The project rapidly grows from a simple sill replacement and general tidy up to a total restoration. Nothing new there, then!

The original plan of repairing the nearside only for now and then moving onto the offside at a later date has to be drastically revised as we chase the structural problems round the front of the Midget and into the driver’s side.

Digging away at a classic car to discover how far back the rust and previous repairs go is always a voyage into the unknown – you never know just what you are going to discover, and you really shouldn’t start investigating unless you are prepared to follow things through to their ultimate conclusion. That was certainly the case with our project Midget. Having taken the decision last issue to remove the nearside sill and see what lay beneath, there was a lot less Midget left on the axle stands when I next visited Alan Denne’s workshop.

To recap very briefly, we knew that an outer sill had been welded over the remains of the original, and that the A-post and the lower section of the rear wing had been padded with filler to bring them out to meet the new profile. Removing the front wing showed that the inner wheelarch was not properly attached to the front flange on the sill, while sanding off the filler revealed some brazed repairs to both the A-post and the rear wing, but surprisingly little in the way of rust.

Subsequently cutting off the entire outer sill then revealed some rust in the inner sill panel, though not too much, and the floor panel seemed reasonably sound. However, taking everything back to sound metal before the rebuilding could start saw both the inner and outer sill panels removed in their entirety, plus the lower sections of both the A-post and the rear wing, not to mention the sill closing panels in both front and rear inner wheelarches.

And we were not done yet! You may remember that last issue we said how the NSF wing had been tack welded to the front panel rather than bolted? This had raised our suspicions of further expense to come, not least because there was clear

evidence of previous accident damage to the nearside front corner – the slam panel had been beaten only roughly back into shape, and the bonnet safety catch did not locate naturally on its hook, but needed a little manual help.

The slam panel could have been repaired and knocked back into shape, but we wanted to make sure that the structure to which it attached had not rotted or distorted. After all, the nearside front bumper iron did not poke centrally through its hole in the front panel. And so we set in motion a series of events that quickly knocked our original plan out of the window.

Essentially that plan was that I had hoped to repair just the nearside sill initially, then look at the offside later when I’d saved up a bit more cash. However, removing the front panel meant detaching it from the offside front wing. There would then be

no point in correcting the position of the front panel if we were later planning to disturb the geometry of the offside structure, so that wing had to come off too in order that Alan could extend his investigations to also include the sill on the driver’s side.

The story was to be very similar on the offside to the one we’ve already told on the nearside. The sill on this side had been repaired at least twice, and there was probably some original sill left underneath too. A repair flange had been welded against the inner sill/ footwell side panel, presumably because only cover sills were available at that point. Later a second sill had been cut and welded from the outside, most probably to avoid having to take the wing off – we know it must have been a full sill panel because it had been cut to go around the A-post, then where it ran under the door it went all the way to the inner sill. The A-post itself had modest corrosion at the bottom, and the rear wing had been poorly attached to the top of the sill, again much as things had

been on the nearside.

So at this point we were into two new sills (both inner and outer), plus a new front panel. But removing the old front panel had meant draining off the coolant and removing the radiator. The radiator turned out to be held in by just one bolt, and being able to move, the fan had flattened a nice circle out of the fins. Replacing that would be pointless unless I also replaced all the coolant hoses and flushed out the heater matrix, and by the time the front of the car was off, there seemed little point in not removing the engine and gearbox too so that we could complete the colour conversion from orange to red and paint the engine bay. See how these things have a habit of spiralling out of control?

However, it was the only way to do the job properly and while I don’t plan on entering any concours competitions with the Midget, I do want it to be done right. And as the picture captions will show, I was rewarded (if that is the right word!)

for taking a deep breath and doing the job properly because it revealed a number of issues which, while they would not have been insurmountable if they had surfaced at a later date, would certainly have spoiled my pleasure in driving the Midget and involved doing some of the work over again. And if that seems like I am grasping at straws to remain positive in the face of mounting problems and rapidly rising expense, you have to take what comfort you can in this game!

1 The slam panel had suffered a knock in the past, and been poorly aligned during repair. That was probably why the front wings were tack welded to it rather than bolted.

2 Further evidence that things were not correctly aligned was the way the nearside bumper iron was off- centre where it protruded through the hole in the front panel.

4 So in the end Simon decided that buying a new front panel for £309.70 made more sense – it would probably be cheaper in the long run, and the car would certainly end up looking better.

3 Obviously Alan could have repaired the old front panel, but there was also some rust where the heater duct attached, and skilled labour does not come free.

6 The bumper irons had rusted on their back faces. Again this is typical and neither serious nor too difficult to repair, but replacements at £20 each are invariably more cost- effective.

5 Removing those bumper irons showed some localised rust behind them on the chassis rails. Nothing serious, and crucially the rails themselves were straight and true.

7 While stripping out the front end, Alan also spotted that the weld joining this anti- roll bar mount to the chassis rail had cracked and was moving about. Another simple repair.

8 However, the radiator itself was in a sorry state having come into contact with the fan. The shroud also needed work, but we decided this would be cheaper to repair than replace – just.

10 However, there were a couple of places towards the bottom of the shroud that had rusted away. Alan chose to weld in repair patches here using oxy-acetylene gas.

12 And here is the shroud after wire brushing and painting with Hammerite Smooth. It is not perfect, but it will certainly not disgrace the freshly painted Midget.

9 Alan started off by knocking the metal of the shroud back into shape on an anvil. To be fair, some of the damage had probably been caused when we removed it from the car.

11 The beauty of gas welding instead of MIG welding is that the bead is soft enough to be planished afterwards, essentially knocking it flat so that the repair is all but invisible.

14 Where the inner wheelarch closed off the end of the sill, this had (again like the nearside) been trowelled full of filler at some time rather than being properly repaired.

13 Moving on to the offside sill, much like the nearside one we saw last issue, this had been repaired with a cover sill in the past, the rounded profile and proud edge being giveaway signs.

15 Which is a shame, because a nicely made repair section for this join only costs a couple of pounds. Mind you, it might not have been available when this work was done.

20 As for the sill, that castellated section is one repair over the original sill, and then the cover sill had been welded on top of that to give three layers. No wonder nothing lined up.

19 ...that A- post looked to be in pretty good shape. It had been welded to the top of the outer sill, the filler only being applied there to bring the skin out, not to replace metal.

16 That’s still no excuse for filler in a structural area, and there is even less excuse for using gaffa tape to cover a hole where the A- post joins the sill, even if it is hidden behind the wing.

18 The door gap was very poor and uneven. This appeared to be down to a reskin in the past that had been done poorly rather than any structural issues with the A- post itself, because...

17 We hadn’t spotted the tape immediately because the grime of decades made it blend into the rest of the panel, but removing it showed rust that would need to be repaired properly.

23 It was just as well we did, because taking this opportunity to separate the engine and gearbox showed that the flywheel ring gear had been badly chewed by the starter motor.

24 The teeth on the starter motor had been chewed up as well, and appeared not to have been disengaging properly. It had been working OK, but the amount of swarf in the bellhousing showed how much damage had been done.

26 The next (and most unpleasant) task will be to clean the engine bay back to bare metal for part of what is rapidly becoming a full respray rather than localised blowing in.

25 That meant we had to remove the flywheel, but again there was a silver lining of sorts as this showed us that the clutch had worn down to its rivets and started to scour the flywheel.

21 On the other side of this panel, stripping out the interior showed two areas of further corrosion in the driver’s footwell. Fortunately these won’t be complicated repairs.

22 Moving a little out of sequence now, but having taken things this far we decided to hoik the engine and gearbox out so that we could then strip and repaint the engine bay properly.