PROJECT MORRIS MINOR PART 7: PASSENGER DOOR SKIN REPAIRS

Last issue we started repairing the passenger door skin, which was bubbling up along its lower edge. This issue, bodywork maestro Alan Denne welds in a repair panel and makes a start on the paint.

Our 1967 two-door Morris Minor has received plenty of welding repairs in the past. A lot of that welding took the form of patch repairs rather than entire panel replacement, which is a shame as inevitably this won’t last as long. However, most of the welding looks sturdy enough, if a little agricultural in places.

There was one place where the rust was bubbling up and spoiling an otherwise nice and tidy car though, and that was towards the bottom of the passenger door skin. We saw last issue how Alan Denne had cut out the offending metal and found that the door frame itself and the upper two thirds of the skin were still in good shape. That was fortunate because repair panels are cheap enough at £25, but complete skins are £250 or more – when they are available.

This issue we are showing how Alan welded in this repair panel, then blended it invisibly into the old metal. In an ideal world we would have finished the entire repair and had the door fitted back onto the car, painted and looking good as new. Unfortunately, a couple of things delayed our progress. The first was that we needed a good match for the Almond Green paint, but the doors were clearly a slightly darker shade than the rest of the car. This had never really bothered me because the mismatch was only slight, but it made sense to get it right now.

That meant getting the existing paint scanned and matched rather than using the paint code. Unfortunately, since we were

painting the door, the way ahead was to match the new paint to the rest of the car and so I couldn’t simply take the door to the paint factors for matching, even though it was already off the car.

First we took the front bumper off, as this was easily transported and had a suitable 3in square flat section at the end for the scanner (plus it would have to come off anyway as I planned to replace the front pulley seal). Unfortunately, cleaning this up showed that it was the same shade as the door – not a problem here given the shape and the shadows, but more noticeable on the doors.

Plan B was to remove the bonnet and take that – a much more unwieldy panel, but at least there were only four nuts and one clevis pin to remove. This just about fitted into the back of my Volvo 340, but when I got to the paint supplier, their spectrograph machine was playing up and wouldn’t take a reliable reading. They tried matching it with paint chips, then made up a sample to test alongside the paint. This looked a pretty good match, but there is no real way of knowing how it will dry. I suspect it will match the doors perfectly, but not the bonnet! However, we still don’t know because of the next two problems to rear their ugly heads. First, there was a bit of paint damage on the nearside rear wing, so Alan extended the painting to cover this section too. In preparation for this he flatted back the paint and blew on a coat of primer, but by the next morning this had cracked and crazed, meaning that the paint underneath was incompatible with the twopack. It could very well be synthetic, and so the whole wing will have to be taken back to bare metal. We didn’t get there though, because then the lockdown put paid to any further progress for a while.

Alan had to put in a joddled step along the top of the repair panel so that it would tuck behind the cut edge of the existing skin and the two panels would then be flush. 1

He then drilled holes where the two panels overlapped and pulled them together temporarily with self-tappers. 2

3 You need a variety of clamps when tackling a job like this – this one is ideal for the return edge of the repair panel.

4 As well as the self-tapping screws, Alan used a long clamp to squeeze the bottom of the existing doorskin and the top of the repair panel tightly together, moving the clamp along after each tack so that it was always sitting beside the spot being welded.

With paint removed either side of the repair, the welded join was covered with filler. This is the proper way to use filler – a thin cosmetic skim, not a structural repair! 10

5 In this way, Alan made a series of tack welds along the length of the join, enough to hold it firmly in place but not so many that excessive heat build- up caused the flat panels to distort.

9 …because the joddled flange had of necessity been made in the repair panel rather than the old skin, this created an upwards-facing water trap inside the door which Alan covered with seam sealant.

8 With that hurdle crossed, Alan could now seam weld along the length of the join in short bursts to keep the heat down. This is the view from inside the door showing good penetration. However...

7 First though, with the repair panel’s edges folded over we could now trial fit the door to the car while there was still time to make any adjustments if necessary. Fortunately, ours was spot on.

6 Using the hammer and dolly, the folded flange pictured in step 3 was then knocked flat to ensure a tight grip on the door’s frame. Alan will also add a spot of weld at each end and in the middle later.

I had also cleaned the floorpan inside the car and applied Dynamat self-adhesive sound deadening across it. This had made a huge improvement when fitted to my old Herald, so it should be good on the Minor too. Hopefully we’ll find out next issue. 20

The repair was then given a second skim to fill any pinholes, before being flatted back again, finally with 360 grit paper in the DA sander. This time the sanding was extended further into the existing paint so that the new coats could be feathered in. 12

Finally I ran a tap through all of the threaded holes in the floorpan in preparation for reassembly and the triumphant drive home. Unfortunately, as detailed in the intro, fate had other ideas. 19

In the meantime, not wishing to sit around watching the filler and primer drying, Alan had taken the opportunity to knock the flanges of the gearbox cover back into shape. 17

I had already cleaned off the thick, gooey mastic that had been sealing it to the car, and bought some closed cell foam which should give a perfect seal, and also make future removal more pleasant. 18

So next we removed the bonnet and took that down to the paint factor. Unfortunately their whizz- bang machine was more bang than whizz today and we had to rely on colour chips instead. 16

The entire panel was then cleaned with panel wipe to ensure complete cleanliness. The repairs were then given two coats of primer, followed by... 13

... a very light dusting from a black aerosol to act as a guide coat – when this is flatted back with 400 grit, any low spots show up as solid black paint and can be rectified before applying the top coats. 14

To ensure a good paint match with the whole car rather than the slightly darker doors, we first removed the front bumper, but cleaning this up showed it matched the doors, not the rest of the car. 15

The door was green underneath the previous repairs and filler, so it is probably the original to this car. Alan flatted the filler back with 80 grit paper. 11