First job of the day was clean-up all the edges of both cars. Spot cleaned the bits I'd missed. I also took out the last of the spare wheel well.
The edge of 'SHorty' was joddled so it sat neatly inside SHW. Spot also came up with the idea of cutting nicks to make the joddling bend with the panel shape.
We had to change the braceing bars as we couldn't check that the boot lid lined up. I also had to cut the chasss rail bracing off because it stopped the floor fitting.
From above you can see the slight gap I now have where the two floors meet.
The chassis rails fitted perfectly. It was a tight fit to push shorty's back end on but a neat fit.
A floor at last.
The back end looks good and we found no distortion at all.
After we finished I gave it a coat of paint and put the badge back on. Only joking, this was Spots V8.
With a quick spray over it looks okay. There is still a lot of rubbing to be done. Look at the bootline, it looks good.
After one more rub down.
All this paint will come off of course, I've already ordered the etch primer.
I have no pictures of the actual welding of the two cars because we forgot but I did do some. Mostly the offside. Spot did the near.
The tops were done in the same way, cutting at the bends. And we spent ages making sure that the panels lined up before welding. We had a job to find one of us with half decent eyesight and Edd's eyes won!
The nearside came out best, not because Spot did most of it, but because I'd cut the offside wrong. It was an easy mistake to make!
To make sure we didn't distort the metal all we did was spot the joint then moved up until we gradually filled in all the join.
The join was seam welded and it was also spotted through the rail in a couple of places.
I will tidy everything up first before attempting to fill in the sides. This gives me more access at the moment.
Edd even had time to fix two starter motors for his V6.
The boot fitted really well. We also took measurements from our 3 other Viva's to check for accuracy.
The nearside is the better of the two. A boot rubber would lift it by the correct amount.
It's coming on.
I was given the task of cleaning up the chassis rails.
