and painting the suspension components I'd removed from the car and ordering replacements for parts that were either missing or clearly beyond their useful life.
Here are all the right parts, in roughly the right order. This is as they were removed from the car.
I find "Gunk" degreasant is excellent stuff for parts cleaning and once cleaned up and washed off I've painted most of the parts with chassis black which is really good hardwearing paint for parts exposed to all the water, salt and other debris that attacks them underneath a car.
This weekend I talked fellow car lunatic Barry into coming over to assist. Between us we were able to remove the body from the chassis and give the chassis a proper inspection.
The good news is that the chassis appears to be in excellent health and is perfectly straight. This was a great start to the day.
I've also borrowed a body stand/roller so the plan for the day was to get the body mounted on the stand so that could be assessed as well. This process began with refitting the body to the chassis using the correct fittings and then fabricating a sturdy bracing frame welded into the body tub. This should prevent the body distorting when removed from the chassis again. Using the chassis itself as a jig means that the whole lot should fit back together properly later.
With the body braced, we raised it on stands and pulled the chassis out from under it. I suspect it will be some considerable time before they are reunited.
Most of the rest of the day was spent fabricating the mounting brackets needed to attach the shell to the stand.
Now the shell could be inspected properly and... Oh dear! Now the body can be rolled upside down it has quickly become clear that there isn't a single panel on the car that isn't either damaged in some way or is suffering from poor repair work. Forty years accumulation of patch repairs mean that some of the patches themselves have patches. Many of the repairs haven't been properly welded either leaving gaping holes and open seams. There's an awful lot of filler and a suspicious amount of seam sealant too in places.
There's clearly evidence of a huge front-end impact at some point too. The outer part of the lower front bulkhead has been pushed back, this has crumpled the front of the sill section behind it and there are ripples right down the floor pans, with evidence of a half-hearted attempt at repairs here and there.
There are many other issues too that will need to be rectified before this car sees a road again. Much tea was drunk whilst we walked round the car finding more and more things that need fixing.
So far the complete list of panels I'm going to need is pretty extensive. I've no idea at the moment how to stitch this lot together without going entirely crazy.
Here are all the right parts, in roughly the right order. This is as they were removed from the car.
I find "Gunk" degreasant is excellent stuff for parts cleaning and once cleaned up and washed off I've painted most of the parts with chassis black which is really good hardwearing paint for parts exposed to all the water, salt and other debris that attacks them underneath a car.
This weekend I talked fellow car lunatic Barry into coming over to assist. Between us we were able to remove the body from the chassis and give the chassis a proper inspection.
The good news is that the chassis appears to be in excellent health and is perfectly straight. This was a great start to the day.
I've also borrowed a body stand/roller so the plan for the day was to get the body mounted on the stand so that could be assessed as well. This process began with refitting the body to the chassis using the correct fittings and then fabricating a sturdy bracing frame welded into the body tub. This should prevent the body distorting when removed from the chassis again. Using the chassis itself as a jig means that the whole lot should fit back together properly later.
With the body braced, we raised it on stands and pulled the chassis out from under it. I suspect it will be some considerable time before they are reunited.
Most of the rest of the day was spent fabricating the mounting brackets needed to attach the shell to the stand.
Now the shell could be inspected properly and... Oh dear! Now the body can be rolled upside down it has quickly become clear that there isn't a single panel on the car that isn't either damaged in some way or is suffering from poor repair work. Forty years accumulation of patch repairs mean that some of the patches themselves have patches. Many of the repairs haven't been properly welded either leaving gaping holes and open seams. There's an awful lot of filler and a suspicious amount of seam sealant too in places.
There's clearly evidence of a huge front-end impact at some point too. The outer part of the lower front bulkhead has been pushed back, this has crumpled the front of the sill section behind it and there are ripples right down the floor pans, with evidence of a half-hearted attempt at repairs here and there.
So far the complete list of panels I'm going to need is pretty extensive. I've no idea at the moment how to stitch this lot together without going entirely crazy.
- Floorpan (left and right)
- Inner and outer sill plus strengthener (left and right)
- Sill end plate (left and right)
- Lower A post to bulkhead repair section (left and right)
- Complete boot floor
- Rear valance
- Rear light panel
- Rear inner wing lower repair section (left and right)
- Rear outer wing repair section
There will be many local fabricated repairs needed all over the car including straightening the bulkhead. It may be necessary to remove the rear outer wings to get access to some of the other joints too so they will need repair or replacement as well in that case. So that's pretty much the entire shell to reconstruct then!
It's also obvious that the shell has been blast cleaned at some point in its life given the huge amounts of sand that poured out of every box section when we rolled the shell over. I can only assume that this was done a long time ago and the sand has been in there ever since, or else it's more recent and someone decided not to bother repairing anything after expending the effort to clean it up. It's rather odd in either case.
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