Right, another day at the unit for me working on the Princess. Didn't quite get all the bodywork done that I wanted to. That said, the bodywork I have completed exceeded my expectation and I'm rightly or wrongly quite proud of what I achieved. First, a picture of my lovely complete manual aerial I mentioned in a previous update.
Then the sill I suppose. In an ideal world I'd replace the whole thing, it's been replaced in the past anyway. There's some areas of pitting that I've just cleaned and left alone, there's still enough metal there for it not to be an issue and I can fix it later. At the front there was a section that had holed quite a lot so that got cut out. Liberated a patch from the sills I'd taken from the orange donor car - the sills on that car looked like they hadn't seen any road, or at least not a great deal, and were still in really good condition.
First patch I measured twice and still cut wrong. Only just had enough to do a second patch of the right size. Cut back to quite good metal, certainly not that easy to get what was left of the cutting disc through it. Identified a little pinhole near the sill trim fixing hole too which got a little blob of weld. The welding itself went far easier on this too, good access and thicker steel really helped.
I'd already spent some time cleaning the whole sill back, removing all the paint and underseal that would come off. Some of the steel has little black stains on it, presumably from rust, that don't want to shift and I didn't really want to go digging just now.
Ground it all back with a new flap wheel and was very surprised at just how well I'd done. Identified a couple of spots that I'd not quite caught and put some fresh blobs down.
Once that was ground back I was faced with the best bit of welding I've ever achieved. This puts me a bit ahead of where I was with my welding and a lot ahead of where I was with putting repair panels in.
Gave the whole thing a coat of primer when I was happy with it. You can just see the diagonal repair line towards the back of the sill that needs a second fill. Before I do final fill, stonechip paint and top coat I'll check the bottom rail is nice and secure.
I'm delighted with that, it turned out so much better than anticipated. Before I tackled that I took all the horrible respray off the top section of the rear quarter to give it a fresh coat of primer and paint. There wasn't any filler hiding but there was still so much paint on there it was as if someone had skimmed it with filler. I used Halfords aerosol for this and the finish is reasonable. There's no lacquer or flatting or polishing, this is straight out the can.
Here's the difference in colours too. On the left is the proper Champagne Beige and on the right whatever the car is repainted in.
The front wing didn't get repaired today, I ran out of steam. I'm hoping to get that done next weekend. I'm really close to having this side of the car finished now. The rear door seal I'd lost reappeared when I discovered it hiding in plain sight so that got fitted today too. Got the battery charged but didn't get around to fitting it to the car to attempt a start up again.