I spent the afternoon looking at the car from loads of different angles.  I started to question the back section of the car which I have largely ignored since putting it on in the first place.  The rear shroud does not have a uniform curve to it on the cockpit edge and there is a little split below one of the trim mounting holes.  When I push the shroud up the crack closes and the wings pulled together slightly.  This made me think that it is possible that the rear inner wings are slightly too far apart and that maybe I should working on that part of the car as it has a part to play on the lines of the car.  Then I remembered that fitting the rear shroud was really tricky and that I had to push the rear inner wings in to get it fit.  If I made it slightly more narrow on the rear, particularly on the offside then I would also achieve a better shape to the body.  Whilst looking at this area I trial fitted the panel that sits above the battery and supports the spare wheel only to remind myself that since I fitted the shroud it is now too wide to fit in place.  I then trial fitted the vertical panel that supports the shroud and sits on top of the spare tyre supporting panel and that took a lot of messing about to get it in place.  Only I can see that it won't fit with the  horizontal spare tyre panel in place.  None of the panels are accurate, I don't think that they are inaccurate either, its just that they all need adjusting.  Then it occurred to me that the whole of the back is built with these new panels and so the whole of it could be wrong. This is driving me mad so I decided that I needed some guidance on it and called Bell Classics as it is the closest classic car company to me.  I spoke with Andy there and he has offered to come and look at the car the week after next.  Phew.

I then took a look back through this blog to see what I'd written about fitting the rear bulkhead at the time.  I was rather horrified to see the car 18 months ago and to discover that I am  what feels like hardly any further forward since then.  I need to get a wriggle on with this.  Hopefully Andy will be able to give me some pointers to moving forward.

Back on it and having put the wings, doors and shroud back I discovered that my efforts had made a difference.

Felt more comfortable with the car now.  The nearside might still need to drop down a little but it is better. Sorry about the finger over the lens, feeling a little old and duffery now.

 The nearside line is much better

The offside too

 The door gaps have altered a little, not so bad above but definitely worse below.  The sol now seems to be in the wrong place and I thing I may have a look at the whole lot again.

 From a distance, sorry about the scooter, it looks better than it does close up.  The lines down the side are getting close to ok but I'm having a bit of lunch and typing this whilst I consider repeating everything I have just do to see if I can make it better still.....

The offside is slightly off from being straight whilst the nearside seems ok.  I remember seeing a Healey at one of the open days and it looked great but the lines down the side were worse than mine.  I say this because I am not sure how far to go with it all, food for thought and time for another sandwich.

I have two days ahead of me in the garage so I'm going to look at the front end again in more detail.  I am unhappy with the shape of the nearside front shroud and the line of the car down both sides.  The wings and the doors make different lines as you look down the length and it troubles me.  When I was a young man I had a 1965 MG Midget which I got on the road having spent £50 to buy it, this wasn't a lot for a car even 25-30 years ago and it reflected the fact that it was knackered.  I did the usual work on the car such as new sills, floor pans etc and got it on the road, if I can find a picture I'll add it later.  Anyway, I was 18/9 and off to university and it felt like I was king of the road.  I had it 5 years and never got round to buying a hood so if it rained, and this is England so it, I got wet.  Madness really.  Anyway after about a year I discovered that my father whose workshop I had used to rebuild had loosened the throttle cable so that I never had it fully opened in an effort to keep me from crashing it.  I told him that the cable was loose and he confessed to it and followed up by saying that I'd wreck it now.  I remember being full of teenage bravado and rather indignant.  Naturally the following weekend I stuffed it in to a tree at some unearthly speed, again I remember the moment well, I had motored round a long sweeping bend in Oakwood, North London and lost the backend and the car did a few 360 degree spins in rather slow motion as I hurtled toward this tree and I hit it on the front wheel with the car sideways on.  The car then bounced off the tree and span at great speed a few more times until it came to stop in the middle of the road, missing all the parked cars.  Part of the car were sprayed over the road and in peoples driveways.  Dad was very forgiving, never once saying I told you so.  Anyway I tell you this story because it took a year for me to rebuild the car and I never realised that one of the front wings was slightly bowed until it was on the road.  Boy did it annoy me, every time I looked at.  So back to the Healey, I am sure that if I left it as it is now and finished it the car would look good.  However, I would notice the differences in the lines along the side every time I walk up to it and I can't possibly progress from here knowing that it is not as good as it could be.  So wings and doors off and some enjoyable hours looking, thinking and procrastinating; oh the joy.

I Started by looking at the shroud and managed with some gentle clubbing to get the front nearside a little further over to match the offside.  I then started looking at how the shroud sat on the bulkhead and began to feel that the bulkhead is slightly off from being perpendicular to the chassis and therefore sending the shroud to one side at the front.  I checked the measurements that I could make but they seemed to say that it was square.  I spent some hours cursing myself for welding up the nearside A post a few months back and then decided to have a look at what I could do.  I noticed that the line of top bulkhead panel was slightly off central and decided that as the shroud fits to that that this is where I should start.  I spent some hours trying to coax it across, back, forwards etc until I felt comfortable that I had mad a difference.  Now to fit the thing back up and have a look but it was beer time so I will do that tomorrow.

I did some more on Saturday before last but never got round to posting it, oops.

One of the things that has been sitting uncomfortably on my mind is the shape of the shroud as can be seen in the photo.  It looks like previous work has been done poorly as the aperture for the headlight is just plain wrong.

This old picture shows the shroud looking bent out of shape with the headlight area looking higher on the nearside than the offside.  It has always troubled me so I thought I should have a look at it now.

The photo above shows the top edge is not sitting well on the wing either.

I cut out sone of the metal where the shape distorts and also where it has been worked on previously.  Once done the wing bent into shape easily.

It felt like time to get the car out and swap it round so that I could work on the other side.

Starting to look like a car.

The height of the light apertures seems more equal but I am still unhappy with it as the nearside seems more compact than the offside.  I will procrastinate on this before I do anything.

I put the car back in the garage and promptly decided that I hadn't got the A post in the best position yet so I removed it.  Feels like one step forward and two back.

Tuesday night and in the garage, must be the half term holiday hang over, long may it last.

I continued with the wing and realised that for the wheel arch to line up the front edge of the wing was miles out so took some decisive action:

Yep, it was out with the angle grinder and a section cut out of the original wing.  Now I should say that I did measure the section and then mark it with a ruler and a tip-ex pen but I must have been a bit trigger happy with the grinder as the cut is very wonky, oops.  You can see that the front edge of the wing juts out from the B post; it is this that is taken care of when the front edge is pushed back to close the gap up.

I welded the gap up and then welded the repair section to the wing.  Only a few tack welds at this stage as I really need to look at the lines of the wheel arch and swage line from more of a distance.  In the photo above, the swage line looks reasonable but below the line looks a little high.  The door shape at the top is also visible but I am not too troubled by that now as I'm sure a little lead work will take care of it.  You can also see that the front return edge of the original wing is a little sharper than the repair section, I will need to do something about that as it is quite noticeable.  The door gaps are great, on all edges which is pleasing and the swage line along the whole length of the car is remarkably good too.

Been in the garage a few times in the last couple of weeks, partly due to the school holidays.  I started by contacting John of 100 register fame and secured a couple of  door locks from a 3000 or even a 100/6 which essentially had the same aluminium casings but slightly different steel levers that go to the chrome handle.  Not convinced that I have explained that well.  The important thing is that I was able to strip them down and build two perfect locks which is very cool.  It was very nice to see John again as he is an inspiration, he had a few overdrive units in pieces and was repairing them.  I now have a degree of an understanding on how they work, whatever next.

I wanted the locks installed so that I could use them to space the B post from the door.  I'm effectively working back from the front wing so this is the last stage on this side of the car.  The photo below shows the lock fitted and the inner wing which is miles too long, a good thing, having been trimmed a little to allow the door to shut.

I now started to do several things at once which is always tricky, I fitted and removed the B post several times then fitted the sill and moved that a few times and finally I started to fit the rear wing repair panel as the original is getting in the way.

The photo above shows the sill clamped in place.  I had to shorten it a little and spent quite a long time moving it backwards and forwards to get a decent looking position for the front and rear wing returns.  In the end I lost patience and welded it on.  I suspect it'll be coming off again later on.

I welded on the B post as well and feel ok about this at the moment although it has been removed and replaced several times already, nothing new there.

I then cut the rear wing off, well the bottom section of it anyway.  I deliberated about how much to remove for some time but as the wheel arch curve looked ok I thought I should go for the whole lot and be done with it.

 The photo above shows the wing repair sat on top of the B post and the original wing sat on top of both of them.  You may recall from an earlier post that I said that the new B posts didn't fit, well I have realised that the wing doesn't actually fit the B post and not the other way round.  If you look below you can see the line of the door and the rear wing and a difference of shape.  This shape would match the original shape of the B post I suspect.  Oh well.  I got a new lead kit for Christmas so I'll be using that to build up the wing to match as there is very little I can do to the door.

I remember reading in one of my Healey books about the production line having several sets of wings and the works trying each set on the cars until they found some that fitted, I suspect I know why.

It feels like I am making progress at the moment.  I always thought that when I am at the stage of having a shell completed that consists of the four wings, two doors, the front and rear shrouds I will be a happy man.  Well I have the shrouds on, the two front wings, the two doors and now I can see light at the end of the tunnel with regards to the first of the two rear wings.  I need to modify the front shroud as one side of it is damaged or rather badly repaired by a 'specialist' and I have yet to fit the bonnet or the boot but it is definitely getting there.

I went in to the garage last week to start on the B post only to discover that the two B post panels I have are for a much later Healey.  Poo.  I nervously logged on to Ahead 4 Healeys to discover that the panels were only £18 each, phew.

Above is the panel I have and it is clear from the angle it makes at the bottom that it is not for the 100 BN1.

This is the new panel from A4H.  It was reasonably funny as I asked what the cover plate they had was for as I couldn't work it out, they told me that it was for concourse cars only and that I didn't need it.  Do you think they are reading this blog and know that?

Naturally it doesn't fit.

So I remove the supporting bracket and get shaping.  I loved doing this.

The panel now re-attached to the supporting bracket.

And located where it will hopefully end up.

So I then started to look at the door locks to see if they will align correctly and realised that the lock for this side is in my Mother-in-Law's garden shed so it was off for a cup of tea.

I retrieved the door and having got it back to the garage stripped out the lock.  I discovered that it was broken, as can be seen above.  It is odd in that the lock is forced together once it is located in the metal bracket that holds it to the door so I am not sure if I need to get this repaired.  Off for some second opinions.......