Triumph 2000
Matt takes an angle grinder to the 2000’s rusty sill…
My workshop experience this month was mainly one of déjà vu. With the rear section of the 2000’s offside outer sill having begun to succumb to the ravages of time, our climate and, ultimately, rust, it was time to reach for an angle grinder and begin the process of exploration within. Being of unitary construction, the main strength of the 2000/2500 shell lies within the sills, which are of a reasonably complex, three-part design.
I’ve been through the repair process on this car before, rebuilding the entire nearside sill section and the front half of the offside sill section with PC contributor Gary Stretton back in 2014, as well as having to rope in fellow contributor Clive Jefferson to help make some similar repairs to both sides of the Carmine Red ’76 2500 saloon that I owned not once, but twice, between 2017 and 2019 (see Staff Car Sagas, PC, March 2019).
I know from experience then that, if the outer sill looks grotty and/or it has rotted through completely, the internal sill strengthener panel and the inner sill panel itself will be in a bad way. This prior knowledge meant that it wasn’t a huge surprise when, after I’d drawn a horizontal line along the top of the rear section of the sill to allow Matt Tomkins to make an incision with the angle grinder and folded the panel away to reveal the internal structure, we found a decent amount of rust. That said, I had seen worse and, once I’d chopped the bottom of the outer sill off completely, sliced horizontally across the internal strengthener to leave only clean metal and then done the same to the inner sill, things were looking a lot better and the task ahead suddenly seemed a lot less daunting.
Thinking outside the box
After devising a plan of attack and taking some rough measurements for the required repair panel, Matt and I rummaged around the workshop sheet metal store/scrap pile to try and find something suitable. Sadly, we were all out of fresh sheets of virgin steel (I blame James Walshe’s Citroën CX GTI Turbo project), so it was time to get creative.
Clearly keen to leave a little bit of Morris inside my rival BL machine, Matt declared that a couple of surplus panels he had lying around could be
‘With rusty metal removed, the task was less daunting’
‘adapted’ to fit. Once cut to length, a Morris Minor two-door saloon kick plate became an inner sill repair panel, compete with a handy return on the bottom edge. Then, after a bit of fettling and reshaping, a Minor van sill repair panel was transformed into an inner sill strengthener repair panel for my Triumph. After some trial and error, we managed to get both panels into position on a trial basis and decided that we were indeed onto something. Using the pre-formed items would also save us plenty of time that would have otherwise been taken up cutting our own bespoke panels from raw steel.
Once both panels were ready to go, I stripped them back to bare metal and gave them a good coating of brushable Weld-thru primer from Rustbuster. The sill internals were also cleaned up with a flappy disc on an angle grinder before being treated to a coat of the same. Once dry, Matt tack welded the inner sill repair panel in place, before proceeding to work his way across the panel’s length and weld it into place.
Structural integrity
While cutting the rust out, I’d also cut the crusty bottom half of the internal jacking point away, meaning it needed reinstating. We did that by drilling holes in each side of the remaining ‘good’ section of the jacking point, then inserted a preprepared length of box section (complete with lower jacking pad) up inside it, then plug welded through the holes to hold it in place. Matt finished the job off by seam welding all the way around.
With that sorted, it was the turn of the sill strengthener to be restored to full health once more. Again, Matt tacked the new panel in place, then seam welded it to the pre-existing panel. Once the metal was cool, I gave everything a once-over with a can of satin black paint, though the sill cavity will be injected with a generous amount of rustproofing wax as a matter of best practice once the outer sill has been replaced.
Speaking of which, I’ve been in touch with
‘Big Six’ resto hero Lloyd Reed of South Wales Triumphs regards a new outer sill panel, which is the next job on the 2000 to-do list. I’m quite pleased with progress so far – more news soon.
■ matt.george@practicalclassics.co.uk