Lowlight Tourer is back in one piece
Having spent some time out on the road in the Lowlight saloon, I have now been back home and plugging away on welding the 1950 Lowlight Tourer. The key objective was to get the welding finished so that I could complete grit blasting and painting before the winter.
When I’d last focused on this, I’d managed to replace the chassis legs, floors and rear spring hangers. However, there were still lots of patches and seam welding to complete to tie everything together and make the car structurally sound. Although I hadn’t fully thought this out at the time, focusing on the larger panels and then coming back to the patches has served me well. The car looked complete, was stronger and I didn’t get bogged down tying the larger panels to the existing bodywork with seam welds, and making a multitude of smaller patches to fill any areas of rust that weren’t covered by the repair panels. As one would expect, there were a few instances where the level of patching required meant that a further replacement panel was ordered, and one such instance of this was the boot surround.
At the rear, the car showed signs of being involved in a prang with another vehicle, although not serious. I suspect this was the reason why the car ended up in the scrapyard. I had initially hoped to patch this area up and knock the dents out. However, upon closer inspection it became clear that the boot floor was wafer thin in several areas and well past its best. To do the job properly I opted to replace both the boot floor and the rear aperture.
This was made more complicated by the fact the car was mounted in the tipper, which picked up on the rear bumper mounts – and these attach to the panels I was replacing. This meant that to effect the repair I would need to remove the car from the
“It looked like someone had already made a start on bodging this”
tipper at the rear. To do this I packed the car up on some old sleepers and wooden blocks. At this point, I was able to start cutting metal out. To maintain datum points, I chopped out the floor and replaced this before moving on to the rear boot aperture.
This panel is a slightly awkward area to fix and having done it on several cars before, I can remember all too well the difficulty with getting an even panel gap around the boot, in particular the boot corners. To be sure of getting a good fit, I offered up the lid. This revealed that the gaps along the side were a bit tight, and so before the bottom repair panel was welded into place these were adjusted using a hydraulic jack and blocks of wood to get a better fit. I then welded the bottom panel in place.
Other than endless seam welding, the only other repair which caused particular difficulty was repairing one of the front shock absorber mounts. On early cars, these have two captive nuts at the bottom and two nuts and bolts at the top. However, both of the bottom captive nuts had stripped and needed replacement. It looked like, back in the day, someone had made a start on bodging this and had already cut out an access hole from above; I suspect they just replaced them with nuts and bolts and used the hole to tighten it. The front shock absorber also doubles up as the top mount for the suspension, and I dread to think what sort of noises this made when going along as the holes were all oval.
For this repair I enlisted the help and guidance of dad. He suggested drilling out the hole for the captive nut to about 17mm and then welding a 4mm thick plate with two bits of 17mm bar welded in from behind and around the edges of the bar at the front. This seemed to be a sensible approach, so once dad had measured and made the plate and bars, I welded it into place and filled the two worn top holes with weld. For metal this thick I needed to change to 0.8mm MIG wire, but otherwise it was welded in without trouble. In due course the remaining holes will be drilled accurately and tapped if necessary so the damper sits solidly where it should.
After this, I removed the doors and any other ancillaries still on the car, such as the aerial, door catches and bonnet hinges. After giving the car a once over, I was pleased to say that the welding on the body shell was done! It feels like quite a milestone, and not one I expected to reach in 2020.
The next job is to grit blast the bodyshell and apply some epoxy primer before winter sets in. I’m using a hobby blaster for this and it’s not a job I would recommend to anyone! It takes a long, long time, needs two big compressors, an air fed mask, ventilation and dust capture. I’m using crushed recycled glass, which is cheap and harmless and gives excellent results. After that, I’ll get it back on its wheels, then turn my attention to the doors, body panels and Alta head – more on that next time.