17 July 2007 - The strip-down.

You know when something seems like a good idea at the time.....

Well, eager to get on with the strip-down I set about taking things off and bagging them up in small sandwich type bags for easy identification later. As more a more things came off the car, it was apparent that the dreaded tin-worm had got into almost all the places it could, and to make things worse, an un-sympathetic welder-wanna-bee had practiced their lack of skill all over her.

At this point I could get easily depressed and give up, but I suppose I owe it to the old girl to try and give her a new lease of life. Anyway, I had some good fortune in that I found a guy locally with a barn full of Heralds (amongst most other makes of old car) and he fortunately had a very good chassis and passenger door, so that will save me a ton of work on welding.

And check out the hard-top! The same guy and a bit of haggling later and hey-presto a nice new hard hat for the old girl.

You'll notice the windscreen area and scuttle is a little worse for wear and is probably going to be the most troublesome. Maybe the whole bulkhead would be worth changing over to a better secondhand one, I'll have to think on this one.

The outer sills are in good condition, and the rear wings seem ok (I have found out that the rear wings are normally okay anyway). The boot floor is not all that bad and the floors seem up together and although welded, can be tidied up easily.

The chassis is completely shot in quite a few places and prompted me to look for a good secondhand one, so I am heaving a big sigh of relief that I don't need to jig up for new outriggers and rails.

The next stage is to clean up and repaint the new chassis and start stripping the bits off to swap over. I am presuming that I will have to replace most of the rubber bushings and mounts as they have been sat for a number of years and probably perished.