The slowly does it Austin Healey 100 BN1 rebuild

Sunday, 26 April 2015

I managed to get to Hertford to replace my Acetylene bottle yesterday which was good. I wanted to use the gas to remove some lead from the front wing because several sections had holes in and I wanted to know if there were more than I could see. There didn't appear to be any more but it soon became clear that the wing is very thin in places towards the front. I cut a few sections out and replaced them only to find that I was blowing holes left right and centre, it was a pain. My mig welder is lovely but I wish it would operate on a lower power level than it does, boy does it get mean with the thin metal. You can see in the photo that there is a lot of damage from an accident in the wings past life which I will have to look at later. I am a little worried that the wing will corrode again in a fairly short period of time due to the thinness of the metal but as I don't have the money for a new set of steel wings there isn't any more I can do,

I had promised myself that I would start at the very front of the wing and work backwards finishing ever job as I went but I could not help but jump around a bit. The next thing I did was to fit the wing and work on joining the rear of the wing up where I had cut a section out.

I went well so I completed the job.

The wing must be a little photogenic as the door gap doesn't look as good in real life as it does there. The very bottom section is bowed out at the very rear of the panel and I am still concerned about if the wing needs a horizontal section removed as I did on the offside. The line down the car is better than the other side though so I am going to make a judgement on that once I have removed the car from the garage and can take a long distance look at it.

I then started to fit the new inner door panels that cover the sill and B post. They don't appear to fit which has me wondering about the position of the sills as these were fitted by the previous owner.