Thursday, 26 June 2014

FHC resto nr. 15; More Speke woes

Although the car is putting up quite a fight the body work is progressing steadily. But as mentioned in my last resto-post it is clear that quality control wasn't high on the priority list at the Speke factory. Biggest problem we encountered this time were the fill panels between the front of the sills and the inner wings. With the outer wings and doors fitted there was no way we got decent shut lines. The outer wings wouldn't go back far enough resulting in rather large gaps between the wings and the front of the doors. Not to mention the alignment with the nose panel. The left hand side was fairly easy to correct. Removing the spot welds between fill panel and sill enabled the rear of the wing to be persuaded with a hammer to move backwards enough for a proper fit. After which the rust holes in that area could be dealt with properly. As there are three panels joining there we cut out a piece of metal from the inside of the A-post for decent access to the rear of the inner wing ...



Also the top edge of the inner wing was adapted slightly. The anoraks amongst you are invited to tell me what we changed here ...



The right hand side put up a bit more resistance. But as there were some rust holes hidden underneath the battery tray, and it would be rather difficult to remove the tray, it was decided to remove the inner wing together with fill panel mentioned earlier.




At the time of writing this is still very much a work in progress, together with the passenger foot well.


In an earlier post I mentioned that the right hand rear wing, were it meets the sill, was also pretty badly aligned. Did some more work there to get a better fit. It is much better now but the rear is still not as it should be, to be continued ...



Luckily these were the only manufacturing faults we found this time. But those who follow my ramblings here will know that the previous owner decided to attack the transmission tunnel to fit a Dolomite Sprint gearbox with overdrive. Looked fairly easy to rectify, but needed a few card board templates (CAD) to get it right.



Next items on the to do list are the doors. Some problems there too ...

1 comment:

Patrick said...

Hello from France
Really a great work !to one futur great TR7. Thank you for the pics they help to understand were the rust will start and also that TR7 is clever and strong build to resist along the years when you take care of it.
Bon courage