Spitfire Total Rebuild!

Update time!

Sorry guys, been a while, but, like I said, the frequency of updates now depends upon how much time I get to work on the car :P Up to recency I was trying to catch up with myself with the posts/stages of the build.


Anyway, I left off with the door repair looking like this....



The welds were then ground down (to reveal a few little holes that needed to be touched with the welder again.



The profile of the curve was then drawn onto the repair section and the rest cut away.


Must have got carried away at this point because the images are lacking! But, essentially I made a number of V shaped cuts into the inner curve marking and then one by one bent these tabs following the shape of the curve, like so...


Just needs a final cleaning, a touch of weld and a skim of filler and the jobs a good'un.



Now, the rear light panels were good to go having had the three holes made larger to allow for light fittings and the mounting points for the light units drilled.



My own (messy) attempt at welding! Note the rusty area in the upper corner to the rear, this'll be cut away and replaced eventually.



Driver side light panel welded in and partially cleaned up. Needs another bit of grinding and cleaning up, but at this point it was getting late so a quick sch'lap of rust primer will keep it safe until I get back to it.




Driver side sill was good to close up! All rust proofed and will eventually be given a good dose of Waxoil when all the body work is done. The box section is the strenghtening bar as discussed earlier in the thread.




Again, my attempt at welding! Not so bad along the sill but I ended up burning away the lip where it meets the bulkhead/firewall! D'oh, ah well, I'll clean it up and get it welded proper! Hole to fill in the bottom too.





Other little jobs have been carried out too, minor bits of welding, filling gaps etc; all of them little steps towards getting the tub off the chassis, flipping her over and treating/sealing the underside!!

Bit more work has been done, but, not that much to show for it really

I'm still at that rather annoying stage of trying to get (what seems like) the millions of little jobs done on the tub; the little holes that need cleaning and filling, the little cracks that need dressing, te rusty spots that need little patches or filling. When putting on large panels; wings, sills etc you seem an immediate difference, but with these little jobs, not so much so. Spend almost 12 hours straight on it Saturday and it still kinda looks the same, but, at least I know I'm a bit closer to getting the tub sorted!



^ About to get stuck in with another days work, but, as you can see, its still up in the air!



^ View from the rear.



^ Touching up a few little spots and cracks in the floorpan. Strenghtning ribs have also been knocked into the replacement section of floorpan nearest the sill.



^ Seat rails going in temporarily As a new section of floorpan was added the lenght of the floor on this side new holes had to be drilled and nuts welded to the underside to take the seat runner.



^ Had some spare brackets left on the donor tub so I figured it'd be no harm to have them added to the bulkhead.



^ The last of the rusty sections cut from the rear light panel! I had been putting this one off as there are a number of layers here and difficult profiles, but, I bit the bullet and got stuck in.........with a grinder!! Here the rusty section has been cut away.



^ First piece goes in.



^ Next bit in on top and tacked in place. Didnt get any more pics of this repair after, got carried away and stuck at it while I had the daylight, but, another two pieces were added and I'm happy to say that job is now done!! :cool:



^ Filling up a few little spotweld holes on the rear deck, remnants of earlier days when the car was split in two!


Until next time.......

Cheers guys!


Nothing worth taking pics of lately, just cleaning up some of the panel joins/welds in and around the boot area/rear wings, treating them with Jenolite and LOWE rust primer, just trying to get a bit of protection down into the seams/joints itself.

Other than that I purchased one of these finger/power files in Aldi yesterday, have yet to put it to action, but if it does work adequately there are lots of little welds and areas that need grinding/cleaning up that a disc grinder cant get in at! So, lets see........

Ah hah!

At last, a little bit of progress and a somewhat exciting stage of the build, it has, for now moved from the reconstruction phase to 'finishing', well, the first step in a veryyyyy long finishing process, but still, its a new area!


The body tub was lifted off the chassis where it was rebuild, hammered, welded, patched, strengthened and spun round and round 360 and was moved, or, squeezed would be a more appropriate term into my former woodworking workshop (had to pull out some workbenches and put away all the old chippy tools ). But at least she's in out of the weather, dry and relatively warm (when I light the stove!) so, I'm happy about that.


^ Looks tight but there is room to move and work around the car.


^ With the car in, and turned upside down the plan is to completely strip the underneath of the many layers of underseal and gunk that was applied by the previous owner. Top marks for effort, there was 3 layers; grey Schultz, white epoxy and black stonechip! Unfortunately the prep work was lacking so there was many patches of rust under all these 'protective' layers, so, one has to wonder if the underseal was protecting the rust! :rolleyes:

Anyway, a bit of heat, some old chisels and plenty of elbow grease will have that stuff off in no time.



^ Not a great pic, but, you get the idea of what I'm working with.....a mess.



I hope, if I have the space and it works to mount the tub on a spinny jib so I can work at it more comfortably as well as similtainiously working on the inside floorpans, but, we'll see how that works out.



The plan for the underside is...

1. Clean off all the underseal, old paint and any other junk.
2. Do any final bits of welding that need to be done and clean up all existing welds.
3. Clean all the underside down to bare, clean metal.
4. Thouroughly clean and degrease.
5. Apply Deox gel as per instruction; that'll both highlight and kill any active rust.
6. Clean again and and apply Hydrate 80 which will put down a rust proof barrier.
7. Over this will be applied an epoxy resin.


^ Deox Gel and Hydrate 80.



We'll see how it goes.......

Got another update for you lot!

The chipping, grinding and sanding goes on. There's a lot to be done and a heck of a lot already done, hence the lack of images as of late, there's only so many images of rust and old paint one can show!

Been trying out my Bilt Hamber 'Deox Gel' on some of the rust and, yeah, it seems to work. Its a water based (how ironic) rust killer and remover. See the pics for more info....

Also been squeezing the upper half of me in and out of the gearbox tunnel opening and trying to work at scraping off a rough textured (almost like stonechip) black paint off the inside face of the firewall/bulkhead and the underside of the dash, battery box etc.




^ A little test with the rust killer/remover 'Deox Gel'. Both sides of the tunnel were equally rusted (approx half way across the diff window is where I worked to. The prep process takes a bit of time but after 45 mins or so it does lift a fair bit of rust as can be seen by the shiney metal!



^ A rusty floorpan, ready for some treatment! Had to be degreased first, then washed with hot soapy water, then rinsed with clean water before being dried, and then...



^ The deox gel gets slopped on good and thick and left for 30-60 mins or so to do its work.



^ After about an hour and before the stuff starts drying out you work it with a wire brush and then wash it away and dry up! The rust turns black and the cleaner metal turns shiney.



^ Then the floorpan got a liberal coating of rust primer! The first of two. Feels good to be seeing nice fresh paint go down on a properly prepped surface. This wont be coming off again for many a year I hope!!



^ Cleaned off the back panel and guess what I found? Yeah! More filler, big splodge of it in fact! Damn. It'll probably knock back into shape.



I also got the frame erected for the 6x3 metre poly tunnel, so, hope to get that finished soon too and at least I'll have a place to store the car and hopefully put on the primer.

Zoo4m8 wrote: »

This is a terrific thread and real encouragement to the likes of me, just finished the spit for my TR7, a collection of holes held together with the odd piece of sound steel, lifted the shell up with the help of a tractor and loader, slotted the spit on and it works a treat!
Unfortunately don't know how to post pics but will sort that out at some stage probably with the help of a 10 year old!

Sounds like an interesting project! Make sure and start a thread when you get the pics figured out! I'm copying mine from Facebook, I keep updates on the Spitfire page so its easy to copy the URL and drop it on here.

Darraghmh91. wrote: »

Really goin balls out on this project full restoration .. Wish I had a garage to do this kinda stuff

Cheers! Wish I had a garage too, hah, well, a half decent sized one. Working room is quite limited, but, I've set up a poly tunnel off site where I can store and assemble the car when the time comes.

sogood wrote: »

I'm getting towards the end of a boat resto before I move onto the MG and even with the luxury of a big dry garage, it can be hard, but every time I read your posts, I stop complaining and take encouragement. Major kudos to you, especially at this time of year, dodging the cold and rain.

Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age!

keep up the great work!

The only thing keeping me going at times is the thought of the end product and the (hopefully) fun I'll get from it and the head turns!! It'll be all worth it, plus, I'll have a car that I know every square inch of!!

'Till all be worth it.

kev1.3s wrote: »

I would be a little apprehensive of the poly tunnel, I'm open to correction but my lancia was stored for decades in a Polly tunnel and it didn't exactly stop her from rusting. I assumed that the humidity and condensation were not ideal for storing an Italian classic, or a BL classic for that matter.

The poly tunnel I hope will just be a temporary measure to store the body on chassis while I work on the bonnet and also to prep the car and prime, perhaps, when the weather picks up closer to summer, to spray it in. There are 12 mesh windows in it so I hope the air flow might cut down on the damp/condensation, but, we'll see.


Happy new year all! Been a busy enough Christmas/New Year so have many updates to share!


Now, I left off with getting the underside cleaned up ready to be treated. It was a long, hard, messy job to remove every mm of underseal, paint, gunk and junk and then tidy up any last little weld/tidy up jobs before the treatments could begin.



^ Almost forgot to make and fit this little guy! Wouldnt have done to have treated the underside then realised I had to weld this in!



^ Lot of rust, but, thankfully just light surface rust/staining.



^ Original floorpan with replacement 1.6mm section down the left had side. Rear section of the floorpan aint so bad, there was a number of pin hole in the footwell that were welded.




After taking the heavy end of any rust off with the wire brush and tidying up any little jobs the whole underside was washed cleaned and then was treated with Deox Gel which removes any active rust and restores metal back to nice shiney stuff! Its messy, gloopy stuff. Instructions say to apply the gel and leave to sit for 30-60mins before scrubbing with a wire brush and washing clean, however, an internet search recommends that its left on for 12 hours plus, possibly 24.




^ Gel was applied and wrapped with cling film to prevent it drying out. Now we wait.....




^ The next day revealed a lot of removed rust in the form of a orange sludge, green gunk and like a white fungus.....nice!



^ Cling film will have to be removed, the metal scrubbed with a brush to remove any loose stuff and then the underside washed clean. Here we go!





^ All washed and clean, and not looking too bad. A bit shiner than when I began for sure. I could do this process again to clean it further but I made the decision that it was clean enough and ready to move onto the next stage.....

Falcon L wrote: »

That's a fantastic job on the underside. It must be very rewarding getting the metal back to (better than?) original.

I would love to do a Stag to this level, but unfortunately, I'm well past being able to.

Good luck with the rest of the restoration. I'll be watching with great interest.

Its very rewarding indeed, does take a lot of work and hardship though, but, while I have it at this stage I might as well do it right and be done with it.

toastedpickles wrote: »

I was actually gona use that combo on my 900 raging i didnt now!

What did you use instead?




The hydrate 80 was given a few days to cure and then it was time to crack open the Lowe Rust Primer, of which it would recieve two coats which turned it from black to grey!







That stuff is like very sticky gloss paint! Not the easiest to apply, but its supposedly good stuff (and if the price is any indication then it is!). These two coats will be allowed a few days to fully cure (it does tend to stay a bit rubbery for a while) and then the seams will be sealed with Tec7 before it gets another coating, this time of epoxy resin.

Now, to the inside......

I figured I'd leave the underside for a number of days and let it harden fully and so started work on the inside of the car. The plan now is to take it in steps, the first area to tackle was the floorpans and inner sills. These were cleaned back to fresh metal with a wire brush, washed and treated with Hydrate 80. After a couple of days and another bit of a cleaning the rust primer came out once more.










And that my friends is me up to date. The above is just the first coat of two, but, I reckon the underside has been left long enough so I'll seam seal that in the coming days and seal up the internal joints before giving it a second coat.

I'll be back....

Been tipping away at it on and off.

Got the boot floor cleaned up, washed and treated the bottom section of it with the Hydrate 80 and then watched it go blackkkk.......








^Set about cleaning up the rear end then, particularly around the little nooks and crannies of the light panel; taking care of most of the dust and dirt before I painted the boot floor, which has been done since but I dont have a pic to hand. At this stage the frame and jig at the rear of the car to allow it to spin was removed to allow access and the car propped up on kegs





^ After that, the disorientation set in again so I had to grab a few parts and put them in place to remind (and reassure?!) myself of what she may look like someday, soon

Stuck the doors on after this for a test fit and got a little issue with the passenger door sorted, so, happy with that.





^ My job for the weekend? To sort this tunnel out! Get the cover on her and secure it. Theres a pile of parts here but the only parts that will be used are the chassis and bonnet, the latter needing a good bit of work. Hardtop is rotten to the core and bootlid under it is not much better! I hope, once I have the cover on the tunnel to strip down the chassis, clean and repaint it, at least it'll be dry.

^ Thinking out loud! I decided I'd drop the Triumph logo off the rear panel and just go with the lettering which, will be raised chrome.








Cut and shut! Almost. The cut ends of the bumper were rounded over but are still round and need a bit more peening over and welding, but, it turned out really well and I'm happy with the look! Cant wait to get the chrome lettering, which, is the same size as I have it marked out with pernament marker.


So yeah, all was going super until I got a message to say this had happened....



Bullocks! :mad:

Cheers guys!

I should mention that the lights will be altered, so the inside red lights will be replaced for two clear reverse lenses.


Apart from that just be cleaning up the bulkhead. I had lashed on some rust primer to keep it from deteriorating whilst it was being worked out outdoors, so, it was a nightmare to get back off; combination of nitromors and wire brush in the drill seemed to take care of it.






Next job is to tackle the poly tunnel and get that up again! Scaffold tubing, plastic piping and galvanise sheeting on the way......

Cleaned up, wiped down, out with the spray gun and rust primer and this is the result.....











....simples