Been working on a few different areas. Firstly the drivers door - cut out the rust and welded in new metal - bought a door seaming tool from Frosts - works quite well but couldn't apply as much pressure with it as I would have liked. I find most 'budget' tools (seamers, benders etc) aren't worth having. The best 'budget' tools for car restoration I've found are a vice and hammer - which I used to form one of the fuel pump covers which had deteriorated quite badly...see below.
Anyhow, I joined the new section of door skin by doing one stitch weld at a time in a pattern which would avoid heat build up. The panel didn't distort but I had to redo one section as the gap was too tight and caused a minor buckle.
Despite the almost non-existent sills, when I removed the underseal from the main underside I found almost no rust - they really caked on the underseal and inside coated the floor pans with about 10mm of bitumen. I'm re-doing the underseal with Tetroseal and Waxoyl - thin but effective I've found...has anyone found a better brush on product?
Some of the messy looking welds on the underside are original not my work!
You did well to weld such a long seam on the door panel without the hear warping the metal.
I get the impression that Waxoyl isn't as popular as it was and other products have superseded it. I recall the 3M products seem to get good reviews. I like Bilt Hamber stuff, though I haven't used their underseal yet - quite expensive though. I have used Metalflake in the past because the postage is free regardless of how little you spend.
I hope your project is going well. Yesterday I spotted a Lagonda at the Silverstone Classic and wondered if it might be yours. Now I can see yours is silver and the one yesterday was blue. It was just parked up behind the motor homes near the wing. Sometimes the cars parked are as interesting as those on display. The AMOC didn't have any Lagondas in their area this year but there was a Quattroporte like yours with the Maseratis.
Just finished the welding - had a bit of a break due to weather etc... Now starting to prepare the car for the body shop and hope to get the engine started some time...which I'm very nervous about!
Just a quick question (great work by the way!) on one of the pictures I can see you are using intergrips. How do you remove the pin that holds the back once you've finished welding? Did you have access to the back of the panel or do you just leave the pins to rattle around behing the repair? Reason I ask is that I've always fancied using them but rarely seem to have the opportunity due to having limited access to the back of the repair section I'm welding. Just wondering whether I should be worrying about this or whether I should just be leaving the pins inside.
Hi, in theory, if you can get them in then you can get them out... You do have to be careful not to slide it along to a place where you can't then remove the pin. Once you've tacked the panels it can be quite difficult to remove them anyhow as the metal expands.