Early Javelin Restoration

[Grumpy Northener]

Debate has been ongoing in the workshop over the last few days on the best way to remove the paint / rust from the bodyshell & panels:
I have had bodyshells blasted before today but whilst it removes rust & paint - it does not access the hidden box sections of the chassis etc - further to this blasting tends to distort the panels and it is just pointless having a bodyshell taken to bare metal to put four buckets of bodyfiller back in it to repair the blasting distortion damage - not to mention the weeks of rubbing down.

Several companies offer a chemical dipping service, so you take the bodyshell & panels to them - they dip them to bare metal, you collect them and undertake any repairs then return the shell & panels to be redipped and then they phosphate prime everything - all sounds good until you write the cheque out for £2,855 + vat and you have to deliver & collect the shell and panels to them twice - so no change out of £3,500 then

I have had a chat to few contacts in the trade and it would appear that what most of them are now doing with restorations on a budget is having the shell & panels intially dipped to bare metal, then undertaking the repairs, 2 pack phosphate priming to all accessable areas and using a high quality cavity wax treatment to all other areas. The intially dipping process is circa £1,000 - the other processess are then undertaken in house making a decent saving.

The final alternative is a bucket of paint stripper, poly carbon discs, rust converters for the cavities & our inhouse media blasters (both grit & soda) plus a lot of time, effort & mess.

Anyone else with a good idea ? (I have already thought of just moving house and switching the phone off)

[tractorman]

As yet another forum member who is impressed by your skills and the high level of restoration, dare I suggest that the "cheap" dip may be the second best option ("expensive" dip being the preferred one if money had been available)?

My theory being that you will spend many unhappy hours trying to remove paint and rust if you don't dip the car - and miss what is in the box sections. If you were to go and do a "paying job" in those hours, you would surely earn far more than the £1,000 (maybe even more than the £3,500!). From my limited experience with blasting, you'll use a heck of a lot of media (I used about 250 kilos for the bonnet of one of my tractors - but I got the media for nothing!), make a heck of a mess that needs clearing up (though mine went on our lawn as "lawn sand") and get very bored. Similarly, using sanders and/or stripper soon starts to cost money!

I've just had a quick look at my spreadsheet for my smaller tractor and the chassis must have cost nearly £200 for materials to strip paint (sanding discs, wire brushes, stripper and rust remover/converter). Add to that the many boring and messy days that I spent stripping paint and rust: I reckon that I could have earned well over £1000 on minimum wages if I'd had a second job for that time.

I don't know your budget; it must be more than mine was (very limited as I had to finish another tractor while doing the first and it cost even more to strip and repaint!) but I'd hate to see such a high class job being "spoilt" just to save what may end up being "loose change".

One thing's for sure, it will end up an excellent car and certainly shows how a test for "roadworthyness" doesn't necessarily mean the car is safe to use on the road!

[Grumpy Northener]

Still looking into the bare metaling of the bodyshell & panels - several forum posts (other forums) are leading us to beleive that although the chemical dipping process is effective - owners of the vehicles have had extensive problems with the new paintwork on the car several months after the event as a direct result of the dipping process - so more research yet to be had and thought about - meanwhile Keith & Peter built a partition in the new workshop to act as a divison between the bodyshop & the workshop

With a large extractor fan & booth filters we can at least vaugely control the dust & air quality at the dusty end of the workshop

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Peter had a day or so grit blasting various areas of the shell with some half decent results

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But then our new (second hand compressor motor failed)

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[Grumpy Northener]

The nearside chassis leg had been the subject of some minor arguement with somthing heavy at some stage in it's life resulting in the factory weld fracturing so this was rewelded

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Rewelded & cleaned up

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[Grumpy Northener]

The damage had caused a dish inwards on the chassis leg so a tab was welded on and the slide hammer utilised to draw it out

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Completed works to chassis leg

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[Grumpy Northener]

Next on the list was the steering box mounting on the offside inner wing - also the subject of accident damage

Steering box mounting fracture

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The hole on the inner wing through which the mounting bolt travels had been elongated in attempt to get the box to fit after the accident damage

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[Grumpy Northener]

New metal was fabricated and welded into the bracket, along with repair to the elongated hole in the inner wing

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The steering box was trail fitted and the holes for the through bolt drilled true - the outer faces were then reinforced by the welding on of a washer - the pedal box support to the chassis was also rewelded where it was fractured

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Final trail fit of the steering box to check everything aligns

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[Grumpy Northener]

Last piece on the offside inner wing was this small section adjacent to the bonnet slam cross brace

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Cut out , fabricated & tacked in

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Welded & cleaned up

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[Grumpy Northener]

Nearside inner wing assessment

Rotten horizontal quarter panel

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Previously patched up air tube

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Poor quality welding habours rust between the four skins of metal that join at this point

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[Grumpy Northener]

Managed to get away from the office a little early on Monday so came the long way home and called in at the workshop for a couple of hours

Quarter panel roughly chopped out of inner wing

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Spot weld drilled out and flange edges being removed

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Edges cleaned & dressed up - hidden / undersides were sprayed with a zinc rich weld through primer

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