Well, having spent a couple of weeks sorting the shed out so I've got a civilised workspace, I started to tear into the 63 last night. Nothing major, just pulled off the left hand running board and front wing to have a look at the heater channel, door pillar and front quarter panel. Running board was utterly stuffed, front wing was good but some helpful previous owner had pulled out 3 of the captive nuts and replaced with nuts and bolts conforming to no known thread or head standard so out came the hacksaw 😀.
Was disappointed but not surprised to discover that the bog that I'd noticed covered up holes in the quarter panel extending from about 1 O'clock round to 3 O'clock along the wing joint line. The rest of the panel's good though so I'll be sharpening up the sheetmetal skills and repairing, probably with a secondhand patch if I can find a better one. Fabrication may be awkward due to the curvatures involved and the need to get it exactly right to avoid pulling the wing out of shape. I suspect the right hand side is similar but possibly not quite as bad.
I also discovered that the panel below the windscreen washer and master cylinder reservoirs is holed but it's all single curvature so shouldn't be too bad to deal with once the tank's out.
On the positive side, all the running board screws came out as they should and the adjacent bodywork appears to be mint.
The door pillar requires further investigation but at this stage the corrosion doesn't appear to extend beyond the area covered by the available repair panels.
Other wings and running board come off tomorrow, followed by the fuel tank 🙂.
PatB Casual Dubber
32 posts · joined Mar 2003 ·