Early Javelin Restoration

[Chris Spencer]

Minor modification required elsewhere on the wing to achieve a good fit

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Reuse of the original wing spacers

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Front of the wing takes a little effort to align with inner wing mounting points - Both the front door & front wing have taken a battering at some stage so I'm not surprised with the ill fitting that is having to be corrected

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Side light aperture had to be opened up in order to allow for the new fitting

[Chris Spencer]

Eventually I got to a point where I was happy with fit of the wing

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And the alignment with the other panels

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[Chris Spencer]

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At some stage in the cars life the floor pan had been hacked out in order to gain access to the gear control rods - there is an inspection cover at this point but now it just flaps about

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Repair section made up

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Welded in - cleaned up and new inspection panel made up

[Chris Spencer]

Offside rear wing was next in line

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Subject of a previous repair behind the body solder

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Neat gas welded repair which had let fresh metal in - However, failure to protect the underside of the repair from all the grot that gets thrown at it off the road wheel just means that it has rotted back through again

[Chris Spencer]

Leading edge support panel was also past its shelf life

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I left the support panel in place whilst I made a new one up - had I hacked it out I would have lost the reference points required to fabricate the new one

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New support made in 3 sections then welded together

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Long section formed by shrinking the leading edge to achieve the radius profile of the wing

[Chris Spencer]

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Only one way forward now

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First section fabricated and ready for being tacked on

[Chris Spencer]

Wing remounted

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With the support edge and upper repair section tacked in place

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And the lower section attached I could now check aperture gapping before I proceeded any further - I can now make up the two right angle brackets to obtain a firm fixing from the support panel to the inner wing - once complete I can make up the remaining repair sections and tack them into place - By leaving the wing on the car I can constantly check the aperture gapping to the door and the profile to radius of the door. In making the repair in several sections allows the compound curvature of the rear wing to be taken into account and achieved.

[Chris Spencer]

Wing back off again and the rear support for the wing now spot welded into position, new brackets made up and also spot welded on to the rear support

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So with the wing held firmly in place I could start to make up and tack in the repair sections

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Fortunately I have one of these for folding the repair sections

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Also one of these - shrinker / stretcher which makes light work of the radius on the bottom of the wing

[Chris Spencer]

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Welded up and initial clean back of welds

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Despite care and taking my time with the welding using a hit & miss technique along with waiting for the panel to cool before continuing the panel was still subject to some heat distortion from the welding - so back off comes the wing - I completed the welding to any hidden areas that I could not access with the wing on and cleaned the underside of the weld back - then I spent a little time with the hammer & dolly just bringing the basic shape back

[Chris Spencer]

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Getting there

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Now needs fettling to aperture gapping to ensure a even gap between the door & wing - then the wing needs to come back off for a final dressing with the hammer / dolly - but so very nearly there

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Even the underside looks tidy

[Jack]

Bodywork questions:

Watching "Wheeler Dealers" doing an awful lot of exactly that this evening on a Cadillac they used a joggling tool on a repair panel cut slightly larger than required and having an overlap between the repair panel and the original, as opposed to butting the two panels together. Can you explain why you couldn't do that on the front of the rear wing? I suppose it would leave a visible line on the inside of the panel, but interested if there are other reasons not to do this.

Second they used some kind of weird putty on the panel to try and cut down on heat distortion. What is that putty, and would it help welding panels like this?

Jack.

[Chris Spencer]

they used a joggling tool on a repair panel cut slightly larger than required and having an overlap between the repair panel and the original, as opposed to butting the two panels together. Can you explain why you couldn't do that on the front of the rear wing?

Its quicker to weld a swaged / joggled panel but then you need the time to joggle the panel in the first place but the repair is always visible from the rear of the panel - its also more difficult to dress the panel flat as when the welding has been completed you have introduced a step and unless you weld the underside of the flange you will always have a open seam that will harbour water / rust.

Second they used some kind of weird putty on the panel to try and cut down on heat distortion. What is that putty, and would it help welding panels like this?

Its a matter of preference, the putty does work to an extent but I find just as easy to use the hit & miss technique for welding - you can also clamp large flat plates of brass or copper close to your weld area to act as heat sinks -again its matter of preference and how you were taught to do the work - my teacher was very old school and I suppose quite a bit of that rubbed off

[Jack]

they used a joggling tool on a repair panel cut slightly larger than required and having an overlap between the repair panel and the original, as opposed to butting the two panels together. Can you explain why you couldn't do that on the front of the rear wing?

Its quicker to weld a swaged / joggled panel but then you need the time to joggle the panel in the first place but the repair is always visible from the rear of the panel - its also more difficult to dress the panel flat as when the welding has been completed you have introduced a step and unless you weld the underside of the flange you will always have a open seam that will harbour water / rust.

Where they were welding was the rear quarter on the car, the outside was "outside" and the inside was the interior of the car. Suppose it makes sense there, where the inside of the panel is not visible (hidden by headlining) and also is dry, whereas the wheelarch here would see a reasonable amount of water and therefore rust in the open seam? I guess this is also the difference between their fairly quick and cheap way of doing things to sell a car for a profit vs a more thorough approach that might take more time but comes out looking completely as it would from the factory.

[Chris Spencer]

Made a little more progress last night

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After some fettling & adjustment I obtained a decent aperture gap between the door and wing, a critical point should ever have to do this but make sure that you have the door rubbers fitted and the locking mechanism should also be fitted to the door / door pillar - should you just obtain a good fit without the rubbers / locks - you will find that this fit will be quite different when you fit everything back up

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On to the rear of the wing then and accident damage reveals a poor fit to the rear shroud

[Chris Spencer]

With wing bolted up everywhere apart from the poor fitting area several blows with a lump hammer on to a blunt wide bolster chisel soon obtained a decent fit

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There is a beading edge that goes between the wing and the shroud once the car is painted