Monday, January 15, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Building a rotisserie
Since there is a substantial bodywork to be done to restore the car to top condition, I decided I needed a rotisserie to allow me to turn the body around when needed. I also wanted to have a solid reference for fixing the body in place when it will be time to replace the sills.
I therefore decided to make a steel beam copy of the frame with exact copies of the body attachement points.
This also allows me to weld temporary reference structures to this frame, such as when I will cut out the front wings for tackling the door hinge structure.
The rotisserie porvides independent front and rear height adjustment and allows 360 degrees rotation in any horizontal angle position.
I therefore decided to make a steel beam copy of the frame with exact copies of the body attachement points.
This also allows me to weld temporary reference structures to this frame, such as when I will cut out the front wings for tackling the door hinge structure.
The rotisserie porvides independent front and rear height adjustment and allows 360 degrees rotation in any horizontal angle position.
stripping the paint off the body exterior
It wasnow time to strip the paint off the car and see what horrors were lurking underneath the paint. As you can see, the body outside shell came out pretty nice except for all the inevitable problems around the headlight pods. As I mentioned, the interior metalwork suffered a lot of damage due to water standing in the car.
As far as the stripping is concerned, I chose to chemically strip the outside since sandblasting and sanding both have great potential for wraping the metal irreparably.
The final paint removal was done using the 3M scotchbrite type pads which worked very well.
As far as the stripping is concerned, I chose to chemically strip the outside since sandblasting and sanding both have great potential for wraping the metal irreparably.
The final paint removal was done using the 3M scotchbrite type pads which worked very well.
Lifting the body off the chassis
Obviously, a thorough eveluation of what has been acquired is only possible after lifting the body off the chassis, and removing the paint.
To lift the body, I removed the engine, gearboxtunnel, spare wheel tray and the ventilation boxes on both sides.
This allowed me to pass a steel tube through the car and attache the lower bulkhead supports to the steel beam as is shown in the photo below. Two ratchet straps on both sides of the car then allowed lifting the body off the chassis. This worked very well.
To lift the body, I removed the engine, gearboxtunnel, spare wheel tray and the ventilation boxes on both sides.
This allowed me to pass a steel tube through the car and attache the lower bulkhead supports to the steel beam as is shown in the photo below. Two ratchet straps on both sides of the car then allowed lifting the body off the chassis. This worked very well.
The car as I found it.
I liked this car because of its very good rust free chassis and very nice bodywork fit.Even if this is a real California car, it has obviously stood outside without it's rear window, so there is a lot of work to be done in the rear end.
It certainly follows the general advice that if you want to restore a car, it is best to buy the worst looking example you can find.
It was sold to me as a 90% complete, and after fanatically collecting missing parts for 2 years now, I would stay it is 91% complete. As least all the important and difficult to obtain parts are there now. What is still missing can be sourced easily from the different companies specialising in XK parts.
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