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.

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.

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.