1962 Vauxhall Victor FB - Making Panels

Lovely metalwork!!! Love these old FB Victors.

You should have done some extra repair panels to sell.My brother has the estate fb and needs all the same panels.Very good work there mate.

good work, nice to see an FB being saved. I hope you are going to keep the original colour, it really suits it

This Victior is going to be 100% bodge free when finished- great fab skills there!

Thanks guys for all the great comments

It is much easier when the car has not been "restored" before, as you never know what lies under the plates or shiny surfaces

Yes colour will remain the same, Primrose yellow with the Honey Gold roof, I agree a great period colour

It seemed logical to stick with this side so I moved down to the door pillar and sill area, as it turned out the sills had been repaired before at the front ends, very nicely done with plenty of filler and pop rivets, looked great but not very structural.







Once the rot was cut back we were left with this, I had to remove the bottom part of the pillar to remove the full sill section, Gordon had been lucky to find a genuine full sill for this side, so I wanted to use as much of it as possible, to try to replicate that factory look




So I made up a patch for the bottom of the closing panel, apologies for not taking more pictures, (note to self : must take more pics when doing the other side)

Anyway here is is, welded in cleaned up and primered, concealed wing fixing also swapped over, onto the new panel, also patch fitted by the jacking point




At this point a Really needed to think about getting the sill on to line everything up, so it was off with the old one





Note spot welds all drilled out, I find that if you rub the area with a piece of sandpaper on a flat block, then it is easier to identify where they are, they all need to be drilled out, to release all of the old sill.





At first I thought that the inner sill was going to be okay, and it would just be a matter of cleaning it up and welding on the new sill, after all it was very clean and solid, when viewed from underneath.



But the fact that this car had been standing so long in damp conditions meant that it was rotting from the inside out, so once I started grinding it clean, it soon became apparent that further repairs would be needed.



So off with the rot



and new panels made



And welded into place, as I could get good access from both sides, I decided to spot weld these on, welding them to the inner sill and the floor pans for maximum strength







And then trial fit the sill, don't worry pop rivets are only temporary and will be removed later, honest







What I have not shown is the doors and wing being fitted, adjusted, adjusted again, taken off, refitted, adjusted, you get the picture.
I wanted to be absolutely certain that once these sills were on, they were in the right place, with good equal and even panel gaps. I have seen far too many jobs, where the doors overlap the sills, or scrape against them every time the door opens and closes. And as my old woodwork teacher used to say, amongst other things, was

" If a jobs worth doing its worth doing well"


Thats all for tonight, tune in tomorrow for the sill fitting.

I do have a shrinker stretcher but have not used it on this project yet, I tend to use just rudimentary tools, like as you say, vice, hammer and angle iron.

I spent years welding peoples cars up lying in the gutter in their street, so you learn just to make do with whatever comes to hand.

As the repairs will be the same on the other side I will take some more pictures whilst I am doing them, I did not really know what people would want to see, but if the panel making pics help then I am all for it.

wow this is kool i had an estate one of these.... purple matt, and lowered... shamefully never got it back on the road

hi,
some excellent fab skills there. did your mate buy it this time last year, i was within a nats cock in buying it as i was struggling to get my fe done for nats.

Update for the sills

Once I was happy that the sill and door gaps were good, it was time to weld it on.
I am trying to replicate the factory look where possible, so the spot welder was used where possible, and the posts were pool welded in place to be cleaned off later

You may remember that some of the spot welds had been near the edge of the post, so I had to use a copper block against the edge of the panel, to prevent the weld spreading out over, hence the corner welds are a little lumpy, but once cleaned up it should be fine









Then they were cleaned off with a 40 grit flap disc, and then a Roloc scotchbrite disc and then finally a DA sander with an 80 grit disc





Pretty happy with them I must say






I had to use a Dremmel to get into the corner weld at the rear, if you have never used one of these, then I do recomend that you do, I have to admit that I thought they would be a mickey mouse type of tool, but their not





Then a quick coat of etch primer to stop it rusting









The seams were looking good from underneath too, once seam sealed and painted it should look factory fresh







Meanwhile Gordon was busy stripping the paint in the boot, I set him away with a clean and strip disc on a drill






I was just tacking the front pillar back together when I ran out of welding wire, and that now brings us up to date, so progress will be slower now, only the odd night time and weekend