Thursday 26 April 2012

Chipping away

I've been getting the annoying, dirty jobs done. Nothing really exciting to see, but will detail progress nonetheless.
The sill is about 95% to how I want it now, it's almost lined up and square. I think I'll cut a front outer skin off another car for this area just to tidy it up and save some time. I could continue to knock it out, but it's quite thick sheet.

 I also managed to get the boot floor straightened out, welded up and that allowed me to remove the fuel tank. Amazing the difference 10mm to the axle hump height made when it came to removing the fuel tank! To remove the tank, you MUST remove the bolt in boot gutter supports. I want to weld these back in when they go in, so I am looking at ways to make the forward supports removable and leaving the angle pieces that run down the boot gutters in place. Also managed to get the crusty old towbar off the car. The boot just needs a good wire brushing and clean up, some seam sealer and it's ready for paint.

I've also removed the side window and C pillar trim/decorative panels. No rust there fortunately. Pretty straightforward removal, although aluminium rivets were used to assemble, meaning the rivets had all but corroded away. There was also a severe lack of sealant around the rivets where they'd been seated, reassembly with Duralac and butyl mastic will eliminate corrosion and any chance of leakage.

 And I'm still waiting on the replacement floor panels. I've got a supplier lined up in Melbourne, but communicating with them is like using carrier pigeons. I'll never understand businesses who want to use websites or Ebay to sell products, yet don't respond to electronic communications!
 You can see the floors here, they would make quite good colanders. One of the only issues I have with Jaguar's assembly and materials selection is the way the soundproofing on the floors was done.
 I'm also pretty sure I need to replace the front torque box/jack support under the front floor on the damaged side, it just looks ratty, so I'll appropriate a part off the future parts car for this as well.
 Here are the holy floors.

 


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