It's been nearly four years since we first set about building Tom a Baja.
The car we used was very good for its age but did need a few repairs at the time.
There were also some areas I just couldn't be arsed to do, like the floorpan and bulkhead etc....
The car was not going to be road legal so we just went offroading.
That was then.
This is now.
I'm not getting any younger so now it's time to do it right, road legal.
Matt & John came for the ceremony and we unbolted Tom's Baja from it's floorpan.
I say "we" but Matt and Tom did all the hard work while John and me offered sage instruction and smoked fags.
Well, we have done it all before and thought we'd let the youngsters learn the way of the skinned knuckle.
The floorpan was even ropier than expected, good job it's not needed.
Just as we thought, the entire bottom of the 'shell needs repairing.
Both heater channels, whilst very solid are shot at the ends so will be replaced.
Front and rear bulkhead areas have the appearance of swiss cheese so they'll get a dose of the same treatment.
It's a fact that no two bugs rot out the same, near perfect heater channels except for real bad rot on the front and rear ends - spooky!
On the up-side, the bottoms of the door-posts and b-pillars appear perfect where they join the heater channels.
Both rear quarters are solid as well so there's a good few jobs saved.
The few repairs I did when we first built it are still sound and won't need doing either.
Good times!
As we've done all of this before on Matt's Baja I won't go into too much detail but I will hopefully have a few new tricks up my sleeve.
Lessons learned from the first "resto" should help speed progress too.
First job - brace the bodyshell
I decided not to brace the door openings in an X fashion like we did on Matt's car - with hindsight it was great for stopping the door opening going out of shape but no use for keeping the width of the car right.
This time round I have built a frame inside the car that braces both side to side (transverse) and front to back.
I intend to use the transverse braces as reference members for heater channel replacement - I'll put a long piece of box section or similar under the channels and measure up to the bracing to get the height and alignment just right.
I don't like tack-welding to a perfectly good panel only to hack it off later (and have to refinish the area) so I used the seatbelt anchor points at the b-pillar.
No such nifty tricks at the front, though I did consider using the door-hinge fixings but decided against it as the fixings can move up and down for door adjustment - bad for a brace/reference member.
Hopefully the bracing will allow me enough room to replace the heater channels comfortably.......fingers crossed.
Soon be breaking out my old mate Mr.Bosch and removing some metal!
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