Anyone who's seen my current motorcycle will quickly understand that I'm more about what's underneath than what's on top.
So, she came back to me and after another couple of years, she kinda looked like this:
Anyhow, roll around 2007 and she's off the road; the 1275 engine that came from a shed has started to rumble, rattle, smoke, and the poor car feels like she's going to shake herself to pieces. I'd rather fancied the 'turreted shock absorbers' for a while (the speedbumps around here seem to kill lever-arm shock absorbers, that or the many miles I put on her each year). And so off she went to JLH. There was also 'some' rust around the top edges of the wheelarches, so I thought - let's splash out and get the back of the car sorted.
This unfortunately rather quickly spiralled into major structural works when Jonathon discovered that actually, the body wasn't attached to the floorpan at all...
Not only that, but the C-posts were disintegrating under a layer of filler.
But the whole thing got worse when they realised that some rather important bits of structure were also missing.
Quite a lot of chopping out and welding later, and the wheel arches had something more like structure; and the bump-stops had something to stop against, the sills were completed, and my credit card wept quietly in the corner.
Some sections of the boot floor also needed replacing, and the sills were patched up because they'd holed in a few places. My meagre funds exhausted, the new engine sounding sweet, the knackered gearbox somewhat ruining that effect (and the whining near-expired diff and prop shaft adding their own gentle cacophony to the proceedings) we headed off from JLH, with every intention of actually returning to have the front of the car gently tidied.
I enjoyed driving the minor for a while, but after a particularly frantic dash through the Welsh mountains to catch a ferry, the Minor's poor gearbox expired* and, with a bit of an inheritence I decided that she could go back up to JLH to have the engine bay 'tidied up' (a petrol leak from a braided hose had, weirdly, managed to spectacularly strip the paint from the tie-plate, and I'd tarted the area up with some rattle-can zinc primer, but not really got any further), a LHD conversion ('cos I want to take her with me to Canada, and it'd be nicer if my daily / only vehicle over there was LHD) and a recon gearbox, lower ratio diff, etc, fitted.
So, Jonathon rocked up with his trailer in September, and off she went.
And we've covered some of what was discovered, and I don't really want to go into the ins and outs of the structural issues at the front at the moment - but let's just say, there was a lot of cutting out and welding required to make the front, and indeed the sills, sound.
Looking deceptively good:
Zinc Primer doesn't really do the job by itself...
OMG! LHD! (sorry, couldn't resist)
I'd actually sourced the LHD accelerator pedal a long time ago, the rest of the bits came from elsewhere/new.
One of the signs that this wasn't going to be quite as 'cheap' as I might have liked...
Sandblasting revealed what I've decided to term a 'Trauma of discoveries'. I think that's the appropriate plural.
As part of the process, I'd decided a while ago that this time I would do the job properly (or, more accurately, pay Jonathon and Martin to), and so I opted to get the doors repaired and d*mn the expense!
Some of the doors were, it turned out, completely shot. Some were repaired, I can't remember exactly which doors were salvageable, but the ones that were replaced also needed work, but there will be no more flaky bits of rust dropping off the bottoms of the doors when they're opened.
For a brief period she started to look more like a car again, before the final strip down began:
And the most recent shots - the ones that got me grinning like some insane maniac (despite having an 'in-charge' shift at work). The ones that make me dancey round the room with excitement?
And yes, she will be Trafalgar Blue when she comes back. She's always been Traffy blue, how could I change such a perfect colour?
I'll stick more shots up as I get them, Jonathon - you're of course welcome to add your comments, since you & Martin did all the work
The whole set of photos is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49965961@N ... 383154748/
I would be very greatful if people could avoid a discussion of the previous restoration, as far as possible.
* It appears it had sprung a leak, as by the time it reached JLH it had no oil in. It sounded attrocious when I set off from their workshop, and so I hadn't really worried about it continuing to sound attrocious, but it may have been quietly leaking all of it's oil!
