Weights and measures

I know that you are all dying to know more detail about my comment so here it is, in fact you can quite legitimately sell in feet and inches at the moment as long as it is a supplimentary Unit of measure to the metric units until January 2010 when a European directive comes into force.

After this date this directive means that you will get a £5K fine for any mention of feet and inches... so much for freedom of expression.

Sill or no sill?

Well, after a little investigation it seems that late bays not only did not have rear outriggers but they did not have the centre strengthening sill.

Should I not bother then, it has not had one for the last 27 years why would it need one now?

Decisions, decisions

New hat sir

Well, rather than buying a top hat section for £14.50 + P&P I though that as it is such a smple profile I would have a bash myself. I popped into Wilco carmasters and 'lo behold' they do 4' x 2' sheets for £9.99 with a 1mm guage. Funny that as I thought that it was illegal to sell in imperial units any more.

I marked out the dimmensions as accurately as I could using a small punch rather than a scriber as that is all I had to the following measurements:

13mm
37mm
32mm
37mm
13mm

and left a 13mm tab on the left for the end tabs that attach to the inner sill. Now cutting this out with a hack saw in a brick garage when it is 24 deg + outside as I seem to have lost my jig saw was nice.

Now with my new vice and a hammer I vaguely remebered my metal work classes from school from20 years ago to form a pretty good similie of the original profile. The fact I was using a vice meant that I had to bend it out of shape to make the last couple of bends but it seemed to go back into shape okay leaving me this.

Lovely isnt it? Next I cut the offending length off and did a little prepping of the area drilled a couple of holes in the top of the repair pannel and plug welded it up. After 3 three attempts of pigeon poo I thought just one more go before I run up the garden screaming... and it worked.

I have now welded it in with 'mostly seam' welds and it looks the dogs danglys... if you can get excited about a bit of welding that is.

Vice new trinket

Yesterday, I had many intentions but managed only one thing.

After languishing under my bench for a good 2-3 years I have now installed my vice and look, it says "Made in England" on the side.

You don't see that very often.

Top hat sections look a bit thin

After offering up the inner sill for fit I have decided that I really ought to fix these top hat sections, the last 5cm or so are a little thin. I could plate them but I will try and fabricate some profiled sections.

Now if I only had some steel sheet and a sheet metal folder we would be in business. I will have to see what I can bodge up this weekend. The only two effected are the ones that carry the front and centre rear outriggers... typical.

Talking of outriggers, I ordered a rear outrigger for this job only to find that the late bays don't have them... well that is another part for the next project which is a 1972 crossover twin slider rust bucket ;o)

First patches by me

These two little beauties (Well I think so anyway) are my first two pieces of welding and I don't think that they are half bad.

One the top one I have let a patch in to the chassis rail that follows the contour by the rear chassis cross member and the other a small flat patch on the front cross member.

Sills all off

After a couple of days of grinding I have now finished removing the sills completely from the Off side and I am now struck by the fact that there was no centre strengthening sill? This also leaves me with the quandry of how on earth do you weld them in.

The inner sill has a lip that slots over the top hat sections and the centre has a lip that points towards the inner but they but up together at the bottom. My only thought at the moment is that I should weld in the inner and then try and weld the centre along the outer radius of the bend for the top lip... any suggestions?

In the above image you can see them both roughly offered up and maybe you can see what I mean (the silve one is the centre and you can just see the black inner on the right).