I have worked on two areas in the past few  months, the rear axel and the front wing.

I stripped the brake components off the axel and set about cleaning them up for replacement at a later date.  I was very pleased to see that the differential looks in fine fettle with no obvious defect in the gearing teeth.  It took quiet a while to clean up the edges that mate together with a gasket.

I have been having a battle with myself over the past month about final wing preparation.  I had decided last November at the Classic Car Show that I would get them all dipped and e-coated at an estimated cost of £320 for the four wings.  Recently though I have been having doubts about it, principally around the two main issues I have with it: cost and agro of getting the wings to the stripping company and back again.  I tried to find the name of the company I met at the show last year but haven't managed it yet but the costs of getting it done with the industry leader is prohibitive. I then decided that I should go it myself and buy a sandblasting machine.

I also bought a sandblast cabinet and a whole load of sand/grit.  The machine shown above did a grand job of the axel but used £30 worth of grit in a blink of an eye.  This was the reason I bought the cabinet as it recycles the sand.  I bought fine sand to do the wings with and rough grit for the cabinet only to discover that the cabinet wouldn't work with the grit and the fine sand is too fine.  It feels very frustrating as I have spent over £120 on sand/grit so far and yet to get the right solution.

The axel ready for paint.

And painted:

The brake drums ready for paint.  I ordered hi temp POR15 paint for it and am looking forward to seeing them done.

I have greatly enjoyed working on the rear axel, it makes a fine change to welding, grinding, hitting, removing and refitting and all the other things I have been doing to the panels.  However, I am very close to being finished with the main panel beating which is great.  The passenger side is now sorted out.  I think the the driver side needs some work doing on the sill area to overcome my errors in fitting it too high for the aluminium door shut trim.  I am a little worried about this as this side has been more extensively welded than the passenger side.  I will have to get the car out and swap it round so that I can have a look.

To finish of the passenger side I needed to weld the wheel aperture edge and file it off to get the correct shape and create and fit a return edge for the lower section of the inner wing.  Below you can see the missing section and then the newly fitted section.

I need to look at the sill area on the there side next but am starting to think that I can finally blast the wings and then take care of the rust before I move on to the welding of the chassis.  I have the boot area to create and then I need to run over every weld I have done to make the care solid and ready for painting which is pretty exciting.

Well I have a confession to make, I have been in the garage in the last two months but got our of the habit of updating this blog, sorry.  So when I look back at the photos I have taken I realise I can't remember what I did and when, oops.  When push comes to shove I didn't get in the garage as much as I could have over the last two months but I did do other car stuff like visiting the International Auto-jumble at Beaulieu for the first time (I've been to the museum before but never the jumble) and I couldn't believe how cool it was.  I was lucky enough to go with my wife and the dog on what was a fabulous weekend weather wise.  I visited every stand and only bought some gasket paper which is amusing.  


The dog left in the dog area whilst we look round the museum.

When we return he isn't looking so happy!

Cow challenges on the way home, freaky for a Londoner

I also visited the annual open day at Rawles which again was with my wife and the dog.  It felt amazing to be around so many Healey's although there were only a few 100's in the crowd.  I have pretty much been to both Rawles and Orchard Restorations open days for the past 5 or 6 years and every time I went for the first 2 or 3 years I saw a 100 in pieces being worked on then nothing but 3000's.  Better luck next year.                                                  

So I naturally reviewed the wing after I had taken the section out and decided that I still had work to do on  section above the aperture for the chrome trim which still had a bow on it.  Did a little cutting and welding and that is now better.

Last Monday I visited John from the 100 Register fame to collect my petrol gauge which he has restored for me, it looks lovely:

I then had a discussion with John about the parts I may need before the restoration is complete and we got round to the rear axel.  Now as I have this in my garage as apposed to in my Mother in-law's shed (thanks Avril, still grateful) I was quiet keen to discuss it with him.  He reviewed with me the parts that some times get worn and what I need to look out for.  So I got the axel out and was quite conscious of the state it was in:

So I set about it with with a scraper, some petrol and a wire brush and by the time Spurs were on TV it looked like this:

This afternoon I started the strip down and discovered that apart from a few insects the inside of the drive side of the brake drum was in surprisingly good condition.  The half shaft was perfect and many of the brake components were too.

You can see the half shaft sticking up in the air on the photo below in addition to the wheel bearing which is now exposed.  The eight sided nut that holds the wheel bearing / hub together is showing signs of treatment which suggest that previous mechanics didn't have the correct tools; in other words it has been chiseled to near death.
All the pistons in the brake cylinder are locked solid which may present a challenge but they are quite cheap so it should be manageable.

Having faffed around with the scooter I got down to looking at the Healey.  I did some of the welding that was left over from yesterday and fitted the wing back to the car.  Today is supposed to be the last day of the summer (August still, FFS) with rain due from the afternoon onwards so I decided to get the car out of the garage to look at it.

I know I have posted lots of photos that look all the same but it does actually feel like I am getting closer.   I had spent a while looking all over the car for things to work on when my wife returned from an open water swim.  I made a cup of tea and then the pair of us went round the whole car.  The door gaps are not consistent but other than one of them which I can address by playing with the door skin they are good enough.  One of the front wings, in fact the one I have been working on, had an odd shape in the arch section.  The front shroud is slightly buckled at the front.  The door sill is too low on the driver side for the trim to for correctly.  So all in all not bad.

I am going to deal with the shroud buckle but I don't know how just yet.
I am going to weld a return into the wing that I have been working on and will cut and shut the arch to improve the line down the side of the car.
I will look at the door skin to see if I can improve the door gap.
I am going to ignore the fact that the sill is too high on the driver side.  To do anything about it will require messing with the front and rear wing and the door.  In other words I have reached a point where I acknowledge that enough is enough on that issue.  I will modify the sill cover and be done with it.

I then cut the wing open, extracted a slice of metal and then welded it up again.  I effectively removed the kink or bow in it.

Feeling pretty cool about the car now.  Just need to deal with the shroud, weld a return in for the front wing and I can seriously begin to weld the car up, fit the boot and get on with it.  Exciting times indeed.

So I have just returned from France having spent a month there on the usual summer house exchange.  It was lovely.  In the house opposite where we were staying was this chap called Fay who was clearly a car nut.   I got talking to him and showed him pictures of the Healey.  He invited me to a classic car show in a village called Poussan a couple of weeks ago.  I had the most fabulous time and saw many many fabulous cars.  There were plenty of English cars there and more American cars than I would have expected but the old French cars were the steal of the show, they were just beautiful.  Oh well, summer holidays, happy days.

In the garage and reacquainted with the front wing that I was repairing the rear edge of I felt rather over whelmed by how poor the state of the thing was.

I'd forgotten that I had cut the middle of the wing in a bid to remove the bowed metal.  When I looked along the length of the wing the lines were shocking.  I started welding it up and then set about it with the hammer and dolly.  I finished forming the area to the bottom of the repair and was pleased with the outcome.

Th door gap does increase towards the bottom but overall it looks much better than it did previously.

Got to be happy with that.

What with it being half term holiday and my lovely wife being away for Ironman training I managed to get a few days in the garage this week.  I also managed to get to Orchard Restorations for their annual open day with my wife and Wilf the Bulldog which was great, more on that later.

I returned to the car and set about finishing the wing.  I fitted it to the car and decided to get straight to the chase and weld it up without any faffing about and it seems to have come out really well.

I then looked at the rear inner section which had lots of pin holes in it (not clearly visible in the photo) so I set about cutting off the original and making a new section.

I kind of like this type of activity, It is one big puzzle to be solved.

Slowly but surely I got there.

It took most of the day though, measuring, cutting, bending & measuring again etc.

At last, all welded.



























I then looked at the side in a little more detail and decided I needed to work on the front wing lower rear edge.  I did the same on the other side so I know what to do.

One of the things that has been teasing my brain is the amount of cut-off that I need on the B post.  Not sure why actually apart from it being really obvious that it would need cutting back from the very first time I welded the inner wing on.  I decided to buy the  aluminium panel that sit on the inner wing and sill to enable me to work out what metal I need to remove.  Only when I fitted it I came across an unexpected issue.  This is what they look like on John Hendrusson's 100 BN1.

And this is what they look like when trial fitted to my car from the inside, miles out.

So in typical fashion I ignored it and got on with the rest of the car.

Happy with the door gap on the rear near side.

In the garage the line down the near side looks good too.

The rain stopped and I got the car out.  I have been looking forward to the moment when I realise that the wings fit, the door gaps are good and I can can get on with the task of welding up the inner body and and fitting the boot panels etc.

I knew that moment wasn't now though.  The lines down the side are just not good enough and the sills must be in the incorrect positions.  So I did what I always do, cut the lot off and start again.

I am not  sure how easy I will find the other side, but this side was easy to remove and reposition.  I am a little worried that I cut too much out of the front section of the rear wing last weekend but I can always modify it again if need  be.