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I have been working on various parts of the bodywork whilst repairing the underbody structure. As can be seen in the video on the homepage, there were rust bubbles at typical points along the bottom of the front and rear wings, wheel arches and bottoms of the doors.
The first area I tackled was the bottom of the rear RH wing. With the fuel tank out I was able to cut out the inner and outer lower wing and fabricate a new inner and outer to replace it with.
As well as replacing some metal around the wheel arch I had to fabricate some panels for the area between the rear door and the wheel arch. This is a complex area but needed to be done well.
I have started to fill the areas but there's a lot of work still to block it back and prepare the surface for paint!
The next area forward was the rusty lower part at the rear of the front wing, just in front of the door. This was frilly along the bottom edge and it looked as though there was some corrosion underneath too. The previous repairer had used a lot of filler which was was quite concerning! Once back to bare metal I could see where the panel needed to be cut back to.
Once into the cavity I was able to repair and reinforce then rust treat the area...
...before patching over the exterior and tidying up the welds. I have yet to apply any filler but it will be a thin skim instead of the thick stuff I removed!
Onto the front of the car now. The valence underneath the indicator is a common spot for rust and mine was no different. I cut out the rusty area and another where there were holes around the sidelight and fabricated replacements. The complex curves were difficult to recreate but it was worth the time.
The LH front wing has a number of holes along the joint line above the LH indicator. This looks pretty severe in this picture but I found it easiest to replace a strip of the wing in this area rather than patching the holes.
June 2017 - Rear RH door lower door skin replacement:
June 2017 - Rear RH door lower door skin replacement:
Due to bubbles in the paint and corrosion on the rear RH door I stripped back the lower part of the door to bare metal and decided to cut out and replace the lower part of the door. The door frame needed repair at the front and rear ends before the door skin could be fitted. This is an area I will certainly be checking if I ever buy another one of these in the future.
A previous owner had this lower section of the door repaired previously, but as the panel had warped inwards along the weld line, the repairer had resorted to using loads of body filler to rebuild the surface rather than getting the metal close to the right place. Very frustrating. I have got it a lot closer than it was so will be using a lot less body filler.
The letters and numbers had mostly fallen off when I got the car. So I removed them all, stripped and repainted the number plate before sticking the original letters back on. Need to do the front plate too but it'll look really tidy when they're back on the repainted car.
9th May 2018
I have been spending some time working to improve the bonnet shut lines before respraying. It has been noticeably higher at the hinge end on the right hand side. I've used all the adjustment in the hinges without success so I have had to bend it to fit better. I wonder if someone has closed it with something in the engine bay in the past causing it to be bent out of shape.
I have also started to remove the bonnet insulation as it isn't in good condition and I intend to respray the interior of the bonnet too.
With the old bonnet insulation
Insulation removal in progress, taking care not to dent the bonnet from the inside!
The secondary latch needs a clean up
as it'd be pointless to respray the bonnet and leave it looking like this.
Similar for the primary bonnet latch.
I have sand blasted the latches and will prime and respray in body colour. Need to do the hinges too!
My cat (called "Leaper") needs a bit of training to pose correctly in the right place! I don't know how I'll keep him off when I start respraying the car!
With all of the insulation removed I have rust-proofed the small areas that needed it and have masked up to seam seal around the edge of the bonnet to prevent corrosion.
Using U-Pol brush on seam sealer that I have also used under the car.
The end result looks tidy and can be painted over.
October 2018:
I'm getting stuck into body filling and sanding.
June 2019
Last time I touched the bodywork was last year. Since then I have rebuilt the carburettors and the rear suspension. Now that it's summer I need to get on with preparing the body and painting it. I'm lucky in having a friend who has offered to help having worked doing exactly this kind of work professionally for over 20 years.
Above - Barry has already made great progress on the front left wing and rear left wing. Fascinating to watch how he does it...far faster than I do it!
June 20th 2019
June 20th 2019
I'm getting to work replacing the rusty door bottoms with fresh metal. First I've carefully ground around the edges and cut it out and cleaned up where I'll have to weld.
Nice straight edge cut to join onto.
The door inner is sound, just needing a bit of surface rust treatment.
June 23rd 2019
June 23rd 2019
Sorting the rear LH door grafting in new metal as there were a couple of blisters in the paintwork and I didn't want to just put body filler over rust.
Tacked in bit by bit to avoid heat distortion.
After the welds are ground back.
Carefully lapped around the door inner. I've then welded and ground the corners back.
Body filling and sanding continues...
August 17th 2019
In the last few weeks I have taken the chrome, handles, latches, windows and window mechanisms out, cleaned it all and re-greased where necessary and stored ready to re-fit. With the front end and front and rear wings mostly prepared we have fitted the doors to get the shut lines as good as possible.
Above: The winder mechanisms clean up really nicely and the channel at the bottom of the window just needs a little rust treatment.
Old and dirty window mechnisms.
Rejuvenated after a good de-grease ready for re-lubricating and another 51 years of use!
The chrome and door inner look 51 years old. I'll add photos after the clean up later.
Note the spacers under the chrome.
Interior latch mechanism before removal.
Access to the lower fixing for the chromed window frame channel.
The chrome in its before state. It cleans up very well.
The outer waist seal profile - it'd be good to replace just the rubber as the chrome is re-usable after a c lean and polish.
Meanwhile - body filling and sanding continues.
One of the door check straps has broken and can't be repaired so I'll replace it. The other 3 look ancient but clean up nicely in the sand blaster and are now ready to repaint.
Getting the door shut lines right takes time. I have had to grind back the curved area around the curved shut line in some areas then weld additional steel back in and grind again to get to an acceptable shut line. The egdes of the door have to be solid metal of course.
The photo from a trial fitting shows that we're getting close to a good consistent shut line with the bottom edge still being a work in progress. I'm hoping the rubber seals won't prove problematic if we make the shut lines better than the car had originally!
With the shut lines on all 4 doors sorted and a lot of adjustment to get the bonnet set too (this was very tricky as the rear right edge of the bonnet was always really high needing me to modify the hinge) I've prepared the surfaces and primed and painted the door and bonnet inners and hinges plus a few other things. Great to get to this point!
I've primed and sprayed the inside of each of the doors and the bonnet to rejuvenate them. I'll fit some heat reflecting and sound deadening material in the bonnet at some point as the original fibre glass pads aren't tidy enough to be reused.
I blasted and cleaned up the hinges a while back and they now look like new.
The bonnet safety latch is also resprayed ready to refit.
Below - Early September 2019
All of the areas of the bodywork that have been repaired and filled have got a coat of filler primer to deal with the smaller imperfections to leave the larger ones for further work.
Mid-September 2019
Barry has rubbed down the body with 120 grit paper and rectified some areas highlighted by the filler primer. The next stage below is a couple of full coats of primer for the whole body and the doors. It is starting to look like a complete car finally!
August 2020
I doesn't look like much progress has been made on the bodywork since last year, but in the last month it has become a priority again. We got the car in primer by September 2019 as shown above, then had to leave it over the winter as the temperatures were too low. The plan was to get back onto final preparation for getting the colour coat on in the summer of 2020. The Covid lockdown delayed things and once lockdown eased I used the time to focus on engine servicing, front lighting wiring, cooling pipes, heater box and tidying the engine bay. With that done we've now focused back onto the bodywork.
Picking up from last year, the first thing was to get the car covered in satin black to help pick up issues when flatting it back using a flat bed sander on the flat surfaces and hand blocking on the curves.
With that done I started to construct a booth in my workshop. This setup will have proper paintshop filters at one end and an extractor fan at the other. The booth will hopefully reduce the risk of contaminants getting onto the paint as well as isolating the paint from the other cars in the workshop. I've upgraded my air compressor and have filters to remove air and oil.
With the booth sealed up and the filter and extractor fan working, a final coat of primer has gone on ready for another thinner coat of satin black and final surface preparation.
It has been difficult to source a dark British Racing Green in 2K paint as BRG covers a lot of different shades of the colour. I have had a base coat matched from some dark British Racing Green cellulose that I had made by Ken Burdekin from Car Restoration Paints as he has a stand at the twice yearly Jaguar International Spares day at Stoneleigh. I really like the colour and it will look great on the car.
This picture is borrowed from Wikipedia and (lighting and picture quality aside) show an S-Type in a dark BRG. I hope that my car has smoother contours on the rear door and rear wing as this car looks quite poor.
This famous car, the first E Type OTS is in dark BRG and again is the colour I'm aiming to emulate. Almost black until reflected light shows the green.
Other cars I have seen such as this XK120 are in a lighter shade of BRG which I think is too light for the S-Type.
This mk2 also is in a BRG shade that is too light to my taste. Again, the doors both aren't reflecting the light very well.
September 7th-9th 2020 - final painting in 2K base coat and clear lacquer.
September 7th-9th 2020 - final painting in 2K base coat and clear lacquer.
It has taken a little longer to get to this stage than I intended but we had to ensure that the surface preparation was done as well as possible. I originally intended to spray the car in dark British Racing Green cellulose as that was the original finish. Barry who had spent 20 years in the trade convinced me otherwise for various reasons, the most important of which are that cellulose, being solvent based, changes over time and needs a lot of polishing periodically to look it best, and secondly it is less hard wearing than 2K so more vulnerable to stone chips. Having decided on 2K the options are a 'direct gloss' or a base coat followed by a clear lacquer. Barry has most of his experience with 'base and clear' and recommended it, and the observing the spraying process showed the practical realities of why.
I spent a long time working on setting the door gaps and surface flushness, making shims as necessary, so we decided to spray the car with the doors on rather than risk damaging the door edges during refitting. Barry reduced the fan shape on his spray gun to help get into the tighter spots in the hinge area.
The first step of the painting process is to do the door, boot and bonnet shuts and apertures and lower areas all round the car. Getting these done early helps ensure any dust or dirt that could be moved by the air pressure from spray gun doesn't get onto the carefully prepared panels.
The next coat was a quick, light coat to check for blemishes, fish eyes and paint reactions. There were various small 'fish eyes' from small contaminants on the surface of the primer.
We let the paint harden for around an hour then set to with 800/1000 grit wet and dry paper and sanded them back.
(Left) - I was keen to make sure that the slam panel at the front of the bonnet was cleaned up and sprayed too. The body number is shown on the right.
The next step was to wipe and dry the car down, let it air dry, tack rag then a second light coat to ensure the remedial work had been effective. This second coat showed a a very significant improvement so we decided to leave the car overnight for the paint to harden.
It is worth adding at this stage that this is a good reason for using the base and clear system. Any flaws with direct gloss would have been more problematic to resolve at this stage as the paint which contains the colour, hardener and thinners would need to be left for much longer to harden before rubbing back.
After a night hardening, Barry rubbed the paint back in the few areas with some imperfections and did some spot repairs before wiping and drying the car again. The next coat was a proper full coat of paint - just under a litre in volume covering all the panels. This looks to have come out very well with very few flaws present. Because this is a thicker coat and we don't have too much time pressure we again decided to leave it overnight to harden in the booth.
This is the first picture of the car outside in lacquer its fully painted state. The lacquer isn't perfect out of the spray gun but it has been well covered and is hardening nicely. Polishing and correcting any areas that need it is underway with a machine polisher and Farecla G3 and G3 premium compounds.
She is beginning to really gleam! Again out into the sunshine to get the best possible lighting conditions. I am looking forward to getting the windows back in and starting to fit lights and chrome.
The windscreen is now fitted. The original one had some deep scratches so I had to source a replacement screen. With a new rubber from SNG Barratt and some nylon string the refitting went well.
The chrome surround is being re-chromed and will be fitted later.
The drivers door and seat gets the most use in any car. The check arm was not working on this car and investigation showed that the latch built into the door that the springs in the check arm locate onto to hold the door open had broken. The picture on the left shows the remaining half of the broken component and above a new one I made to replace it with and the check arm above.
The new latch had to be riveted in place
The re-fit of the side door windows is being covered in the Exterior Chrome & Lights page
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