Not much energy to get in the garage after work recently and the weekends have been consumed by other stuff.  Last weekend I did go to the classic cars show at the Birmingham NEC with my wife and had a lovely day wandering around.

I spoke with Pro Strip about dipping the wings and think I will have to bite the bullet and do that.  I feel a little annoyed that I spend £310 getting them blasted only to realise that it isn't really the answer.  My issue with the wings now is that there is clearly some rust still in the steel which is visible in the crevices of the steel and there must be rust in the returns for the wheel aperture (where the wing wraps around a steel wire to form the edge) and in the A post (at the rear of the front wing, where it is bolted to the A post) because these are hidden by metal and therefore not accessible to the sandblasting process.  I knew that the returns wouldn't get blasted but when I saw rust in the wing surface both on the inside and the outside I was a little disturbed.  Anyway, with the wings now clear of filler and layers of paint I can at least cut/shut and beat them to the desired shape.

Working this weekend, which for a teacher is a pain and doing a coast to coast cycle next weekend so not sure when I can get on with it.

Today, Saturday and I have a whole day in the garage, yippee.  I was a little troubled by the after effects of the sandblasting as I really expected the process to get rid of all of the rust on the wings but it didn't.  I'm not sure if the person who did it did not really do it well or if I was just expecting too much.  Either way I have spent the idle moments of the past week thinking about it.

The first photo shows the outside of one of the wings and it doesn't look too bad.  You can see the lead work to the very right of the wing, just above the headlight aperture.  All the wings had some lead work on them.

The next photo shows the inside of one of the wings and it is easy to see that there is still rust present in the pitted section of the metal.  This is what has been stressing me.

Even on the outside of one wing rust is still visible.

I have firm memories of the MKII MG Midget that I 'restored' (I use the term loosely) when I was a kid that started bubbling up with rust within months of finishing it and it stressed me out in a major way.  I know I'll be so cheesed off if this Healey does the same so I cannot plough on from here without knowing that I have it under control.  I have POR15 rust encapsulator paint and some weld through primer but couldn't work our the best way forward so I contacted Frosts, the classic car restorers supplier for advice.  They were very cool and suggested I use the primer for now to prevent any new surface rust developing and then complete all welding work.  Once done I should then use the POR15 products.  This I decided was a sound way forward so I decided to get the painting over and done with asap.

I woke quite early and was pleased as the weather forecast was for rain from mid morning onwards.  I had to feed the dog, do some shopping and then feed myself before I could head for the garage which meant that I didn't get out until 9:00.  I got the car out of the garage and hung the panels off the roof supports for painting.  I did a quick dust coat and then a full coat as quick as I could.  It took until gone 10:00 and by that time it was looking like rain so I patiently waited for the lot to dry so that I could unhook them and return the car to the safety of the garage, I only just made it.

Painting cars is lovely, It felt really nice to see the wings looking smart in a single colour and hanging from the roof.  Whilst waiting for the paint to dry I tried the aluminium bonnet I brought back from Norfolk for size, you can see it isn't great.  I'm rather glad I also have a steel bonnet to use, I must dig that out and try it too.

I then got rather distracted by the boot area and tried the boot floor for size, of course it didn't fit and so I spent a while cutting, hammering etc. before I started to put the wings back on.

I felt that the inner wing had too large a return on it so I cut that back to enable the rear shroud to fit better.

Here you can see the trimmed section.

With the floor in and the shroud on it became clear that I needed some further cutting and shutting.  I did some but lost patience with it so I took the floor out and returned to the wings.

I put the wings back on and realised that the rear shroud was in need of quite some adjustments so I took that off and spent some time 'adjusting' it.

Once the wings were back on I realised that the car is starting to look a lot cleaner.

Next job, fit the sill and finish the off side front wing before working backwards.  

Until next time.

I picked up the wings on Saturday, photos to follow.  I will hopefully get them in primer tomorrow after work.  They looked better than I suspected they would although a few new holes did show up.  I will need to use metal ready to get the rust out of the area that have returns such as the beading around the wheel arch and the return on the rear of the wings.  It was surprising to see that there are more than a few repairs by lead on the wings and this escaped the dipping and sandblasting procedure, I'll be leaving it now.