P5b's sure are handsome old things. Loving the work you've done so far - lots of people attempt fabrication and welding, but not many do it to a fantastic standard. Your work looks enviable!
Some more pictures from the wings
Removed all the underseal from the wings and these were not too bad
There is a bracked near the rear door which is a real mud trap which leads to rust
The bracket was half gone so i took another bracket and repaired it by replacing the lower half
Then repaired the outer skin
The other side had the same issues
Was able to find some NOS front wings which were never fitted to a car but after fitting these to the car i found the reason why nobody had used these. The fitting was so poor near the bonnet line that i decided to repair the old ones.
A hole was found near the head light which was easy to repair
common rust spots are are the lower part near the front door. There was a strenghening piece there which was completely gone. I took the shape from the NOS wing
Copied the shape on 2 pieces of wood to use as a jig to make a new one
Then welded on a strip of metal as i couldn't make out of 1 piece
Then welded the bracket and lower repair piece to the wing
To weld the repair onto the wing i used my MIG welder but this caused some distortion
The other side received the same treatment but i asked a friend to TIG weld which was smoother without disortion
Lining up the repair piece took a fair bit of time
After tIG welding the panel remained straight and the weld is hardly visible
Now some picture of the bonnet which was the biggest job panel wise
After removing all the paint with paint stripper, a small hole was found and the bracket inside also showed some holes
and drilled out all the spotwelds to seperate the skin and the frame. I had 2 other bonnets but these fitted very poor so i choose to seperate the skin from the frame
got both shot blasted and a coat of primer
The bad pieces were cut out and replaced by new metal and theskin was fitted to the frame again
Although carefully welded, the bonnet had warped and the shutline was very poor
I tried heating up the side and stretching these but this didn't work. Also tried it with a hammer but was afraid to damage the skin.
I ended up making a frame with arms to pull the bonnet into the right shape
by turning the nuts on the arm i was able to shape the bonnet curve. It took a lot of "runs"to get it right and was careful not to overstretch it
It took a lot of time but it worked well. Now there is a for a P5B a nice shutline without damaging the skin.
Thats it for today. Hope you enjoyed it
Peter