1974 Daimler Double-Six VDP (higher axle stands)

With the inner sill off the jobs to do were fix the edge of the floor pan & replace the rear box section then the front. The log should confirm which order I did it in.

I had already done the floorpan edge reasonably successfully on the driver's side and it should be a simple job but it did have its frustrations which got me thinkinking I should have just bought new floorpans and cut the outside inch or so off them.

The floorpans on my car are in fantastic condition inside and out with all the original paint and underseal on them. There is even coloured paint showing on the underseal from when the sides of the car were re-painted at some point.

This leads me to one of my 'bugbears': we all spend a lot of time & money trying to prevent rust re-appearing and no-one ever seems to use what the factory used. In fact there are pages of pictures of people removing pounds of the OEM stuff from their cars.....tar?

That's what it seems to be and it seems to do a great job in places. The original finish seems to be red-lead primer followed by black paint then a thick stippled coating of black tar-like stuff. On Hillman Imps its so thick in the internal pressings that if you snap it its like black shiny toffee.

I don't think any modern products replicate it but I have an idea that you could probably collect lots of it, heat it up to soften it and re-apply it successfully. I'm planning to do one side of the car like this and the other with modern stuff and see which fares better.

Back to the floor repairs tho. I basically got 2 strips of steel, each about 3' long and 2" wide, and bent them into right angles to form the edges of the floor pan then welded them on. The front and back box sections of the car have these bits already shaped in the repair panels so I only needed to do the actual floor pan bits. The annoying thing is when you bend the metal over it curves slightly so for long lengths you get quite a noticable banana shape appearing which needs to be over come with heavy clamping, some slits and more hammering et than you anticipated.

Once it is on however you then can look to fitting a new inner sill as the bottom horizontal flange of the inner sill should sit neatly on the floor pan and then the two get spot welded together.

Looking at my pictures it seems I actually replaced the rear box section before doing the floorpan edge. This was a job I really deliberated over......its a sort of crucial part to get right as the radius arm bolts to it



new edge to passenger floorpan near front of car




same again at middle of car




new front jack point/box section sits overlaps front floorpan



again from wider angle. looks messy with combinations of paint/metal/corrosion




from above. rear floor pan meets 'intermediate panel' which imo was what made a SWB become a LWB



























this shot shows the new lip along the length of the car to good effect


















close up of new rear box section installed. grey primer at front is over small repair patch on vertical face of seat pan

I'm really enjoying this thread, i need to do all the same bits on my xj coupe so its nice seeing the path being trodden before me. Top work

I've just spent quite a while reading this thread...Loving the progress and photos, inspiring stuff indeed! It is indeed me that is restoring the Red Coupe, no updates just yet though as I'm snowed under with work , and fixing my SD1. Have you seen your cars twin on ebay?

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Jaguar-Daimler-double-six-vanden-plas-/120839847252?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item1c229dbd54

dggp - Did you ever sell the pale blue Coupe you were selling, or is that the one you are restoring? Are you still going for the Supercharged V8?

Sheesh -what a lot of rust and fabrication!!!

I've always reckoned Opels to be the worst in the world for tin worm but I've found minis to be dreadful and now I've seen worse!!

ok so the last post showed the inner sill in the black paint it was supplied in and in this post it is in red Eastwoods Rust Encapsulator paint. In these pics it is fully spot welded in along the bottom edge where it meets the floor pan


















front plate is for seat belt fixed-end. rear one is for inertia reel mechanism. looks messy as was cannibalised out of brackets from series 3 inner sill




this shot makes inner sill job look almost perfect

Volksangyl Hi. I find the car pretty easy to work on. Not sure why as all cars of last 40/50 years are basically same construction. Maybe its the room you have....

I remember Practical Classics did a full restoration of a pale blue SWB series 1 and in their article about the inner sill replacement is said it was a 3 day job. The company still took about 2 years to finish the car right enough

As I'm nearing the end of this rebuild I can say with some certainty that I could do another one in perhaps 1/5th of the time it took to do this as a lot of the time is wasted planning and pussyfooting around a job you haven't tackled before.

If I had to do a full sill replacement now I'd attack the job and maybe do it in 3 weeks but that's easy to say in hindsight.

I would probably approach it something like:-

• day 1 - grind remains of outer sill bottom from floorpan (3 hours)
  
• day 2 - drill out all spot welds from outer sill to inner sill & A/B/C posts (3 hours)
  
• day 3 - cut bars & weld them from A to B post and seat crossmember to rear seat pan (3 hours)
  
• day 4 - drill out inner sill spot welds & cut away seam welds at A & B posts (5 hours)
  

etc etc. You can see it still takes time and you might miss days inbetween but we're talking periods of weeks rather than months/years to finish jobs.

An example of this is the rear wheelarch repairs. My first attempt was held up for about a year deliberating about where to cut and crying that the panels didn't fit properly but once I knew thare was no way round it I had the other one done inner & outer start to finish in less than a fortnight.

Also the IRS. It seemed like a mysterious unit that would need a team of skilled technicians to work on but you could easily get it off and back on again in a weekend. I spent several nights trying to get the calipers off with it in situ but its quicker to take the whole thing off. It also gives much better access for welding repairs to the rear end.

Getting stuck in is vital to keeping a project moving. As long as you're sensible I've found a job gets done far faster by getting into it rather than fannying about with overplanning. Sometimes mistakes are made, but usually with a car, mistakes are easy to rectify if you notice them when you make them.

If it weren't for build threads like this I doubt I'd ever even pick up a power tool to have a go at the jobs I've done on my own car.

I don't really want to mess up this thread by jumping forward to a job I have in hand just now but if anyone is interested I have just posted a query about replacing/repairing the metal fuel pipes that run from the front to rear of the car

retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=techni&thread=121406

More great work there! sometimes you just seam to follow a trail of rot in a car until it runs out of metal! Is the carpet good enough to put back in or are you getting a new one.