Around the rear, with the wing panels and taligate removed, some more rust became visible.

This is behind the panel, so can be fixed with some fabrication rather than a replacement panel.

On the left you can see the end of the rear crossmember which will need some work to ensure the rust is completely removed

It looks worse than it is really, it should clean up fairly easily. 

 In the picture on the left you can see a nut being held onto the bolt using MoleGrips.

They went around the SJ, welding nuts on all the stuck bolts

On the left you can see the wheel arch after the wing has been removed. This area is the part where the wing meets the wheel arch and is a key area of corrosion. On lots of rusty SJs you can sit in the rear seats and look down and see the wheel and road through the corrosion holes. James' SJ is not bad but this will take a bit of cleaning up to attach to the brand new wings with all the rust removed.

On the right you can see the rear wing on the drivers side. This has the fuel filler in it. The filler is brazed in-place and we have a new one to braze into the wing. The square hole at the right of the picture is where the seat belt fits.

The picture on the left shows the wing with the wide arch (ie. a standard Samurai wing) and the additional narrow arch that I purchased.

The key difference between a Samurai wing and an SJ413 wing is the decorative pressing line around the arch which would be difficult to reproduce. However we believed that this pressing line is actually still there, hidden under the wider arch.

The spot welds were therefore drilled out on the arch.......

The restoration has started! 

Winchfield Engineering has sent over the first batch of pictures from the work this week. If you recall, they asked me to strip as much as I could first so here is a reminder of where I had go to.

I had stripped off all the parts that I could easily remove including all of the interior apart from the dashboard and a few plastic clips used to retain the carpets etc.

The SJ was then loaded onto a trailer for the less than 1/2 mile trip to the restorers.