Project Ninety: Part Seven

An unknown damaged rear body tub stalls the new paint job, but it’ll be worth the wait

I’ve been worried that I’m trading the patina, age and character of my Ninety for a shiny new, unmarked paint job that I won’t dare drive off-road. I rather liked the dings in the body, the faded blue paintwork and the token tad of rust that suggested the vehicle had been around a while. But I wasn’t so keen on the aluminium corrosion on the doors and wings, the mismatched colour repairs, nor the numerous leaking body seals.

And I was still questioning my decision to have the Ninety painted in its original colour. I liked its old powder blue appearance, but that was really Shire Blue with 28 years of fading, so it was difficult to know just how the Ninety would look in the original colour. Print or screen images often don’t replicate the real shade, and it’s difficult to visualise the whole vehicle from a paint sample.

So, when I drove to Marshbrook Garage in Shropshire to see how the job was progressing, I was still worrying whether I would like the colour and whether it would look too shiny for an old Land Rover. The last thing I wanted was a 1989 Ninety that looked brand new. On the plus side, I knew I’d learn a lot about the painting process from Marshland’s Nick Hooper who would be colouring my Ninety.

To date, only the smaller and new panels have been worked on. Holidays affect work schedules and Marshbrook are incredibly busy. That would have been coped with, but for the accident damage on the rear of the Ninety. The damage must have been done years ago, but we only realised the full extent when preparing the rear body tub for the paint shop. We reckon the Ninety had been reversed into something hard, and the roof rack ladder had hit first, pushing the rear body quarter panel in and spitting the aluminium. It had been repaired by pop-riveting a backing plate on behind the panel, but the rear wing was buckled, too. I agreed with the paint shop that we should delete this bit of the vehicle’s history and do the job properly by

removing the rear quarter panel, reshaping and securing the rear wing, then fitting a new quarter panel, riveting it to the vehicle panels as the factory did.

So we’re delayed, and we can’t bring you the full painting story in this issue – after all, this series is live, it’s ongoing at the moment, and it’s real life. The good news is that many of the smaller parts and new panels have been completed prior to the main body tub and bulkhead, so we have a taste of what the finished vehicle is going to look like.

Here Nick starts on the new and smaller panels prior to tackling the body tub and bulkhead on the rolling chassis.