Jowett Kestrel Rebuild & Restoration

[Tony Fearn]

Hi Julian.
Nice to see you having a go at spraying. Perhaps removing the windscreen will give you a better access to the front.
The battery box renewal looks good as well, but remember that when it rains, this will have to hold water or it will ruin the carpet. The bonnet hinge is directly above it. Perhaps a sealant such as Sikaflex ETB (various colours) around the seams will be of use, unless of course you've had all the edges welded.
Regards,
Tony.

[Chris Spencer]

I'm hoping to be able to use this part to get an exact paint colour match

Julian - I can help with this if you wish - I would require a small section of an original painted panel to do it (about the size of a business card) to take a reading from - I have a spectrophotometer and from the reading I can give you a paint name & mixing formula - let me know if this is of interest

Regards

Chris

[julian]

Many thanks, Chris and I'll let you know if I need your help. My current plan is to take the door catch to my paint supplier when I call next week to pick up the black paint. I am hoping the part will be large enough for them to take a reading. If not it would mean removing the B post from the car and taking that along, which would be a bit of a pain!

[julian]

I've made a couple of trips into Bradford recently to organise paint and powder coating of one or two parts. I now have black and green gloss (not in the same tin) ready for spraying when the time comes (maybe or maybe not this year, depending on weather). I have been practising on the bulkhead as I reasoned the finish wasn't too important - what's clear is I need more practise, but it will be OK for "under the bonnet"

Pictures below show before and after for parts I had powder coated:-

[julian]

I've now fitted the rear bumper mounting brackets, touched-up the paintwork on the chassis & sealed the exhaust joints. After a final look over everything I decided it was time to wheel out the chassis ready for reuniting it with the body:-

Chassis front view

Chassis rear view

The next stage was the reverse of the work carried out in March when I lifted the body onto pedestals. A little more tricky getting it back down in the right place, but with a little help from my friend we managed it and all the mounting bolt holes aligned OK.

Now the real work begins!

[julian]

Since my last post I've been working towards getting the car to a stage where it can be driven out of the garage. To this end I’ve been working on the engine bay boards, gearbox floor pan, dashboard & steering column:

The engine bay panels have been cleaned up, patched up and re-felted along the edges:

Similar work on the gear-box floor pan, which took a bit more cleaning & patching to get it to fit correctly. You can see where I filled in the depressions from years of clutch and accelerator operation!

The dash board needed a fair amount of filling, spaying, sanding & re-spaying and even then I could have gone further, but in the end decided a few imperfections were part of the car's history (I'll probably apply this principle quite frequently over the coming months). I looked around a few stores for a brown paint that was close to the original and decided on Rover Rustic Brown. I used an acrylic paint and one 150ml can covered the surface pretty well. Not perfect and no wood effect, but fit for purpose:

[julian]

All panels re-fitted with clutch, brake and accelerator pedals in position & woking well.

The steering column has now been cleaned up and re-sprayed. Needs a bit more work polishing the wheel, but this can be done later.

Next was the rewarding bit of assembing all the "new" parts: The dashboard, steering coulmn and re-installing and conneting up the instrument panel. I'm still working on the glovebox inserts, so these will go in later.

So on 6th October 2015, I was able to drive the car out of the garage and up the drive to the house (about 50 yards), not far, but enough to get into second gear!

Before taking the car out I ran it with the rear wheels off the ground to check out the spedometer. I was getting very large fluctuations (about 10mph) so took the cable apart, cleaned & re-greased, but no real improvment. I guess this is wear and tear in the cable - any thoughts or is it a new cable? (if such a thing exists!)

[julian]

.. and here photos of the car parked outside the house; not exactly gleaming in the sunshine, but certainly on it's way to being a car again. After all that excitement is back down to earth working on the body; scraping off paint, sanding, filling and painting!

[julian]

It's been a while since my last post, mainly because work on the body is slow and not very interesting to report. However after a lot of scraping, sanding & filling and spraying, things are moving forward. I've focused initially on the doors and these are starting to take shape:

Front n/s door after stripping & sanding:

Same door after rust treatment and several coats of primer

I've also carried out some work on the o/s door, which needed some repairs at the bottom edge. This rusted section has been cut away and a new piece made, but has yet to be welded in place.

The inside of the doors have also been cleaned-up along with the window winder/door catch mechanisms.

Looking at the mechanisms, the n/s & o/s winders are different and I can't see how the o/s winder holds the glass in place. The n/s front (and the rear doors) have a channel which the glass sits in and a single point attachment to a spring loaded pivot on the mechanism. On the o/s front there are 2 brass pegs and just the glass (which was broken!). I presume a part is missing - does anyone have an explanation and/or photo if a part is missing?

[julian]

More photos of the door restorations:

Inside view of rear n/s door, before

..and after

[julian]

I've also been stripping paint and sanding down to metal on the roof sections and around the windscreen:

I uncovered a lead repair, which shows some work had been carried out in the traditional way in the past. I'm afraid my repairs will used a more modern 2-part filler!

..and here painted with primer and with 2 doors mounted.

[richard turner]

Coming along nicely! Leaded in this area from new. It allowed the scuttle to be welded to roof panel over the wooden frame and then filled with lead solder as the join could not be dressed by orthodox sheet metalwork. I may have some window glass and mechanisms for this model.
Regards Rich

[julian]

Hi Rich, many thanks for the information.

I would be very interested if you have the glass for the front windows as one of mine is broken and the other is missing.

I've attached photos of the window winder/door latch mechanisms below. As I mentioned earlier the driver’s side is very different from the other mechanisms.

The levers on the driver’s side are arranged in a parallelogram so that the glass supports don't move sideways as the window is raised & lowered. This differs to the others as the single point support slides along a channel in the glass support bracket.

Drivers side

Passenger side

So I have 2 questions..

1. Why is the driver’s side mechanism different?
2. How is the glass supported on the driver’s mechanism?

[julian]

A bit more bodywork preparation today which involved lot of scraping - paint stripper doesn't always seem to work too well when there is a build up of different layers of undercoat, primer and top coats of various types!

Picture of the rear of the car after stripping and initial sanding:

Just the lower panel (not fitted) and the aluminium area around the rear window to strip now. Any thoughts on type of primer for aluminium?

A few repairs are needed at the lower edges of the wheel arches. There is an inner panel, which has rotted away at its lowest point - would this have continued round to meet the outer panel and so enclose the timber in this area, or was it left open? Most of this area will be covered by the mudguard when this is re-fitted, so it may not be too important, but I would like to repair it as it was originally.

[julian]

Following more scraping & rubbing down, I've now stripped all the paint from the rear of the car body.

In amongst all the rain I had a window of opportunity when the sun came out and the temperature was reasonable, so I managed to get the whole of the rear coated with primer. I used an etch primer as a first coat on the aluminium section and aluminium trim.

Looking at the back of the rear lower panel, can ayone advise what the brackets attach to & should the bracket be bent over as in the picture?