To finally get off the rotisserie I just need to paint the bottom.  After that, I move to a paint/transport stand that is designed to support the tub, subframe and bonnet.  Final blasting of the bottom is done with my usual aluminum oxide followed by masking, careful degreasing and then priming with PPG DP50LF epoxy primer.  Some of the more difficult and inaccessible areas are brush painted.

After that the seams are sealed with Fusor 800EZ urethane sealer.  Having the tub still on the rotisserie for these steps is very helpful.  The wood blocks in the second picture are used to protect the sub frame pockets from a buildup of Rocker Schutz.  The sub frames are a tight fit in the pockets.

I used 3M Rocker Schutz applied with a 3M schutz gun.  This product is a resilient undercoating that is paintable.  It was thinned 10% with lacquer thinner to reduce the coarseness of the texture.  Three 30oz cans were used with barely enough to cover.  4 cans might be better.  Of all the chemical products used so far, this one by far smells the worse and causes immediate dizziness if any fumes linger.

Finally the bottom is painted with the same Glasurit/RM base clear Opalescent Silver Gray that will be used on the body.

And with that, we finally leave the rotisserie for the paint stand.

All the major rust sites are now complete and it’s time to start thinking about final prep and paint.  I have painted one car before (a Lotus 7 replica called a Stalker V6) and it came out pretty well for a first effort, what I would call a good 10 ft paint job.  Much closer than that and the ‘new guy’ mistakes become apparent.

Problems with my first paint job had a lot to do with improper facilities. Basically my booth was too small and had inadequate ventilation.  I purchased a Hobby Aire fresh air respirator so I was physically protected but the lack of good ventilation and lighting meant after a few minutes of spraying I couldn’t really see what I was doing.  It also meant fume build up in my garage was extreme and was difficult to keep out of the house.  Considering how lethal modern paints are, I want zero fumes in the house.  Fortunately when I painted the Stalker it was summer so I could open up the booth to atmosphere and still maintain proper curing temps.  This time, I would likely be painting in winter.  Maintaining proper ventilation and the correct temperature in New England in winter is almost impossible for the DIY guy.

I also had a tough time controlling dust.  Fortunately, modern base/clear paints allow for a lot secondary cut and polish so most defects can be handled later, provided they are not under the clear coat.  Unfortunately, the airflow required for good ventilation makes dust control difficult.  I was going to have to build a much better booth this time, probably one with a good source of make up heat to compensate for the ventilation requirements.

And then there’s skill.  I don’t a have a lot of experience so my technique is not the best.  After all the work to get to this point, the only part really visible is the paint.  No one will ever see the endless efforts required for the rust and collision repair or at least they shouldn’t.  But the paint is right in everyone’s face.  It really has to be just about perfect especially for a car like this.

And then there’s cost.  The materials are unbelievably expensive.  Building a proper booth will be both very time consuming and expensive.  When you break it down, painting the car yourself will save maybe $3,000 over having it painted by a pro.  Given the cost of the overall project and factoring in the expected difference in quality and safety risks, I have decided to go for the pro this time around.

It’s not a decision I make easily though.  There is a lot of pride in being able to say you did the whole restoration yourself, including the paint.  Everyone will have their own set of tradeoffs for this decision.

So why worry about picking a painter now?  After all, I’m still a long way from finish paint.  My reasoning is if you’re having a professional paint job done, the painter really needs (and wants) to take responsibility from the bare metal stage.  This means he does the final sanding, degreasing, priming etc. with products that are all compatible with the choice of paint system.  And that’s why it’s time to pick a painter.  I’m nearly at the point where the external surfaces will get their final media blast quickly followed by epoxy primer.

After considering a number of painters I have chosen Ron Randall at Metal-Morphous.  Ron has been in the business for 30 years and has become the go to guy in New England for replica Cobras.  But with so many years of experience, his roots of course are in steel cars and he’s anxious to do the E-Type.  It’s important to have someone truly excited about doing your car.  He’s also willing to work with me on my schedule allowing me to do as much prep as possible without compromising the final result.  And finally, you just have to respect someone who has a Cobra in his office!  BTW, the paint on this car is 16 years old and it’s still perfect.

So the plan is, I will do all the metal work and media blasting on external surfaces.  Ron will take it from there.  The exceptions are the interior and bottom.  I’ll be priming these and in the case of the bottom, I’ll be applying the body shutz and final base/clear.  The reason for this is mostly logistical.  The bottom paint is best done on the rotisserie whereas the rest of the paint will be done on a transportable paint stand.  I also need to be off the rotisserie for subframe and bonnet assembly.  So this means I have to choose the final color now—long before the bonnet and bumper fits are done.  Hopefully those jobs will be relatively straight forward.  Sure…

I take it as a good sign the repairs are getting smaller now.  I have a rust though site in the rear hatch gutter that contains the rubber weather strip.  Here’s the location on an old photo prior to blasting and priming the interior.

No doubt water pooled here due to a leak somewhere or perhaps the drain in the bottom of the gutter channel was plugged.  Fortunately everything here is more or less single curvature so the construction of a patch panel should be straightforward.  The only slight complication is the sheet steel has to be folded to double thickness before forming.  In this first picture (below) taken from the inside, the double wall is clearly visible.  In the second picture, the damage appears limited to the inner edge.  This should allow me to stay away from the highly curved and highly visible external surfaces.

Here’s the blank with the fold completed.  The only moderately fussy thing was to get the folded height correct, as that can’t be adjusted once the fold is made.

Now to match the curvature of the hatch the stretcher is used, followed by the shrinker when you go too far.  And then the stretcher again…these Eastwood devices work very well by the way.

The match is pretty good at this point so the outline is scribed onto the body and the cuts are made.

Then comes the usual tack welding and rough grinding.  Final smoothing comes later.

Sometime in the distant past, the left rear had been hit.  Since this area has strength and stiffness like the end of an egg any deformation becomes very difficult to undo, although someone once tried rather unsuccessfully.  Here’s how much deformation we’re talking about compared to the opposite side.  Doesn’t look like much but it’s really difficult to remove due to the stiffness of the surrounding structure.

Since the taillights and bumpers have to fit here I want to get it as good as I can.  Complicating this is the fact that the collision also moved license plate well forward too.  This area is incredibly strong.  You can see what looks like a minor crease from upside down and inside the trunk (vertical red line).  So to start, I will try to move this area aft.  I could just bang away on the crease from the inside but I’m sure I will buckle the panel that contains the cutout for the marker lights.  So, to in effect pull the panel aft I cut an access hole through which I can insert a drift.  It gets REALLY LOUD when you’re doing this!  Once again, glad to have a rotisserie.

After straightening  the bulkhead/license plate well as best I could, I moved to the outside.  After blasting away all the bondo, I’m left with an unsalvageable mess.  Lots of crumpled and corroded metal.  Most of it is too thin to be saved so I will cut it out.

Here’s the rough cut I intend to make.  It will be final trimmed after I make the patch panel.

For the patch panel, I made a hammer form to generate the rather tight bend radii that develop.

Here’s the part prior to trimming and forming.

After a few more hours with the stretcher/shrinker and the shot bag we get this.

This yields the reference edges necessary to complete the much simpler panel under the bumper which is the top in this view since the car is inverted on the rotisserie.

After grinding and touch up with the slapper we get this.  As usual, not perfect but as close as I can get and easily handled by a little filler.  Note: the black areas are the remnants of guide coat indicating the slightly low areas remaining.

Final check with the marker light to make sure it still fits.

Once again, it’s been a very long time since my last post.  However work has continued steadily.  Next up is the right hand sill and the adjacent rear wing.  This sill was in somewhat worse shape than the other requiring a few patches to the inner sill and complete replacement of the fore and aft sill stiffeners.

After the usual fettling they were cleco’d in place, all surfaces blasted and primed with either Weld Thru primer or self etching primer, depending on the exposure to subsequent welding heat.  After that came the laborious outer sill reshaping, fitting and punching for plug welds.   Then a final blast and prep with primer(s) and CRC marine corrosion inhibitor.

Here’s some of the torture devices to hold the reluctant sill in place.

Now to the rear wing.  Here’s an exterior shot.  Doesn’t look too bad.

But as well all know, Jags rust from the inside out.  Here’s the inside.

Since I will be removing both the inner and outer arch, all curvature reference will be lost, so a set of measurements are taken every 6 inches or so along the arch.

Now a first exploratory cut.  Not only is there rust but collision damage too.

To get past the rusted area and the worst of the collision damage I used most of the Robey patch panel—reshaped for compound curvature and extended to cover the sill seam.

With the inner arch peeled away, I have access to the collision damage and can scribe the fit of the patch panel.

Patch panel gets the traditional blast and prime treatment.

Random tack welds in progress.  You may recall on the left hand side wing I fabricated and welded the inner arch and then the outer.  This had the advantage of establishing the arch curve with the inner panel and leaving a good edge for clamping the outer arch.  The disadvantage was once the outer panel was welded I lost access to the inside so any heat deformation could not be effectively dealt with.  So this time I’m doing the outer panel first, so I can get behind it after the welding for additional shaping.  I can also verify I’m getting good weld penetration.

After post weld shaping, comes the usual grinding, blasting and priming.

Next an inner arch panel is fabricated from sheet stock.  I tried to re-use the flap of original inner arch steel but it was hopelessly distorted from bending it out of the way.  I had hoped to bend it back and weld but it came out terrible.  So I cut it back out and started over.  Live and learn.

The welding access gets pretty tight but the rotisserie makes it reasonable.  I can’t imagine doing this project without a rotisserie.  The shop vac is there for fume extraction.  Weld Thru primer creates a LOT of fumes.

After endless hours with the slapper, shot bag, hammers and dollies, I settle for this.  Not perfect but not bad and quite a bit better than the left side where I had no post weld access.  Of the two approaches, this is far better in my book—which maybe I’ll write someday.

So that’s it for the sills and wings.  This brings us up to about mid September 2011.  Next up is fairly extensive collision damage near the taillights.

Back in October2010 I started working on the left hand side (LHS) rear wing which had a combination of collision and rust damage.  The exploratory part of that repair was posted here:
http://ejag.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/sills-and-stuff/

Further work was postponed until the sill replacement was complete.  With that done it was time to fit the MR patch panel.  Unfortunately, it didn’t fit at all well and needed extensive modification.  In retrospect, I believe it was intended to weld directly to the sill seam.  This leaves a monster channel to be filled with lead/plastic or another small custom panel.  Instead, I chose to add an extension to the panel and bend it for a flush fit.  The next (4) pictures show the progression.

Martin-Robey wing patch panel

Closeup of gap left by MR panel

Extension panel added to fill channel

Next it was time to re-make the under quarter panel after discovering more extensive rust beneath when the lead was melted out.  Starting with flat stock and an Eastwood stretcher/shrinker a new panel was fitted.

Next the inner arch panels were cut away and replacements fabricated from flat stock.  Getting all these 3D curves to line up in space proved extremely difficult and time consuming.  God only knows what I would have had to pay to have this done.  In the last picture you’ll see a stack of washers I welded in to take up the space between the inner and outer panels in the area of the forward bumper bolt.  It proved easier to thicken this area with washers than to add more complication to the sheet metal.

And finally the outer panels were re-fitted and welded (with a mock bumper bolt in place).

The only step left is to cut the inner/outer arch flanges to the proper width.

I would like to fit larger tires someday so I need to research areas of possible interference and size the flange accordingly.  Obviously I’ve left out a LOT of tedious steps.  I’ll save those for a book some day:-)

Bonnet parts after chem strip

This first picture, taken after a preliminary chemical strip and prior to blasting, is a little old but clearly reveals the extent of previous repairs by persons unknown.  When I removed the old bondo I was left with a moonscape beyond my ability to smooth so my goal is to repair as much as I can and leave the final shaping tweaks to a pro.  In this case, the Panel Shop in Stratford, CT.  It is run by a couple of expatriated former panel beaters from Rolls Royce with all the specialty tools (and skills) to get these panels just about perfect with minimal filler.  So on with the repairs…

In my last post I had discovered rust in the wheel arch beads.  Starting with the LH wing my approach was to cut along the median line of the bead, blast, re-weld and re-shape.  The next (8) pictures show the progression.

Lower wire bead cut along median line

Partial arch cut along median line

Lower edge patch panel

Unfortunately, it didn’t come out at all well.  First of all, cutting at the median line left me with a brittle weld that often cracked as I tried to roll the patch panel around the wire.  I re-welded and re-ground the cracks but ended up with a bulge in the panel.  It was so bad I cut out the arch weld and tried again with a new joint further into the panel.

LH arch - second attempt

This worked better but still left me with a bulge I couldn’t remove, in fact I could only make it worse.  My attempts at cold shrinking didn’t help, so this area is being left to the Panel Shop.  Sometimes you just have to know when to stop.

On the RH wing, where the rust was more extensive, I decided to cut off the lower edge completely.

I made a patch panel for this and for the rust through area.  This approach seems better but left me (or should I say left the Panel Shop) with more bulges to remove.

Complete but bulges at repair still present

Next onto the bonnet underpan.

Under pan before blasting and repair

There was considerable jacking damage in this panel clearly visible after blasting.

Some spot welds had broken revealing a lot of rust in the joint.  I decided to separate the pan from the stiffener to eliminate the rust and get better access to the jacking damage.

With this complete I plug welded it all back together and shipped it off to the Panel Shop for some tweaking of the air inlet area.

Re-skinning the door hit a dead end that I will revisit at a later time.  While that issue gets resolved, I’ve moved onto repair of the front wings.  Both wings have a perforation just aft of the arch.  (Click images to enlarge)

The perforation is caused by a water trap formed by the wing and a gusset that fastens one of the stiffeners.  Here’s a view from the inside.

After blasting the damage is a little more evident.

I decided to make a patch panel from a section of discarded door skin since the curvatures are the same.

Here I’ve cut out the area to be replaced.

Out of curiosity I cut back the rolled edge adjacent to the damage.  Although there is no perforation, there is considerable rust trapped in edge.  This is true of both edges but is more severe along the bottom of the wing than it is along the arch.

The question now is what to do about it.  My first inclination is to continue the cut in the rolled edge all along the bottom of the wing and maybe 6 inches or so up the arch.  Then blast it, flood with primer and weld the cut edge to the wire.  It won’t look original with the exposed rolled edge missing but it’s pretty minor.

Another option is unroll the edge and lift the wing away from the wire and treat as required.  This seems pretty risky…something to think about.

Has it really been 5 months since my last update?  There’s been a lot of activity, unfortunately quite a bit of it resulting in dead ends.  But I’m back on track now.  Here’s a brief summary of what went on.

After priming the interior I set out to repair the collision damage to the rear wing on the driver’s side.  There was also some rust damage here too.  (Click on images for full resolution.)

Collision and rust damage

I decided to first attack the rust at the rear of the arch and below the seam.I marked out what I thought to be a generous cut into sound material and fabricated a patch panel.  This is a fairly complicated panel since it has compound curvature and curved/folded seams on two edges.  But it came out fairly well forming it over a variety of blocks.  Without having a shrinker/stretcher I made the seam flange follow the body curve by peening the outer edge to stretch it.

Under quarter panel

I was actually pretty happy with this until I melted out the lead in the area.  I had been hesitant to do that until I had the patch panel correctly formed since a lot of the curvature I was trying to match was formed with lead.  When the lead ran out I discovered massive rust damage hiding beneath.  So either someone long ago used lead to cover up a rust through or the rust formed under the lead.  With the amount of distorted metal in the rusted area I’m thinking the former although I suppose it’s possible the factory leaded over some construction damage.  Either way the patch panel I was so proud of was now too small and probably scrap.  Dead end number one.

Rust hiding under lead. Patch panel only covers 75% of it.

So on to the collision damage.  Cutting out the rusted areas gave me partial access to the dents but to get fully behind the damage with a dolly, I had to cut some major portions out of the inner wing too.  You can also see how much larger the under quarter patch panel needs to be to eliminate the rust revealed by melting out the lead (dashed lines).

Prelim cutouts for patch panels

Inner fender well cut away to get behind damage

With the dent pounded out reasonably well, I decided to work on a patch panel for the wing.  I didn’t get too far before I realized this panel can’t be installed until after the sill has been replaced since it covers the sill joint.  Dead end number 2.

Wing covers this seam--sill has to be done first

OK, so the time has finally come to cut out the complete sill.  The scale and risk of that job had intimidated me for quite awhile.  I began to be concerned with the strength of the car once the sill was out (and the floor pan insert not yet replaced).  To see if there was merit to this fear I re-installed the hinges and doors and checked the B-pillar gap with the body upright and then inverted on the rotisserie.  The change was substantial but a lot of it was due to wear in the driver side hinge.  This allowed the door to move up and down accentuating the gap.  Fortunately the passenger hinge was still very tight, giving me a more accurate picture of the body deflection—about 1/8” difference in door gap–due primarily to body flex.  This would only get worse with the sill removed so I decided to build some reinforcement struts.  Not quite dead end number 3 but certainly a left turn I hadn’t counted on.

To properly position the struts I needed set the door gap correctly and then nail down the struts.  Except the driver hinge was so bad I couldn’t gap the door.  So the hinges needed to be rebuilt first.  Another left turn.  Remember I’m only trying to replace the sill so I can fix the wing and match it with the repaired arch (after I remake that panel).  I’m beginning to think I have autobody ADD.

With the help of Harvey Ferris’ excellent instructions, I rebuilt both hinges.  The only departure I made was using a 0.499 dia undersize reamer instead of the adjustable reamer.  Apparently ENCO had a bad run of them and refunded my money after sending me two units.  It’s too bad they couldn’t source a quality unit but they were very good about a full refund including the shipping on the two units.  I would do business with them again.  Anyway, the reamer (from McMaster) worked very well and the hinges came out very well.  You just have to carefully mic the rods before deciding what size reamer to buy.  Running a 31/64” drill through the bores left just enough for the reamer to clean up beautifully leaving a good ringing fit.

Drill and ream hinges

New 1/2" pins fitted to brackets

With fresh hinges the doors could be aligned and the struts installed.  It now passed the inversion test just fine.

Struts in place

I’m not sure why, maybe it was my lingering intimidation of the sills but I decided to repair the doors while I had them handy.  Also, the passenger door had some rust on the bottom edge that would require a patch panel to be fabricated.  I wanted to have that door correct before I pulled the sill since I planned to realign the new sill with the door.  It was about this time that I realized the car is built around the doors.  Once the door is in place, the B pillar shut face, the sill and the bulkhead side panel (which forms the A pillar) all need to line up.  More reason to the get the doors right before going any further.  So, another left turn, but at least one of my choosing.

Cutting out the rust and making a patch panel for the lower door was straight forward with the help of  the Tin Man video “Autobody Steel Patch Panels”.  Here’s the panel ready to go.

Joggled door bottom patch panel

I also had some rust perforation at the top of the door where there is a built water trap on Series 1 cars.  So I cut out the bad area and formed up a rather tricky patch panel (at least for me).  It came out well, life was good.

Upper door perforation

Bad area cut out

Patch panel in place

Before I welded in the two panels I decided to give the door a sodium gluconate electrolytic bath to leach out any hidden rust in the seam above my repair.  After the treatment, I opened some of the seam and was appalled to find extensive hidden rust.

Rust inside seam

The door would have to be reskinned and the considerable patch panel work would be thrown out.  This counts as a bonafide dead end.  Number 3 I think.

I ordered a new skin from SNG and while waiting for it proceeded to the other door which turned out be completely sound.  With its rebuilt hinge, the alignment was good so I was finally able to cut out the sill and the bulkhead side cover.

Sill and side cover removed

With the sill removed, it was finally time to install the floor pan insert.  I had held off on this as long as possible because it improves the access for blasting, painting and hinge adjustment.  SNG floor pan inserts are now shipped with a tough powder coat finish.  This was ground off in the joint area and Weld Through primer applied before welding.  So with the help of the world’s largest sliding bar clamp (another left turn but really really helpful), I perimeter welded the new floor.  This had to be done before the new sill could be installed since the sill joint overlaps the floor pan joint.

Floor pan welding with help of long reach clamp

Floor pan welded and ground

Pretty decent weld penetration too.  But the fumes from the burning powder coat and WT primer in the joint are pretty nasty.  Good ventilation and a mask are a must.

View from inside foot well

Fitting the new sill was trickier than I thought it would be.  It was far from an exact match, so you just had to choose what set of compromises you were willing to make.  In the process of doing that, I completely ruined it beyond repair.  Dead end number 4.  A new sill from SNG arrived the next day so I got to try again—this time with experience.  I believe I’m also invited to the SNG Christmas party.

The fit up went better this time but not having spot welder I had to punch about 200 plug weld holes.  Then I blasted the cavity and painted it with self etching primer and applied CRC heavy duty rust preventative.  I masked the joints and then applied weld thorough primer to the lapped areas.  Joint clamping courtesy of the big clamp again.

Media blasted with aluminum oxide

Prepped and ready to weld

 

Door opening seam aligned and clamped

Floor edge clamped

After what seemed like an eternity of welding and grinding, one sill is in.

And that brings us up to date.  It’s been exactly a year since I started stripping out the interior.  I guess that formally ends my estimate of finishing in a year!

Next on the list, re-skinning that door.

With most of the repairs to the interior panels complete, it’s time to finish off the interior sand blasting  and get some primer on the bare metal.  Panels that I had blasted back in January now show signs of considerable surface rust.  In fact, they were showing rust only a month after blasting as shown here.

I’ve also discovered blasting is one of the most tedious and miserable jobs…so far.  To minimize it, I’ve taken to chemical stripping for the large expanses of sheet metal.  It’s easy to remove 90% of the paint and all but impossible to remove that red primer.  However a quick hit with the angle grinder removes another 75% of the remaining paint.  The rest I leave to blasting.  Here’s a shot after chemical and grinder stripping.

Even with this preliminary work complete, it took three full days to blast the remaining interior.  This is mostly due to the inefficiency of reclaiming media.  A typical blasting session consists of 45 minutes of blasting  with 100lbs of aluminum oxide and another 45 minutes of reclamation i.e. vacuuming the beach, straining the media, refilling the tank, replacing the blast nozzle (every other session), draining the traps, replacing the face shield etc.  Three days later, it looked like this.  Ready for primer.

After converting the sandblasting booth into a paint booth, I hit it with PPG DP50LF epoxy primer.  Other than the awkwardness of maneuvering the gun inside the body, it’s pretty straightforward and not the least bit fussy.  Here’s the result.

With all the blasted areas protected from rust, it’s time to attack the body exterior.  I hope the skills I’ve learned doing the interior will be adequate for the outside.  We’re playing for keeps now—everything from this point forward will be visible.