A collection of articles on rebuilding James' SJ413

Lil Red - SJ restoration - Body Mounts

Just a quick update.

Whilst seemlingly small this is an important milestone. Having painted the doors, tailgate and window frame parts separately. The time has come to join the body back to the chassis.

Early in the build the body was separated from the chassis to facilitate access to the corroded areas, although the previous pictures show the body apparently on the chassis, it was only loosely fitted and some of you may have noticed the apparent "lean" that that generated.

The time has arrived to weld the wings back onto the car and an important part of this is ensuring that the panels all line up, any panel gaps are even and all the shut lines line up. 

Therefore the body needs bolting back onto the chassis so the panel alignment can be accurate.

 

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Lil Red - SJ restoration - First Paint

Its time for painting to start!

First there were a couple of small repairs left to door, Earlier you would have seen small perforations that had appeared in the bottom of the door.

These were removed and cleaned out and then filler welds were added to create an all metal finish that was then smoothed back.

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Lil Red - SJ restoration - Patching completed

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 Work is really progressing this week over at Winchfield Engineering. The welding patching to the bodywork is complete. The welds have been ground back smooth and now a protective coat of epoxy and Cobra (for the undersides) is put on in the paint shop to protect the bare metal until the full painting starts.

The next stage should see the wings being re-fitted.

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Lil Red - SJ restoration - Welding has started!

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The restoration has turned a corner, things are starting to go back together rather than come apart.

The welding has started with patching/repairs of holes. 

NOTE: These pictures show work in progress, not necessarily completed, 

The most common place for corrosion on both SJ and later Jimnys is around the body mount behind the front seats.

The bodywork here is a sandwich of steel panels. Here the top panel has been cut and removed to reveal the rust in the panel behind which has then been cut out and removed (you can see the body mount!)

The holes are then plated over, closing them up.

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Lil Red - SJ restoration - Preparing the Roll Bar

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James wanted a genuine rollbar for his SJ. Now we realise that these roll bars are little more than show items, they are not a competition grade roll bar but it is a factory restore so needs a factory roll bar.

We eventually found one on Ebay. It was not easy to find one but it has been even harder to restore it!. It comes with a white "plastic" coat that at first appears easy to remove as the rust is lifting it up. I took it to the Powder Coaters and they sent it back saying that it simply melted and flowed back whenever they blasted it. In other words, it could be done but would be too expensive in time and money. I then tried sanding, burning with a blow torch and peeling with a sharp edge. It simply would not come off. It took an abrasive wire wheel in an Angle Grinder and close on 4 hours work to shift it.

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