Getting closer to starting on the sill, need to finish sorting the floor out so there is a good reference to tie the sill back into. That means more floor repairs because where the floor panel joined the sill panel was not very healthy. Starting with this floor stiffener panel in the passenger footwell then.... Continue Reading →

Get 'em while you can. Been after a pair for ages. Mine have been over zealously tightened with an inappropriate tool more than once. And they keep coming loose. These are new(er) ones to go in that hopefully won't have the same issue. Right awkward job fitting them to the door mechanism. Yes I took... Continue Reading →

So to repair the sill on the car I need to repair the repair panel off a less rotten car. Adding hours into a job that could be avoided if replacement panels were still available. Each sill is a composite of 4 panels. I've already repaired and epoxy primed two, onto the final two. Split... Continue Reading →

Finished and primed the repair panel ready to weld on. On to the melting metal stage... Welded in and dressed the welds Pleased with that, time to get it in primer and move onto the sill work. And primed...

It's been a while but back on with this. Made an additional CAD piece to just make sure I had the curves and angles right after modifying the original CAD structure to map it to steel. Fabbed that up and ready to start welding it together and then to the car. The repair piece is... Continue Reading →

Did some Cardboard Aided Design work to design a chassis rail repair section. So much easier to do the fine tuning this way and then you can work out from this how to translate the cardboard into sheet steel and start working out the metal repair piece.

Did some more poking around at the end of the sill and the front wheel arch. Layers of steels and lots of corrosion. Plenty of opportunity to improve this mess. So let's chop out a load more crud and make some repair panels for this floor section. Bit of CAD and we have a repair... Continue Reading →

Started chopping out the overplated repairs that had been carried out previously. Obviously it was covering problems, what ever those had been previously, trapping it in a sealed metal box didn't make the situation any better. So that all came out too. Repairing the chassis rail is the first job, but in doing this prep,... Continue Reading →

After a bit of a pause we are back underway with the Series 1 Rallye. The next job on the list is sorting out the near side sill. It was a known problem when I picked up the shell. Unfortunately, it hasn't' improved with time. It had been repaired previously, but not to a restoration... Continue Reading →

Managed to get the boot floor in a few weeks ago and eventually ground the welds and gave it a lick of primer. The butt weld where the new floor meets the old has had a skim of filler and it will need some tidying up in future.

Trimmed the carbon spare wheel tray to follow the curve in the back of the car. Did this with the boot panel in the car because the vertical upward face also needs to be taken into account whilst trimming. Whilst it was in the car, I drilled up from underneath to put the fixings in.... Continue Reading →

Some calculating, a couple of pilot holes to get the cuts in the right place and then started the work on the spot welds. Quite pleased with the spot weld removal, just needed a little bit of a tickle to clean off the remnants. Next up was a vertical cut to allow the cross member... Continue Reading →