Front NS Wing Repairs

This is the first of 2008 work on the car. Got a bit tired of looking at the nasty bubbles on top of the front nearside wing and was getting the impression that the next person to prod it with a thumb would go throught it, which I wouldn't be happy about. So last week end in June had a look myself to see what the damage would be, I can't run to a new wing yet so going to practise some panel beating, well not got much else to do.

After picking at the scab and probing with the automatic centre punch to find out what was good and what was bad I had this left, not too bad but not easy to fix.

The next job was to make up a cardboard template of the repair area and then transfer that to my nice new shiny patch metal and cut my self a patch. Which after a hour or so beating it with a hammer and few other things I had a piece of metal like this.

You have guessed the next job is to cut out the old metal in the wing and then weld this nice new bit in and fettle it all up and it should look like brand new.

The Repair Work (actually done middle of August)

Pictures 1 & 2 This is the wing with the rust removed, deft use of the angle grinder, more rust on the headlight bowl mount....

Pictures 3 & 4 Repaired the headlamp bowl and ready to stick my magic patch on

Pictures 5 & 6 Magic Patch applied, I ended up making a tool to joggle the patch as I couldn't \ chickened out of butt welding the patch, need to be a bit quicker with the torch as I seem to build up a hefty weld, any way the grinder sorts that

I actually lead filled the wing to see if I had the skill, very tricky, not unlike a lead plumb joint as taught to me by a Cable Jointer many moons ago, any way bit of skill with the files and it looks good.

I painted the repair with aerolsol cans and decided after I finished it to attack it again with the bloody wet and dry because it looked bad, got a better finish but as the car has had about 7 separate coats of paint applied in the past, my reconning looking at this wing, which I am sure is original, it came out of the factory metallic blue, then got 2 other coats of blue a coat of white which I think is primer underneath a coat of what looks like silver and then another coat of metallic blue and finally some red lead and a coat of black, so its no surprise the paint has cracked it is about 1/16th inch thick