MadaboutKitcars

Looking good Mr T, looking good.

A perfect way for me to switch off the computer and step away from the forum for a few days.

Have a good one, Paul.

I'm off to work in half an hour, 9pm to 6am on foot keeping order in a busy town centre so I'd just like to wish everyone a very happy and prosperous New Year before I set off.

Let's see some more Sammios finished in 2013, especially mine!

Got permission from my significant other today to go to Goodwood revival in September, so that's something to really look forward to. Just the small matter of getting some leave organised as I'm supposed to be working that weekend. hwell:

Enjoy your celebrations everybody and I'll see you next year.

First progress of 2013 today - I was too tired yesterday after getting in from work at 6:30am and then getting up to do family stuff three hours later.

The job I set myself this afternoon was to grind down the last vestiges of the rear outriggers, paint the bare metal stumps with hammerite and then fill and sand the rear corners. I ran out of light before I could get them fully smoothed into the bodywork though





I did have time to 'deseam' the rear wings while the filler dried though. Sanding them down took a lot more time and effort than expected, even with very coarse 80 grit paper on the mouse.



Back to work in the morning for me but I'm hoping to get some more body prep done in a few days.

I am sure that when you get that first coat of primer on, the body work will look the part.

I'd put sanding my own seams on my list of Christmas jobs that didn't need many tools / parts.
So thanks for the heads up on the fact I will need to allow a bit of time.

Good luck, Paul.

Evening T, nice to see you getting some work done.

The dremmel or equivalent rips through those seams worth a thought

Quicker with a long board, and you will get a better finish. Just glue (spraymount) your paper onto a piece of thin ply. Add a couple of blocks on top for grippage, and your off.

My home made long board sanders were lengths of grey foam pipe lagging cut in half to leave a flat side for the paper and the curved bit to grip.

You can cut these to whatever lengths you want, the curved bit is comfortable to hold, it is very cheap and has enough flex in its length to cope with the curves of the bodywork

I made mine about 12" long and they cut the seams down to size quickly and easily with a length if 80 grit on them

Looks good! I'm starting to get twitchy and wanting to get re-building my car now but i'm still waiting on parts

For the more aggressive sanding jobs i used sanding flap wheels in the angle grinder. They just eat through the bigger stuff in no time at all but you have to be VERY delicate!

All good advice guys. This is my first go at sanding, filling and flatting a car body so I'm kind of making it up as I go along at the moment.

I know deadlines are a waste of time but I'm now hoping for an on the road date by the end of this month. Hmm, need to get a move on, methinks.

Once you got the filler close, get yourself a can of spray paint , darker the better, and mist it over the filler. Next when you block down your see any low patches which will still have the paint in the low patches. This does not mean
that you always need to add filler, it might mean you need to block more filler.

Your get a feel once you had some pratice, if you run your hand flat over the surface , not pressing hard your feel the height or low points in the filler.

Try and work in round about a metre square area so you dont miss anying dips that might that might show in the finish paint.

Always ask me and i will help

Thanks Mike, sound advice, I'll get a can of black to dust over the surface after the etch primer goes on.

When it comes to flatting the body, will high build primer actually level small dips or do I have to use filler? This might sound like a stupid question but I'm a complete novice at this spraying lark.

Mate, you can spell i cant, lol but i do bodywork

Well i can work body filler without a guide coat as ive been doing this for many years, but not alot of people get the feel for the finish needed. I think by spraying guide coat between filler coats will realy help you and take alot of the
guessing out rubbing down. You are right about the high build it take s a very small amount of the level up , but only maybe 2mm if that after flating back , its more for pin holes and blending paint or filler into existing body work.

The spraying and saniding idea works. Did mine I. Burgundy as that was what was the shelf. The first photos show what appeared to be a flat panel.

http://www.madabout-kitcars.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3273&page=11

Having decided to spray my 'egg crate' grille in Ford Diamond White to complement the silver paintwork, I spent a couple of hours today fitting it up and sorting out a black aluminium mesh 'inner' to stop stones hitting the radiator -









I was hoping to put a full day's work into it tomorrow, but snow is forecast for the East of England tomorrow.

Still, should be ready for Goodwood...

Evening T, looking good... the grill looks smart.

looking nice.... pop into your wife she said u was hard at it ...if i had not had to go to docs to day would have pop over for a cupper ..but alls going well and looking very nice

Yes, she said she'd bumped into you and your other 'alf, Phil. Hope everything's ok with the Doc and you know you're always welcome to pop round for a brew. How's progress on your mkIII racing Spyder, got it to the moon rover stage yet?

In the words of Tony the Tiger....Greaaaaaaat!
Silver and white sounds very nice to me.
Final pic looks so mean. I'm going for "quaint 50s English", but that is something different.....and I really like it.

Cheers matey, it looks even meaner in the 'metal'.

I put a lot of thought into the colour of the grille. My first notion was to go black for a contrast look, then silver to match the body. White won out though after exhaustive google images research kept drawing me back to a more subtle complementary colour. I'm very pleased with the look and I might even spray the wheels to match at some stage...

Silver wires look great, but every time that I have seen them in colour they look even better.

This pic converted me -

Each to their own, but I really, really don't like black wheels. They're turning up on everything now: corsas/saxos/imprezzas/mercs, they were even a bloody option on my 79 year old mum's Nissan Note 1.6 automatic for Christ's sake.

I blame that Richard Hammond off Top Gear. When he ordered a Morgan Aero 8 a few years back he special ordered it with black wheels (perhaps to distract the eye away from the general fugliness of the rest of the car). The production manager at Morgan tutted through his pipe and frowned, but sent a chap in a tweed jacket down to Halfords to buy a can of oven enamel anyway. They then charged The Hamster seven grand to spray it onto his alloys.

Once done, I guess it was too hard for him to admit how horrible they looked after wasting so much TV licence payers' money on them, and, because Hammond wears a leather jacket and smokes his opinion seems to matter to the rest of the herd, so, black wheels became cool. In the words of Jim Royle 'My Arse!'

Phew, feeling a bit better now the voices have stopped...

Mr T - Grille is looking good.

And I'll be stealing your "safety" mesh mounted inside it idea too.

Cheers, Paul.

With the angle the 'chip cutter' sits at, I'm not 100% you need the grill behind it as virtually nothing got through mine. Well...... not in any large pieces

A few people have commented on their threads that everything seems to take longer than expected when building one of these cars. It's now twenty months since I bought my donor, and twelve months today that my first deadline to complete my Spyder, my 50th birthday, passed, and it still isn't finished

Over the last year and a half I've: bought and stripped down a worn out classic and made a (small) profit selling off the redundant parts on ebay



Renovated a rotten chassis, learning to grit-blast and weld in the process











Fabricated custom parts like the radiator fan-shroud, fuel tank frame and dropped floors







Had new friends drop by along the way



Bonded on the body and got it through a rebody inspection





Burned the candle at both ends on occasions, but it's not affected my health...



And brought it to the point where it can be driven around and only really needs paint and final fit of the lights and trim to finish



It has very much been a spare time project and I'm still enjoying every minute spent working on it, even when things don't work or have to be redone because I'm not happy with them. I'm now confident it'll be on the road soon (a Jamaican word meaning an indeterminate length of time that's probably still quite some way off) and I'm really looking forward to driving it to Goodwood.

I'd recommend it to anyone.