Austin A60 Cambridge
A lot of rot was removed from John’s Cambridge after it was media-blasted – certainly enough to worry him…
1966 AUSTIN A60 CAMBRIDGE
Media blasting is a great way to find out about your car, but the truth is not always what you want to hear. Nick Graham of Soda Blast UK’s careful stage-by-stage blasting had followed the rust (which is a sort of back-to-front classic car version of the ‘follow the money’ Watergate edict) which had led to the car becoming rather more dismantled than planned and revealing itself to be much rustier than I had realised.
That left me with two choices – to take the car back to Steve Turner in York, who is not a welder, and try to weld it up after the engine had been fitted, or find a welder in Newcastle capable of this kind of work. Luckily ‘ blaster Nick’ contacted his friend, local enthusiast and welding guru, Dave Thomson, who agreed to take a look at the car. Happily, ‘taking a look’ quickly turned into ‘getting his sleeves rolled up and starting the job there and then’!
Dave has welded all sorts of cars and actually dropped work on a 911 rebuild project to do this job for me. The fact that Nick Graham kindly let the work happen in his workshop meant that Dave could just get on with it the following week, without the car having to be moved again. A top chap is Nick.
I later drove all the way from Birmingham to Newcastle and spent a couple of days up there helping Dave and Nick to strip the car and get on with the welding, working as a gofer and parts finder. I’m not a very good welder, although I’m beginning to think that I should have a go at learning properly because I seem to need welders a lot, these days!
The list of jobs was daunting, but the car was stripped, so at least access wasn’t too bad. We made a list of the jobs then worked out an order, something that gave me confidence in Dave’s abilities.
In broad terms we were looking at the passenger-side ‘elephant’s ear’ (the panels behind the sidelight area of the grille), the top of the nearside A-pillar and inner wing, the nearside wing mounting channel from about halfway back to the bulkhead, the inner wings on both sides and the interior floor on both sides. We decided to leave the offside elephant’s ear and valance because they weren’t as bad as the rest of the area, so that wing didn’t need to come off to finish the blasting. I can do that side in Birmingham before the painting.
I was able to get an elephant’s ear from A60 parts specialist NTG, but Dave made all the other panels and repair patches by hand. He carefully and methodically worked his way through the car, producing nice neat welds, helped by the super-clean blasted surface, which of course makes welding easier.
I’d actually made my way back to Birmingham by the time that Nick and Dave had reassembled the car for me, but apparently it wasn’t an easy job – naturally, panels never quite re-fit quite as easily as they come off.
The wing is now bolted on, though, so we can make fine adjustments when we get into the paint stage, which at this moment seems a very long way into the future…
OWNED SINCE May 1984 MILEAGE SINCE LAST REPORT 0 TOTAL MILEAGE 500,000 LATEST COSTS £1200