This is my mate Steve's gasser that I've been tricked into doing some welding on. It has a racing history and was returned to a street car a few years ago. It was running 11's with a hot Ford 302 V8 but is now running a baby 289 V8 out of a Mercury Cougar. Steve decided to get the front end jacked up and straight-tube axled, gasser style, and the car needs a few bits sorting so it's MOT-able and safe. The inner sills were a bit grotty and someone had jacked the car by the sill so it was all pushed in. This is a good time to deal with little bits like that.
I'll start with the important bit, the car, up on stands:
Oh and the engine is important too:
The garage has no power so I'm now going to take you through how to restore a car with nothing more than a Lidl Workmate, vice, snips, hammer and a battery grinder.
Actually that's a bit of a lie because we borrowed a 5.5KW Honda generator off a kind chap from the NSRA with the hope that it will be able to supply power to the welder. Unfortunately it just can't deal with it, the start up power required for the MIG is just too much and it stalls the gennie. It has proved handy to run power tools off though, so all is not lost because we've been able to cut the car up, clean out the grot and cut the sheet steel with a jigsaw.
This is all going to be in an odd order because I took the pictures backwards, so here's starting with the second problem area on the car.
The second problem with the car was a bit of grot in the floorpan on the drivers side. Cleaning it back revealed a previous repair and only more grot to have to weld the inner sill to. So I hacked it right back to put in some fresh panels. Here's the new hole in the floor and removed inner kick panel on the A pillar:
The strengthening panel is good so we just have to replace the inner kick panel with this:
On the A pillar outside it's a bit snotty on the drivers side. Passenger side is already repaired but here needs attention:
Yuck. I've made this panel to start to rebuild it with:
And looky here behind the door, it needs seeing to as well:
I waved my magic wand and my snips and hammers danced together like in Fantasia and made this:
Er, this is the bit that goes inside, probably should have showed you that before:
Back inside the car again the outrigger is rotten where it meets the inner sill so that's been lopped off:
And it is to be replaced with this natty little outrigger I made:
Fits on like a glove and the floor will be supported by it:
Now onto the floor, front section is curved and the lip on the edge goes downward, then there's a second rear section where the lip goes upward. The grotty bit managed to pass across both bits so I have to make two repair panels for one hole. Well I don't have to but it'll look nicer and more original when it's done. Here's the front one, lightly curved:
And in place:
Now onto the sill itself. The car has been re-silled already to a satisfactory standard but the ravages of time and neglect mean it needs doing again. Only the front and back are gone so I'm not taking the whole thing off, just sections. Repair panels are made from an inner sill panel. They aren't the whole sill, just a bit of it so I've had to form the end myself. Not too hard to do and this is what it looks like:
Under the car you can see the munched part of the sill. The bent bit is the middle sill, yup, it was pretty mashed in to get that far. You can see two cuts in the outer sill which I have made either side of the dent so I can pull it back into shape and weld back together:
Inner sill drops into place pretty much like this:
And this is how we left Noddy's Taxi. On the right you can see the two sills:
I'll start with the important bit, the car, up on stands:
Oh and the engine is important too:
The garage has no power so I'm now going to take you through how to restore a car with nothing more than a Lidl Workmate, vice, snips, hammer and a battery grinder.
Actually that's a bit of a lie because we borrowed a 5.5KW Honda generator off a kind chap from the NSRA with the hope that it will be able to supply power to the welder. Unfortunately it just can't deal with it, the start up power required for the MIG is just too much and it stalls the gennie. It has proved handy to run power tools off though, so all is not lost because we've been able to cut the car up, clean out the grot and cut the sheet steel with a jigsaw.
This is all going to be in an odd order because I took the pictures backwards, so here's starting with the second problem area on the car.
The second problem with the car was a bit of grot in the floorpan on the drivers side. Cleaning it back revealed a previous repair and only more grot to have to weld the inner sill to. So I hacked it right back to put in some fresh panels. Here's the new hole in the floor and removed inner kick panel on the A pillar:
The strengthening panel is good so we just have to replace the inner kick panel with this:
On the A pillar outside it's a bit snotty on the drivers side. Passenger side is already repaired but here needs attention:
Yuck. I've made this panel to start to rebuild it with:
And looky here behind the door, it needs seeing to as well:
I waved my magic wand and my snips and hammers danced together like in Fantasia and made this:
Er, this is the bit that goes inside, probably should have showed you that before:
Back inside the car again the outrigger is rotten where it meets the inner sill so that's been lopped off:
And it is to be replaced with this natty little outrigger I made:
Fits on like a glove and the floor will be supported by it:
Now onto the floor, front section is curved and the lip on the edge goes downward, then there's a second rear section where the lip goes upward. The grotty bit managed to pass across both bits so I have to make two repair panels for one hole. Well I don't have to but it'll look nicer and more original when it's done. Here's the front one, lightly curved:
And in place:
Now onto the sill itself. The car has been re-silled already to a satisfactory standard but the ravages of time and neglect mean it needs doing again. Only the front and back are gone so I'm not taking the whole thing off, just sections. Repair panels are made from an inner sill panel. They aren't the whole sill, just a bit of it so I've had to form the end myself. Not too hard to do and this is what it looks like:
Under the car you can see the munched part of the sill. The bent bit is the middle sill, yup, it was pretty mashed in to get that far. You can see two cuts in the outer sill which I have made either side of the dent so I can pull it back into shape and weld back together:
Inner sill drops into place pretty much like this:
And this is how we left Noddy's Taxi. On the right you can see the two sills:
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