The weather has sort of warmed up enough that I could get some paint onto a few areas.
First off I laid a couple of coats of polyester filler over the rear end, to fill any imperfections and sanding marks in the filler and sheet metal. This spray filler is great, sands easily and fills all those tiny marks that always make themselves very hard to remove:
I've also managed to spray some epoxy etch primer over the engine bay, cowl and front half of the roof. This is a very nice paint, very tough and flows well. This is the last coat before colour that the engine bay will get, I have no desire to sand the engine bay to a perfect finish, so I'll just scuff the epoxy and straight to colour. This will also give me a nice, thin, super tough paint finish.
Also spread some seam sealer around all the engine bay seams (unlike Jaguar did originally!)
And then finally decided on a colour and sprayed the engine bay. The colour is Jaguar Azure blue. It was available as a special order 1972-78 and a few E types were painted this colour, but I haven't seen an XJS in it.
I've been working on the door repair the last few days, shaping the repair patches etc. Slow going but needs to be for such flat panels to avoid significant warpage. The actual door shell was in pretty good condition, just needing the rear corner replaced:
Then made up an outer skin replacement. This involved folding a flange into the top of a piece of sheet metal for a nice lap joint. Jaguar seems to have coated the inside of the door skin with sound deadener before folding the skin over the door, I had to remove deadener from the rear of the existing skin behind the intrusion bar, to get the repair to lay nice and flat.
I was lucky in that I also had a nice piece of sheet metal laying around that closely matched the gentle curve of the door skin as a starting point. Was still a fair bit of work getting it to fit nicely though!
You can see a bit of distortion in the front edge of the existing skin in this photo, it could be a real problem when it comes time to weld. I am hoping my temporary jig below will help reduce any chance of distortion by keeping the seam in line and acting as a heat sink for the welding process. I'll just go slow and do a little at a time to avoid excess heat build up.... all I can do really!
I've painted the lower door shell and back of the repair panel with epoxy primer. When it is all completed it will get another coat into the folded seam then seam sealer. That should eliminate any chance of future rust in this area.
First off I laid a couple of coats of polyester filler over the rear end, to fill any imperfections and sanding marks in the filler and sheet metal. This spray filler is great, sands easily and fills all those tiny marks that always make themselves very hard to remove:
I've been working on the door repair the last few days, shaping the repair patches etc. Slow going but needs to be for such flat panels to avoid significant warpage. The actual door shell was in pretty good condition, just needing the rear corner replaced:
I was lucky in that I also had a nice piece of sheet metal laying around that closely matched the gentle curve of the door skin as a starting point. Was still a fair bit of work getting it to fit nicely though!
