A few weeks away from the garage which had nothing to do with it being freezing, no, nothing at all.  I got the hinge panel on the near side ready for welding but chickened out for some reason.  Next time I guess.

It is very cold today so I'm keeping the heaters on and the doors shut.  I start to fit the hinge panel or A-post as I think it may be called.  It is slow work as, naturally, it doesn't fit properly; but having done a day at work and cycled to get there I suspect I know the real reason why I'm slow! 

You can see some surface rust on the panel with big holes in it.  This rather annoys me as they were delivered new and shiny so I should have painted them then, sometimes I'm a donut. Anyway, I get the sander out and attack the panel whilst it is on the bench.  The bench is rather cluttered despite the fact that I cleaned it before I started work and I knock a can of zinc primer off it.   When the can lands on the floor it hits something sharp and punctures causing a stream of grey paint to sprout with some energy from the can.  It is sods law that the can is a new one and therefore full (and expensive!) of paint.  By the time I grab it and throw it into the bin it has emptied its contents over a large area of the garage, and me.  So the bright red battery charger that I got for Christmas is now red and grey for example.  Not for the first  time today, donut springs to mind.



So I eventually get the two panels painted and decide to head for safety of my bed.

Sunday and a few hours to work on the Healey's rear end.  I had planned to work from the front backwards so I should be doing the posts that the door hinges mount on first but I am a little fixated on the fact that the rear shroud doesn't fit perfectly.  I think I know why now that I have removed it to fit the rear wings.  The return edges have been replaced and the welds were not cleaned particularly thoroughly so I think some of the welds are interfering with the inner wings.  So I start by getting the grinder out and grinding for what seems like ages, my ears were ringing.  A coffee break was needed. Back in the garage and the shroud fits perfectly.  Seems too good to be true.

Now I fit the wings and this is a little more involved than it should be because the shroud returns haven't got any holes in them.  Once sorted I fit the wings and then get the doors out of storage.  Now I have never looked at the doors since I bought them, which as I pull them out of the cardboard wrapping seems a little odd.  They are ok though, some of the corners are bent but I guess that could have happened since I have owned them.  The important part is that they fit, well of sorts.  The gap between the front and rear wings is a little tight on the off-side but pretty good on the near-side.  More importantly the swage lines seem to be ok.  Don't misunderstand me, there will be loads to do to get them fitted properly but I am confident that I can get there now which is very exciting.

Next step is to fix the hinge panels and have a proper go at mounting the doors.  I noticed that the doors do not have any holes for the mountings screws, that'll be nervy sorting that out.

So, having cleaned up the hinges I painted them with POR15 for supposed long life protection.  I took a long look at paint before I bought this a year or so again and decided to go for it and Metal Ready for all non weldable metal surfaces.  I'm not sure how good at sticking to metal it is but it certainly sticks to skin; I have spent the last two days teaching with grey hands, nice.  Today I freed the hinges up again and then set about getting the rear wings on. 

The rear shroud doesn't fit that well at the moment so I took it off to see if the wings sit on it well and they are ok but not great.  I then fitted them to the inner wings and discovered that they fit well.  I need to drill some holes in the rear shroud for mounting the wing because the return on the shroud has been replaced.  The wing and the inner wing line up well so once I have the shroud fitting well I will drill that out from the inner wing.  I think that the welding needs to be cleaned up on the inside of the shroud to make it fit better and that will be my first line of attack.  I am getting very excited about the prospect of lining up the wings and the doors, if that goes well then I am a long way down the road, to exciting to think about.

Fitted the front wings yesterday morning and the car looks ever more like a car.  I asked my wife to come to the garage to look at it, I think she thinks I'm barking mad.  It is clear that the shroud is out of shape though, on the near side it is quite distorted around the headlight opening; I'm very surprised that I didn't notice this earlier.  I will fit the rear wings now and see how the door gaps are, that will be fun.