Final Door Preparation - Triumph Spitfire Restoration

Not a whole lot of pictures from these visits, so the video will be more helpful this time around.

Had some issues with snow, so my first of the two visits was cut rather short. It was a tricky ride home, but I made it safe and sound.

Not cool, man. There were several inches by the time I left.

On a side note, I had also ordered and received a gallon of epoxy primer and another gallon of Wax & Grease Remover from Southern Polyurethanes. I am probably going through the epoxy faster than someone should, but each panel is getting at least six coats of it prior to putting on build primer. I figure a gallon should get me through the rest of it, including the body and bonnet, but we'll see.

So many peanuts. I'll get the paint out later.

I also checked on all of my bonnet pivot tube brackets after they had dried. Since they were laying against a 2x4 for ease of painting, I was afraid it may damage the paint when they were unstuck...but it worked out ok. I bagged them and put them away for future reassembly.

The snow accumulated significantly by this time and I decided to throw a coat of regular filler on the front valance and brave the drive home.

Filler, sloppily applied, to the front valance.

Kinder weather was with me for my next visit and I was able to get a good amount of work done. I started right in on the front valance and got it sanded down, then hit with another round of filler for the spots that needed it. That done, it was ready for epoxy.

The driver's door, having been done in epoxy and finished up from the last visit, was now ready for build primer and blocking. I was happy with how straight the door had turned out, even prior to the build primer. I got it in build primer and blocked it out. Found a few more low spots, got them filled with a light skim of polyester filler, sanded it down, and got another round of build primer on it.

View down the long axis of the door.

As for the passenger's side door, I called it done after final blocking. Still some minor spots on there, but nothing I'm going to fret over. It still needs 600-grit wet sanding prior to the epoxy seal coat, but that won't be until just before I'm ready to put color on it.

As for the boot lid, I finally put the reinforcement frame in and it compensated for nearly all of the oil canning, which was what the consensus of my YouTube commenters said would happen. There was some flex right in the center of the lid, but it didn't "pop" like it did before. I'm happy with that and that's how it'll stay.

While getting the driver's side door ready to block out, I unfortunately noticed that the cracks that I had repaired around the window channel were back. Not sure if it was from just moving the door around so much, but there they were. I cleaned the paint from the area, drilled some small termination holes, and welded them up again. Hopefully they will hold this time. I used a small paint brush to hand-paint epoxy over the bare metal spots.

Area hand-painted.

That done, I didn't want to block out the door and get all of that dust in the wet epoxy, so I left it for the next visit. Until then...