Etype Gallery

This is the Bodywork Gallery

It all started with removing a rust bubble on a rear wheel arch, that and the door skins appeared to have bowed out slightly at the bottom which indicated a little bit of trouble but as you will have seen on the Rust Gallery, hiding under the sound deadening material and behind seemingly good repairs was a whole host of rusty metal that was crying out to be replaced. In the end I replaced the following:

  • Passenger door (entirely)
  • Drivers door (entirely - after trying to re-skin it)
  • The entire bonnet (Twice - 1st purchase was a mistake)
  • Passenger floor pan (front to rear)
  • Drivers floor pan (front to rear)
  • The Transmission Tunnel
  • Passenger side inner sill
  • Driver side inner sill
  • Sill closing panels
  • Engine frame bulkhead panels
  • Sun Visor panel
  • Entire engine frame (just in case)
  • Engine Picture Frame
  • Bonnet Frame
  • Boot floor (entirely)
  • Rear quarter panels
  • Number plate panels

floor panels

Brand new floor panels, which include the radius arm mounts because I was highly nervous of welding those into the wrong place which would throw out the handling

offside panel

Look how thick that filler is – that had to come off

Windscreen edge

So decision… replace the entire roof or take a chance and repair this edge. I do not know where I could buy a roof so repair it was

Rear sill end closing panel

Wheel arch outer repair completed, outer sill was fine but the closing panel had a few holes so had to be replaced

Scuttle panel

Although welded in all the right places, the PO had added a few strengthening welds to the sill – no idea why

Welds removed

So those blob welds were removed

Rear Sill blobs

Similarly the rear ‘blobs’ were removed – that’s not how the factory did it

Floor pan & Transmission Tunnel

Ultimately the entire floor was replaced – including the entire transmission tunnel, floor pans, cross members etc.

Main cross member

Not a great shot (pre digital camera’s). This section had to be removed and new metal let in so that the 5 speed gearbox did not foul the bodywork

Main cross member

An easier view of the modification area

Transmission Tunnel

The handbrake ‘cutout’ was removed from the original transmission tunnel and let into the newly fabricated version

Passenger wheel arch

Wheel Arch repair panel let in, fully welded and initially filled with lead

Wheel arch repair

You can just see the tail end of the repairs to the inner wheel arch – that took blooming forever, converting flat metal to complex curves is a tad tricky

Etch Primer

Post sandblasting the body was lightly sprayed with etch primer to prevent it rusting before I could get to the body work

Etch Primer

A different angle

Jaguar Bonnet

Allegedly this was a Jaguar Bonnet, never used on the road so I paid reasonable money for it – turned out it was not red underneath so it had been repainted. Grrr

1st time around

This was the body work first time around before the painter declared it unstable. I was so happy with the panel fit and was gutted that all that work was wasted

I wish…

I wish I had fully stripped the car prior to sand blasting. Then I could have removed all the old lacquer paint from crevices the easy way. Sanding is now the only option

Bulkhead cleaning

Sanding back all the nooks and cranny’s was not easy

Bulkhead in primer

Sanded back, cleaned up, seams sealed – getting closer to paint