John from France, a previous customer of Restore-A-Ford, has entrusted us with his second pride of joy, an Austin Healey 100.
The car is in need of some minor welding repairs to the chassis and is to be fully stripped to bare metal and refinished in its original colour 'Healey blue'.
The car had already been partly stripped and revealed some corrosion to the lower areas of the car including the sills and inner sills.
Firstly the corrosion to the front lower A-post areas was addressed. Considering the age of the car,this was not that bad.
The outer panel which had corroded was sectioned out to reveal the corrosion had affected the inner panels as well,
So the panels were cut back of corroded sections to reveal the main chassis section was in good order.
These areas were treated prior to new panels being fabricated and welded back into position. It was the same story with both sides of the car.
Once the repairs to the inner panels had been completed the removed section of a-panel could be refitted.
The next area to attend was the sills, inners and rear lower sections. Again considering the car is fifty years old plus the corrosion was not that bad. With the rear quarter panels removed it revealed some poor previous repairs had been done. not the best either. The sills were removed along with one complete inner sill panel and a section of the other. As the panels are a simple shape it was relativly straight forward to fabricate new inner sill panels and the rear lower inner panels. New rear brace panels were also fabricated to replace the original one's which in fact had corroded to almost nothing. Once again after all the inner sills and rear sections had been replaced, new outer sills could be fitted to the car. The new sill panels were available off the shelf and were aligned to the doors prior to being welded into position.
On completion of all the repair work to the sills and inner panels we could then move on to the body. Unfortunatley the car had sufferd a fair few poor previous repairs and paint jobs during its life in America. This meant that the whole body needed to be taken back to bare metal to enable us to re-repair some previous repairs before being able to move forward again. Being the front wings and rear quarters are bolted panels these were taken away and blast cleaned. This revealed some pretty nasty damage and repair work as expected. The front and rear deck panels of these cars are alluminium so great care was taken to strip them back and reshape the panels prior to them being repaired. Unfortunatley the damage was quite severe to some areas so after reshaping the panels as best as possible a full skim coat with stopper was needed to get them nice and straight. All the panels were checked and rechecked several times to ensure the fit was correct.
Once all the panel work had been completed and we were happy with all the alignment of panels, the shell was wheeled into the booth and coated with etch primer, prior to being primed and guide coated. All the panels were etched and primed at the same time in readiness for paint preperation. The shell and panels were then block sanded and all seams to the inner panels sealed, prior to the new coat of Healy blue being applied to the car. The traditional Cellulose finish was binned in favour of a 2-pack clear over base finish. This is, of course, much more durable than a Cellulose finish and although not as the car would have been painted orginally, is a far superior product. Prior to the panels being refitted to the car, the inside of the panels and rear inner quarter panels were treated with a rubberised black underguard to prevent any stonechips leading to corrosion in the future. The panels were then refitted to the car and aligned prior to the refit and finish of the car.
The refitting of the car actually proved to be quite time consuming and fiddly as these old british cars were hand built so things tended to be very precise so not much in the way of tolorences. However we got there in the end and it was a great day to finally be able to drive the car outside of the workshop and see it in full daylight again. We feel the car has come out very well and looks fantastic. All that remains is to clean the car and just a couple of little jobs to ensure its ready for John to come and collect.
Once the last couple of jobs had been completed, the car was cleaned and polished ready for John to collect and make the trip back to France. John used to use the car for classic rally and hillclimb events but has now decided after having it refinished that she will be used during the summer months as a weekend car. We hope he enjoys it as we are sure he will.
