Triumph Spitfire Restoration - Outrigger Repair and Other Stuff

ign: center;"> Finally, my posts are caught up with my videos!

So, for a little change of pace, I decided to take a break from getting the underneath ready for paint. I visited a local auto body place on Friday afternoon, during their business hours (according to Google) and the door was locked with a sign on it saying that it would no longer be open to the public as of May 1st. Well, that was a bummer.

Today, though, I went to another place and two older gentlemen were behind the counter and were very helpful. By the end of my visit, we were showing pictures of our project cars like others do of their kids. Though I didn't purchase anything, I'll be going back there later this week or early next to lay down some cash.

But, as for my garage visit, my initial intent was to get the strengthener brackets that go under the front of the floor pan between it and the ends of the outriggers welded in. These attach to the floor pan. To do this properly, however, I wanted to get the body on there to make sure I wasn't going to weld them in and not have them align.

Getting the body on and off is a rather involved event and it takes me a few hours on either side so I knew that I wouldn't make much progress, but it needed to be done. While I was at it, I also wanted to fix the broken bolt in the passenger's side front outrigger, and that's what I started with.

First, I needed cut out the area of the bolt and fish it out.

Hole cut, magnet stick at the ready.

I fished the bolt out of there . The bolt is " collared" and the smaller diameter of the collar fits in the hole. Unfortunately, there was no evidence of it ever being welded, so I took care of that.

The top view, showing the collared portion of the bolt sticking through the hole

The underside of the. Yeah, I don't see any weld metal, either.

There is now! She's not coming off of there. Just hope the other outrigger was done properly.

With the bolt now securely fastened to the metal, I tacked it back into the outrigger at the corners. I wanted to get the body landed, since I was going to do it anyway, before I welded it in fully  just in case I needed to tweak its  placement a bit (I did).

Another part that I was working on was the driver's side front body mounting bracket. I did a horrible job welding it in the first time around (as I mentioned in my last post) and decided to take the one from the black car since it was unmolested (I reamed out the hole to enable me to mount the body).

Getting it cleaned up.

Another angle.

With that bracket prepped, I landed the body back on the car and get several bolts (in the back and to the middle outriggers) aligned.

Home again, home again, jiggidy-jig.

I got the new bracket as aligned as I could (I think the outrigger ended up being welded in just a bit off) and verified that the other side bolt repair also came into alignment.

Looks good to me!

I also get the strengthener pieces in there and these ended up being essentially a non-event, as they fit in a channel and extend all the way out to the edge of the A post (I'll show this better when I actually get them welded in). Well, I didn't need to land the body to tell me that, but at least now I know and am confident the other repairs will align as well.

So, with that, off came the body and I welded in the outrigger bolt and repainted the area in POR-15.

Welded in.

And POR-15'd. I'll scuff this up and hit it with red eventually.

And that was about it. All told, I spent  about 7 hours over there during this visit and I would say a solid 4 of it was dedicated to getting the body on and off. So, lots of work for little progress but, like I said, better safe than sorry and better to avoid creating new problems that I may only find much later down the process - like after paint! Cheers!