Early Javelin Restoration

[robert lintott]

for Robin, the register was published in 2008. Eden Lindsay, the Javelin registrar, no doubt has later changes , but nothing has been published since . I misread your number because EOPC 10010 D is listed , the registration date is shown as 03 May 05 ( ?), there is no registration number , colour Maroon, owner R.A. Fairservice . EOPBL 10100 is not listed, I think the "L" means left hand drive ?, so I confused the two similar numbers ---apologies! Perhaps Eden can clarify the appearance of your name against a different car ?

This all arose from the Javelin being restored by Chris Spencer, which is an export model to New Zealand . Yours is an export model to Canada, both these cars will have been built to export specifications for the two countries , both of which will be different from UK specs re lighting and other aspects too, so there will be significant differences as you describe .

Apart from all that the car Chris is restoring has a 1950 model number. but when it was made and how may be a mystery Bob

[Chris Spencer]

Jack removed all the door glass and window regulators a couple of weeks ago and last weekend I removed the rear quarter glass along with the front & rear windscreens - the headlining is a recent replacement that Peter had undertaken out in Switzerland - bearing in mind that the floors & glass are out the car and we have cutting / grinding / sand blasting to take place on the bodyshell we have opted to remove the headlining to safe storage otherwise we shall end up replacing it given the work required - further to this we also have the wiring harness to replace so we would have had to remove part of it anyway to access the feed to the interior light - finally in removing the headlining we also reduced the fire risk whilst cutting / grinding / welding.

Meanwhile Keith readied the rear axle for removal - the axle is servicable - just requires a pinion seal and cleaning up / painting - all the fastenings came apart with ease with the bush bolts also removed with ease - the axle had clearly been off the car within the last few years - who ever undertook this took the time to apply copperslip to the fastenings so making life very easy for Keith - with the axle off we can now access the underside repairs that are required. The petrol tank was also removed before we called it a day - more to come soon.

Rear axle removed

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Petrol tank haboured a thick layer of debris but is sound

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[Chris Spencer]

Hard to beleive that such a solid car could hide these horrors but I will let the images provide the proof

N/S/R outrigger / rear suspension mounting - Ugly welding but quite solid and will tidy up with a little work

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O/S/R shock absorber mounting - all but hanging off - had been previously poorly welded up

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N/S/R shock absorber mounting - worse that the O/S and dreadful welding

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[Chris Spencer]

The horrors continue

Crossmember on the front bulkhead - split away from the mounting / inner wing

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Split in N/S/F chassis leg

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The gearbox had managed to chew it's way through most things within the locality of the bulkhead - wiring harness and was very close at going through the brake pipe !!

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[Keith Clements]

Exhaust, some of the rear suspension and spare wheel carrier off today. Now you can really see the problems around the shock absorber mounts.

[p.p.]

ohhhhhhhh you got her to take off alll the under wear as well
rhowina is a stripper girl
and she shows her naked body on internet to the hole world

thanks go's to the langley gang you do a brilliant job thang's again

peter

[Keith Clements]

As well as poor penetration and a sporadic seam, the weld around the shock absorber mounts was probably contaminated with carbon as the area was not cleaned of paint, grease and underseal prior to welding. Cracks tended to run along the old metal where the new weld had been made.

[David Morris]

Hi there,

Excellent photos! It is very helpful to see the problems you are discovering! The cracking around the transverse tube that carries the front suspension top 'boxes' on the inner wing is something I have never seen in this country. That's really quite a substantial chunk of the front of the body and is not known for heavy corrosion. Perhaps it hints at rough road conditions in New Zealand? On the rear shock absorber upper mounts, it might be worth adding the additional strengtening brackets that Jowett's introduced as a later mod?

Also, I was interested to see the cracks on the chassis leg. I recommend that you have a close look at the area ( on both sides) around the torsion bar forward mounting that is just shown at the right hand edge of the photo. Here, you can get nasty stress fractures around the four bolts that have sent many Javelins to the scrap heap in the sky! I believe that our friends in Austrailia have made replacement chassis legs to repair this area, but perhaps someone there could confirm this?

This situation is made much worse by any slackness in the four mounting bolts and the vertical long bolt that goes up through the chassis. They must be kept really tight and checked very regularily.

I do hope you keep up the photos, they are very useful!

All the best,

David

[Chris Spencer]

I had a afternoon - and part of an evening come to that removing more parts from the car - first on the list was the headlining before it got damaged - so I spent an hour or so extracting the staples and carefully freeing the headlining from the glue - once out care was taken to fold and wrap the head lining up after removing the supporting rods - each one is a different length / curve radius so these were carefully marked up

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The fastening of the supporting rods to the roof rails were also carefully noted

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In order numbered / oriented

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One bare inner roof skin - nice to see that even sixty years ago that they were applying sound deading material

[Chris Spencer]

Working from the rear I released the wiring harness from the clips and drew it through to front of the car

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The harness now just requires disconnection from the dashboard

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[Chris Spencer]

The Javelin book of horrors part 3:

The original battery tray had been removed at some stage and replaced by a metal box which was well fabricated and retained by four self tapping screws so this was removed to allow for easy access to chassis etc.

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On the rear seat upstand was a plate pop riveted into place - the plate is not that visable in the picture

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Pop rivets drilled out and plate removed reveals body filler - patching a rather large hole

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[Chris Spencer]

Javelin book of horrors part 3 continued:
With the filler lightly tapped the hole got quite a lot larger - it would appear that the metal in this area has been subject to effects of battrey acid at some stage

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Strangely the same body filler also found a home in the O/S centre jacking point

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And just what were they thinking ? - I thought the N/S/R out rigger looked a little thin so I gave it a couple of taps - only to find that it's fabricated out of copper and braised on to the chassis - New one on me this - I have been around classic cars for 35 years but never come across anything like this before - it must have been the local plumber that did car repairs on the side

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[Chris Spencer]

The boot floor gave up the fight once the hammer was taken to it - unfortunatly some of the captive nuts were seized solid within the keeps so these had to be removed and shall require replacment

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Mechanical parts were removed as required - with quite lot of the control rods showing much wear wear - lots of ovel holes that were round once upon a time and a handbrake cable on the verge of snapping

And still the bodges keep appearing

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Thats it for now more progress to follow soon

[Keith Clements]

Peter has ideas on selling the copper for scrap and recuperatating some of the cost of the new bits.....perhaps silver solder was used and we can melt the car down for scrap.

[p.p.]

thats for melting the car down for scrap.........

nice pic hopfully it helps others to a solid restoration..

nice work....thanks - would like to be there.... 26. dec. not long to go...
peter