vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 21, 2016 21:34:50 GMT
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Cheers, chaps  . It's good to be back on it again, I reckon I just needed some time away from it for a bit so I could be enthused again. That and better free time management, which I have now, and is the reason for another update today. --- Another day, another bout of rot busting. I thought it'd be neat to just take the paint off the rear passenger door and get the rotten corner welded up. I mean, how difficult can that be? It's not like those microblisters in the paint can be hiding any horrors like OHMYGOD EVERYTHING IS FILLER DUST.  Get real tired of this routine. Not fantastically surprised that there's way too much filler in this door where there's some more gouges in the panel. I know there's nothing on the rear wing this side as that's already been taken back to bare metal so at least I can leave that alone. The filler in the bottom of this door was dug out a couple of years ago too and given a liberal dose of red oxide which served well to keep things pretty much in stasis. With the door off the car it was far easier to clean it up and see what I was dealing with. No worse than expected on the outside really.  After a couple of hours (no really, it was pretty tough going on this panel compared to the others, loads of filler and paint to fight through) I had the outside of the door back to bare metal so I could finally see what I'm dealing with. You can hopefully see the black lines where I marked the gouges with a marker pen since they weren't showing up on the camera.  Part of the reason the door bottom had rotted out is a previous repair. I'm guessing this bit of metal shoved in between the door frame and outer skin and welded along the bottom edge was to give a platform for filler. Caused more problems than it solved this.  This corner on the inside was no worse than when I cleaned all the filler out a couple of years ago and red oxided it. If nothing else, the theory of red oxide being great for protecting metal has certainly been proven with these doors.  With everything cleaned back I could see there was a lot of the inner door frame I needed to replace. It's not holed yet but I'd rather just deal with now so I don't have to pull the door off again.  Better view of the door cleaned up.  After some time I'd worked out what shapes I needed, what needed cutting out and set to on repairing the door. I got Mike to help as I needed to fit the door to the car to check the bottom edge was correct so that I could fold the new outer skin repair over it. The welding went moderately well, the welder seems much happier lately for some reason, and the flapwheel did its magic to make things look good pre-filler.  The only hiccup with the whole process was that I'd overestimated the amount of metal I needed to fold over so I need to trim it down before finishing off, I'll also tidy up the welds for the inner frame pieces I've let in.  I ran out of time to get the metal work on the door finished today. Trial fit suggests it's going to sit better than it did before, the bottom edge and corner look to line up better with what's on the car now so I'm cautiously optimistic this will look quite tidy when it's got the filler required and a top coat of colour on it all. |
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 22, 2016 16:24:37 GMT
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Decided to make use of my free time at the unit again today rather than the garden as the garden is pretty soggy and not good to be digging in. I put the last few spots of filler needed on the sill so I can paint it when I've done the final sanding before the doors go on. I also took that surface rust off the C pillar and gave it a quick and messy squirt of satin black. I'll repaint this fully when the rear window comes out, for now it's just better protected against the elements.  I'd already pulled the tatty vinyl trim off the B pillar which doesn't now match anything on the car. After cleaning that all back it was given a good amount of primer and top coat and is now satin black to match the window frames and C pillar properly. The paint mellows quite a bit when dry, it looks nearly gloss before it's fully gone off.  I also finished a couple of tiny bits of welding needed on the rear door bottom and then trimmed and folded the door skin over. Every tutorial and blog I'd read about door skin folding made it look like an easy job so either it's not or I was making work for myself because I found it quite a lot of work to fold and bash it to a tidy finish. Still, it's done and given some seam sealer. The repair to the lower edge tidied up surprisingly well, I knew I'd done it fairly tidily but not as tidy as it ended up being so I'm pretty pleased with that. I've not used any filler since this won't be seen and I'd rather avoid filler in any areas I can that don't need it so I just gave it some seam sealer over the weld line and will chuck a load of cavity wax inside to protect it all. I've also drilled the drain holes required in the door.   Then I had to call it quits which was quite annoying since I'm very close to refitting the doors and tweaking panel gaps now before paint. I had an appalling night's sleep and I seem to have got some sort of bug which put the brakes on pretty much everything. I'll take it easy and see how the rest of the week goes, I may just have overdone it a bit lately. |
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Aug 22, 2016 16:30:56 GMT
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That back end looks like it should have a big flat ducktail spoiler on it  |
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 22, 2016 17:37:28 GMT
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Like this?  |
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Quick and dirty mock up to prove a theory I've had rattling around my head. Rather than the factory polish-and-black of the Lotus alloys I'm going to just polish the outer rim and the edge of the central dish keeping everything else gloss black. It helps make the wheels look larger, which they do need on this car, and cuts down on the amount of polishing I have to do.  I'll get them done and then have the replacement tyres fitted so I can tick another job off the list. |
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Rich
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 6,341 
Club RR Member Number: 160
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Hopefully they won't lose too much of the visual detail.. Otherwise it'll just look like steels with trim rings. But it could work. I'm awaiting patiently. Good work in a short space of time on the princess too btw |
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Aug 23, 2016 13:43:05 GMT
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Like this? Yeah That'd do the job. |
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 23, 2016 15:43:41 GMT
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An update a day... I should probably have condensed this all into a single weekend post or something. Never mind! It's all good stuff, it's nice to be making progress on the Princess again after so long of being unable to. Surprisingly, the plates I ordered from www.a1showplates.com arrived today too, slightly personalised to go with the rest of the car and look a bit more finished. They're in a modern font rather than something absolutely period correct, just because of what was available and the fact I'm happy with them. Nice quality plates, very fast service and about the same price as getting plain generic ones locally even with the delivery put on top. I'm very happy with these and I can see why A1 have so many positive reviews out there.  You can also see the mirrors I ordered, these also came very, very quickly. They're better quality than I was expecting and a little larger too. I'm glad of that, the extra size makes them the size I wanted and means I should be able to actually see stuff in them. The stems are metal rather than plastic with the head being chromed plastic. Depending how these look on the car will depend whether or not I paint them satin black. It's quite a large chunk of chrome, satin black would be much more forgiving of their size, we'll see how they look fitted. One nice thing is that the cowling on them recesses the mirror so far back that they should stay really clear when driving through the rain, something the original door mirrors weren't very good at doing.  When whatever this bug is I've got goes I can see about doing some more on the car. At the moment I'm stuck at home feeling very sorry for myself and working at half-speed on commissions. Being ill is really annoying. |
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 24, 2016 13:39:28 GMT
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*sigh* I finally find a set of mirrors I really like and look great on the car only to find that there is no single location on the car they'll fit. They look great on the door but the stem is too short for the mirror to be in the right location to see behind you, even if you turn the mirror on its side. They look great on the front wings but the only location you can see behind you with them from there the mirror head fouls the bonnet by a considerable margin. Worst of all, when you hold them where you can see behind you they're a really good mirror and you can see lots in them, there's just no way of putting them on the car in a usable location. I am very disappointed about this, but at least I still have the black wing mirrors which I guess I'll be sticking with since I like those too and they are good, just not as good as these new ones I got.
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sal
Part of things
Mk2 Cavalier CD
Posts: 240
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Aug 24, 2016 17:34:49 GMT
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Can you not bend up a bracket of some sort to allow you to mount them where you want?
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 24, 2016 18:08:40 GMT
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Not that would look any good, no.
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sal
Part of things
Mk2 Cavalier CD
Posts: 240
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Aug 24, 2016 18:19:47 GMT
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You made a cake tin fit the backend of the car surely you can manage to make a couple of brackets for the mirrors 👍
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Aug 24, 2016 20:51:01 GMT
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Would they work any better if you moved the bracket to the side/corner of the mirror's back?
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 24, 2016 22:57:08 GMT
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This has been rattling around in my head all day and I think I have the solution and a very simple solution it is too. The bigger problem is the angle the mirror stem fits to the door, the length of the stem is neither here nor there. That means I have to change the angle of the mirror and the easiest way to do that is to make up a wedge spacer block. Here's a very simple diagram to demonstrate, the door in beige and the spacer in red, before and after.  Ideally, the spacer wants to be made from a solid block of aluminium so it can be polished to match closely the mirror itself and look less obvious. To fix the spacer to the door I drill two holes that line up with the original mirror mounting holes that are equipped with captive nuts. To fix the mirror to the spacer I just put a fixing through the pre-made hole into the spacer. In theory, job done. Thing is, I've never whittled a piece of metal down to make a spacer like this and I imagine it's a lot easier said than done. |
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Aug 24, 2016 22:59:50 GMT
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A sharp file, and patience is all you need.
Ally is soft, sands easily and polishes up well.
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 24, 2016 23:06:30 GMT
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Daft question maybe, but where do I get a block of aluminium to start with? I was going to make a template out of wood or even cardboard as that will be easier to cut and get the angles where they need to be and then transfer that to the aluminium block. Is this theory sound?
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Go asking around some machinist shops and their bins?
Wood seems like a smart way to trial it, probably be about as fast to work with, but cheaper.
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,287
Club RR Member Number: 146
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Aug 25, 2016 18:07:46 GMT
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A unit neighbour dug out an aluminium I-beam to see if that would do the trick but it's not thick enough. For what I need the block needs to be something like half an inch thick on the thickest side and the I-beam was only about 4mm or 5mm which is ideal for blanking plates, just not for this application. I imagine it could be cut into a set of plates and then worked as a single block but I can't imagine the finish being as smart as using a single block. Ideally, I think I need to get a single block cut to the same outline as the mirror base and taller than I need for both wedges and the chop it in half on a diagonal before filing back to the angle and height needed. Another suggestion offered was to get a block of plastic and wrap it in aluminium foil which I quite like because I've worked with those materials before to good effect and can get hold of them much easier. --- Today I'm feeling much better and that meant some Princess time again. Mike was volunteered to hold the doors while I bolted them on, it's a horrible job to try and do solo and I'm grateful for the help. That was after the sill filler work was finished and given a coat of top colour so I could get the doors on. Getting the front door aligned was surprisingly easy and it now lines up and shuts much better that it ever has in my ownership. I got enough primer on both doors to see what I'm working with and some filler work started. The rear door needs the arch-door gap tweaking at the bottom corner as the repair is ever so slightly wrong and the door-sill gap isn't quite as even as I wanted it, but not bad for a first attempt at this sort of work and satisfactory enough for me to work with it. The repair is going to need much less filler than I expected it to which is quite rewarding.  Rather than cover both doors with filler as was previously done I've just focused on the areas that need it which are much smaller than previous restoration would suggest. It's nice to see the swage line showing through crisply now for the whole side of this car. I've done what I can with the lower section of the front door to line it up with the new sill better, it will need some filler as the old patch repairs have warped things because of the way they welded them on. Other than that, it's not too shabby really.  I couldn't hang around to do more filler and paint today. I'm just happy to have the doors back on the car. Getting the bodywork straight on this side is going to be fairly easy now, it won't be perfect, it will just be solid and tidy. Perfection can come later.  |
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Aug 25, 2016 21:22:00 GMT
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What size bits of ally do you need? have a measure up and I'll check what we have in stock. Sure we carry 10mm as std but might have some thicker stuff.
What filler are you using? Upol smooth 7 is nice to use but avoid 'Big Easy' as it pinholes and sinks. Nothing wrong with a good skim of filler - small patches like you are applying don't actually fill as well as doing a larger area.
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Aug 25, 2016 21:31:15 GMT
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Ebay is alright for lumps of aly.
I've got a 3d printer at work but limited time, If you can draw up the adapters (www.tinkercad.com) I'm happy to print them and stick them in the post.
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. It's good to be back on it again, I reckon I just needed some time away from it for a bit so I could be enthused again. That and better free time management, which I have now, and is the reason for another update today.
