DHC repairs #27: LH door skin

In this update, I am looking at a crucial part of any restoration: panel gaps. From the outset, the plan was to fit both reasonably rust-free doors with new door skins. As such allowing for some slight adjustment of the outer shape of the door skin. And the door skin can be moved over the door frame to adjust the panel gaps. Call it fine tuning. The result is pretty good, in my opinion. Though in terms of originality, these panel gaps are really way too good for a TR7 😜

DHC repairs #26: LH front inner wing

Earlier this month I mentioned some problems with the left hand front inner wing on this body. But I managed to lay my hands on a new one. Though it wasn’t an original one, but a replica that originated from Rimmer Bros. And trial fitting it on the car’s body and on the inside of an original outer wing clearly showed it wasn’t an original part. Quality control has been rather poor on this part to say the least! The gap at the back of the wing is about an inch wide.

Luckily one of the left hand inner wings in my stock did have a good rear section. In other words, the angle grinder has been called upon again. The front one-third of the new wing was combined with the rear two-thirds of an inner wing from my spares stock. The welding line being clearly visible in the picture below:

And combining the two panels provided a good mounting surface for the outer wing . As the picture blow shows, the gap between door and front wing is already pretty good. As is the alignment with the nose panel:

DHC repairs #25: LH front wing area

In my previous post I commented on the fact that the rust damage was far worse than expected. Turned out there were several areas where the metal was pretty thin. So more patch repairs. Starting with a hole in a rather standard location; where the front bulkhead meets the inner wing. A fairly easy repair using the well proven Cardboard Aided Design method:

But the worst damage was around the left hand front strut tower. The upper part of which was seriously damaged by rust. Luckily I had a good replacement, and rust free LH strut tower among my spare parts. The angle grinder was called upon again to remove the damaged areas. But not before the body got an extra temporary support to prevent distortion, and a few reference measurements were taken:

Turned out that the metal adjacent to the strut tower was also pretty thin. So the tops of the inner wing panels was also replaced with repair panels from the donor body shell:

Fitting the LH front inner wing is next on the to-do-list.

DHC repairs #24: LH front wing removal

With the repairs to the sills and the rear structural areas finished, the attention could be switched to the front of the body shell. Starting with the removal of the left hand front inner and outer wing and a detailed inspection of the previously hidden area. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that here again were some hidden horrors. As the pictures below illustrate. Clearly visible is the corrosion caused by the L-shaped brackets that were introduced to aid aligning the body parts during body production. Needless to mention these won’t come back:

We had hoped that the left hand inner wing would be salvageable as I didn’t have a spare one. Sadly it wasn’t! Some bodge repairs early in the car’s life meant the outer edges were very badly damaged and rough. But there was also a lot of rust all over the top of the arch. As a result of which large areas were rather thin!

Long story short; I had to go in search of a replacement arch. Luckily there are enough other jobs left, so at least the work will not come to a standstill!