Ok, I've got a lot of random photos from doing the front seams and A panels at David's place. Here's a few,
This is the inner A panel off of the car after some patching and fitting (unfortunately no pics of the removal process and measurements that are required before removing).
Inner A panel welded back on. Remember to take it easy welding this
back on. Tack it and stitch weld as necessary in order to not bend and buckle it too much, remember it was only spot welded on so no need to fully weld it all up. In order to get the hinge positions right measure first before cutting it all off of the car (important!!!!) and then use the other side of the car to confirm these measurements. If you forget and just hack away, make sure you done one side at a time so that if all fails you can measure the other side of the car.
Outer A panel fabricated by using the original as a stencil, making it bigger, then trimming it down to size. It's easy to get fitted if you bolt it nice and tight then you can tap and hammer it as much as you like to get it to fit (most of it was bent by hand actually).
Mostly all welded up, take it easy here and don't put too much heat into the panel. So basically take you time with it. The more you bend and buckle the panel, the more panel beating required to get it smooth. If you deseam at car this is very important as you have to get a smooth transition from the guard to the A panel and if it's all bent out of shape it will be a nightmare to smooth.
Just because I can. Introducing the inverse seam. A 3mm bar tapped and fitted into the pillar to provide some thick metal to weld onto and to replicate the seam on the inside. David's idea.
Finally all tapped and filled.
There's probably easier ways of going about it if you still have a seam because then you can replicate spot welds by drilling a hole through both layers of the seam (through the A panel and guard panel as they are butted up against each other) and using a heat sink (brass or aluminium) behind the hole then by useing a MIG (or any other wleder I guess) a 'spot' weld of sorts can be made. But the way I (with
much help from David) did the job was a rather cheap way of doing it. It good practice with the welder and had plenty of metal left over for the rest of the car.
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1964 Morris 850, 1330 Supercharged - 81.8hp atws.
1975 Leyland Mini S 1100S powered - Nice and reliable.
1977 Leyland Mini LS - Project LS-T
