1967 Ford Corsair V4 - Restoration: Delivered

One of my first jobs was to remove the petrol tank - the car requires a fair bit of welding and I have yet to decide has if I am going to mount the bodyshell onto the chassis tilter for ease of repair / access

Tank out of the way I carefully stored the rest of the panels that has been supplied with the car



A rare new old stock nearside rear wing & a pair of pattern outer sills



A better quality boot lid along with a used nearside front wing which may / may not be required







The bodyshell has had a fair share of previous repairs - some are pretty decent, good, sound structural repairs - not the neatest of work but all in unseen areas







Then again there is evidence of some pretty unsightly repairs - all the repairs have been undertaken prior to Peters ownership of the car

Both front wings require removal to access the damaged A posts - They are spot welded on - they also require some repairs to the rust perforated edges / areas - if wings were available at a economical price then I would normally just replace them - however they are very rare and when you can find one they come at much expense - so the plan is to save the wings, repair & refit them - not an easy task but with care perfectly achievable







First job was to expose the lead loading over the seam between the upper front panel and the wings







I noted the bonnet aperture gapping prior to commencing the wing removal







Then started to drill the spot welds out and ease the wing off it's fastening points



Lower bottom edge is all but gone so I patterned this up prior to removal



This is the tricky part accessing these spot welds on the A post - I will probably just have to carefully chisel through these and make them good afterwards



Wing off and the edges straightened up with the hammer & dolly











Once I get the nearside wing off I will drop them into the blasters to get them cleaned up





Inner wing is in good condition and just needs the loose sealer & paint cleaning off it - probably a couple of very minor welding repairs



Jacking point has been replaced and the weld bead is ugly but it's fine structurally - I should be able to tidy it up a little



Lower front panel is a replacement fibreglass panel but its a decent fit and quite serviceable so I don't see reason to replace it especially when a new steel one is all of £780!







A post outer skin is rotten along with the bulkhead side return panel





Thankfully good quality repair sections are available but are quite expensive





Some of the flange edges will require repair prior to the wing being refitted

Pete is a lucky man to get a "slot" for his Corsair.
Interesting as ever to see this high quality work
Keep posting as it is enjoyable for a lot of people

Will be following this with interest. I've just finished a 3 year stint of welding my mk2 Cortina GT. It is virtually identical to one of these underneath. Mines now gone to the painters, but you'll probably weld and paint this by the time I get mine back.

watching with great interest over here too!

love the work so far....you make even getting things apart look interesting!

JP

Yes panels are very expensive now for the Corsairs. I was extremely lucky when I bought mine, as I got two wings two 2 doors and a front valence all for a grand about 5 years ago. Sourced them all in Ireland at the time, but the seller brought them to the mainland for me as well. I did have to buy more panels from expressed so I reckon I spent in the region of £1800 on panels alone. I reckon the same list of panels now you would be touching nearly 3k.

As she was under resto, and you may recognise the front dolly:


This is mine as she is now:

Yes it is a more modern engine, but on "retro fueling" rather than injection.

Made a start on removing the nearside front wing







It takes some time in order to avoid placing any further damage to the panel - normally if I was fitting new I would have the old wing off within 20 minutes - doing it this way in order to reuse the wing takes several hours





It will need several careful repairs before refitting











The inner wings are in really good condition for a 50 year old car has are the chassis legs - it has had repairs to the strut tops on the inner wings which are a decent repair but just require a little tidy before being repainted

George - Hope you don't suffer from Jowett restoration thread withdrawal symptoms - that said the Bradford is still on the go!

Nearside front outer wing removed







A post & bulkhead return panel in a worse state than the offside but nothing that the repair panels will not resolve







Initial thoughts that the top of the inner wings would repair with isolated sections but with both outer wings now off I made a more detailed inspection









The strut tops have been over plated - however when undertaken they have simply plated over the existing rust hence there is now a rust sandwich between the strut brace and the inner wing - really needs to be removed but I shall talk the options through with Peter when I meet up with him at the NEC Classic Car Show this weekend





Underside of the bulkhead / inner wing (under the dashboard) - note the beard of rusty mig wire poking through







Offside inner wing upper / top section is in a similar condition has the nearside







I removed the factory applied sound deadening pads from the underside of the front outer wings by use of a sharp scraper and careful use of the heat gun





Now ready for dropping into the blasters