This week's progress. I've finished off the nearside as far as repairing the frames and primer are concerned.







I've also removed the offside windows and found that they're much better than the other side with this area about the worst I think



I got a quote during the week for the custom aluminium windows. The cost is £62 per window or £78 if I want a double channel with sliding windows. This doesn't seem too bad but it's the method of fixing that makes me think that they might not be suitable. As you can see from the diagram, the channel would fix to the existing frames leaving a 12mm gap between the aluminium frame and the bodywork.



I've got some thinking to so over the weekend anyway because I got a price for 2 new pieces of glass (having cracked them during removal) - £28 each Maybe that's the going rate but it seems a bit expensive to me.

Nice work! Too bad that glass thing, but i think u should put sliding glasses. But it is only my opinion, so u do what u like.

How do you see through them?

she's looking good Bertie. Just found this pic from reg day 08. She looked pretty smart. I like the roof in black I must say.

That isn't Berties Bed' mate, That's Eleanor Chubbs.

It is indeed. I have many other pics of that fine car, provided by Neil just after I'd got Belinda so that I knew what she SHOULD look like.

I haven't done much on Belinda this week because the party season seems to have started early, but here is what I have done in pictures. I was thinking about starting a seperate thread where we can put step by step pics of repairs (common or not) so that others may learn from it, but for now they're here because this particular repair is in 2 parts:

After cleaning the affected area back to nice solid metal, I started by making up a template using a cereal packet as the cardboard is excellent for trial and error shaping





Once I'd got the shape about right, I folded the card back out so I could transfer the pattern to the metal



then it was a matter of shaping the metal using a hammer and a vice









Although thin card is a great way of getting the right sort of shape for a repair piece, it never seems to translate perfectly into metal for me so a certain amount of fettling was needed but a bit of grinding here and a gentle tap of the hammer there sees the repair piece slowly but surely fit snugly into it's new home



before welding in and tidying up again with the grinder



Hopefully (for those of you that are contemplating taking up welding) you can see that out of the 2 hours that it took me to weld this piece in, 90% of the work was preparation.

That'll be me then
You make it look logical bertie, and I can't do logical. I do explosive, brute force, wild eyed savage, smashing, swearing and bleeding fury, but logical always escapes me.
There's a cracking thread on retro rides regarding welding too Bertie, some fella doing is up an old Vauxhall Victor, and his metal forming skills are amazing.

Tried to teach myself to mig weld a few years back as I attempted to renovate the floor of a Saab 96 V4. The result looked ok on the top... but underneath resembled a hedgehog, with little lengths of wire sticking out at all angles. Used a ton of wire on that job. By the time I finished the car must have been about twice as heavy as it was at the beginning of the project. I still couldn't weld for toffee.

That Saab was a lovely car, though (sigh). Had a fantastic heater, too. Instant heat, regardless of engine temp.

I hadn't got a lot done in the fortnight before I finished for Christmas due to an interesting social calendar but I did manage to get the bulk of my window frame repair done. Just when I thought I'd finished welding and was just cleaning up the remaining small back window, I noticed something odd. As I hope you can see in the next photo, the frame was kinked inwards towards the bottom. This meant that the distance between the frame and the outside of the window aperture was smaller at the top than it was at the bottom so that when I come to replace the window itself, there would be a gap at the bottom.



I could have just filled the bottom with more sealant than at the top but to me that'd be a bodge and I really wanted to find out why it was like that. Sure enough, a previous repair seemed to be the culprit so out it came and a new repair piece was fabricated & welded in to match the rest of the frame.



That's it until the New Year now when I can hopefully look forward to getting the frames finally tidied up, painted and new windows put in.

Have a Happy CHristmas everyone.