Tag Archives: inner sill

October 2002 – Right inner sill

Fixing the Right Inner Sill (19 – 21 October 2002)

I mentioned evil rust. Well, we found plenty in the inner sill on the right side of the vehicle.

Apparently, the right outer sill had been “repaired” by a previous owner, whom we shall call the HVAC Man (thanks, Mark O’Neill, for coining the name). Some of the cosmetic fixes consisted of attaching 26-gauge galvanized sheet metal (the kind used in heating and air conditioning ducts) with pop rivets and then bondo-ing over the lumps. This was done on the right outer sill, right over a rusted out (probably original) outer sill. That ancient outer sill had been ingloriously spray-painted a candy apple red, so it was probably a relief to cover it up.

Anyway, little, if any, attempt was made to arrest the development of rust inside the sill itself. The inner sill (which is the part of the sill visible from inside of the vehicle) was badly corroded along the bottom and especially so in the rear section. A picture shows it well:

To find where the corrosion stopped and where good metal began, we removed the rust with an angle grinder along the length of the inner sill. We found that sound metal was consistent about 1″ below the bottom of the reinforcement bend located along the sill, about halfway up. We marked a line at one inch below the bottom of the reinforcement bend, and cut the sill. Then we carefully cleaned the surface from the cut to the bottom of the bend. We would use this area to attach the newly fabricated lower part of the inner sill with spot welds (spaced about a centimeter apart) and lap welds both on the inside of the sill (as shown) and on the other side (facing the interior of the car). We fabricated the part from 18-gauge sheet metal — a little thicker than the 20-gauge that was originally used for the Jaguar’s monocoque body.

Here’s what we’ve ended up with thus far. It’s pretty much done, though we’ll do a little more grinding and perhaps some cleanup welding once we flip the car over to install the floors. Then we’ll have easier access to the sill. Also at that time, we’ll attach the front and rear sill “stiffeners.” I’ll probably fashion another stiffener to fit mid way between the front and back. Another stiffener won’t hurt. Of course, the front and rear sill terminating walls will be replaced.

February 2003 – Right floor installed, left sill stiffeners, POR-15 trunk

Through January I did some extra work for some extra cash (for extra parts for the Jag). As a result, I spent very little time in the garage. It has been very cold in North Carolina this winter, and January wasn’t the best time to do much of anything without a good heater. The garage space heater just can’t keep up when it gets cold.

I did work on a database of pictures and notes for this site, and I hope to let that have its debut in the next couple of weeks. I have a lot of pictures — taking up in excess of 500 megabytes. So, I have to be ingenious about making them available on the web. My intent with the database is to show the process of this restoration in a clear and searchable manner. If I can do that, other restorerers might find it useful, too.

UPDATE 16 February: This has been a winter to remember. We’re probably going to get another ice storm along the lines of the one that hit 5 December and stopped everything. People who wear aluminum foil hats (to ward off mind control devices) might make a connection between my working on the car and ice storms. I just hope that the last ice storm took out the trees that would fall on power lines, so we might be spared the darkness! Ice is already covering the ground, though only about a quarter inch so far.

Right floor installed (13 February 2003)

It’s been five months since we picked up the car, and I am wondering if we are where I wanted to be with this project. I think we are close to the mark, though I do wish we were done with metalwork on the “tub” — the car body. We haven’t touched the bonnet, we’ve done very little with the doors and the trunk lid, and the engine and other mechanicals are practically untouched.

Getting a floor panel installed was a milestone, however. It seems a turning point from the putzy little fixes to something, well, substantial, even though the the floor panel itself couldn’t go on before the putzy little fixes were done.

Strictly speaking, the floor installation wasn’t entirely “by the book.” Rather than a simple spot-weld affair, as was the case with the original, we decided to use bolts in certain places. No bolts are on the outside edge, since that edge has to accept the outer sill. But we placed bolts (5/16″ width) at points along the edges the crossmember and along the edge nearest the transmission. Three bolts are lined up along the front tab of the floor. Along the back we installed quarter-inch bolts — a little smaller so that they fit along the back lip on the floor panel. These bolts are grade 5, not stainless; but I figured that they will be covered with rust-preventative POR-15 at any rate.

Installing the bolts makes spot welding easier, since the floor panel is held tight to the metal you’re welding to. Since the bolts are for all practical purposes invisible, I thought that this would be a good way of ensuring a tight floor fit without changing the car too much.

Aaron did most of the welding. After a bit of grinding to smooth out some lumpy welds, the entire surface was primed.

On Saturday, 15 February, we removed what remained of the left floor. In order to make sure that the floor area was structurally secure during the installation, we left square tubular beam intact on the left floor area. This beam runs from front to back along the underside of the floor. Once the right floor was in place, the support (if any) given to the body was no longer needed, so we cut it free and removed the vestiges of the left floor. This freed up the otherwise inaccessible space behind the interior rear bulkhead and the part of the bulkhead that faces the independent rear suspension (IRS) — a void of about 3-4 centimeters wide running laterally across the car. I vacuumed the dust and dirt that had accumulated, brushed off what I could, and Rustoleum primed the entire inside of the void. I really wonder why the car was designed to have this inaccessible area, since once the floor panels are on, you can’t rustproof or paint anything in the void.

The picture was actually taken on 16 February, after I had primed the left sill interior. (You’ll see the unprimed left sill below.)

We also did some repair of some hacked up section of the bell housing/transmission cover. This was a repair stupidity like the one we removed and repaired earlier, though the affected area was much smaller. Like that other section on the opposite side of the car, this area had been cut with a pneumatic cutter, splotch welded and then smeared with Bondo over fiberglass screen. It was nice to get real solid metal in the area. We also added some metal tabs along the perimeter where the floor panel rests. Actually the tabs we added are too large, but we will cut them to size when we’re ready to attach the floor with spot welds and bolts.

It’s coming along.

Left sill stiffeners

I had finished the rebuilding of the inner sill in late December, as I recall, but the sill stiffeners weren’t done yet. I kept the remains of the stiffeners and these made good patterns — at least for the sections that hadn’t corroded. As I have with other parts I’ve fabricated, I made a cardboard template and used it to fashion the piece. The stiffeners were made from 20-gauge steel, and I fashioned the middle stiffener from the design I used for the middle stiffener done for the right sill. The secret is to be generous in your measurements for the tabs that you use to weld to the sill. It is easy to cut metal away, but not so easy to add it.

This definitely looks much improved over the way we found the sill back at the end of November. There is still a fair amount of rebuilding to do. The attachment piece for the front frame at the front portion of the inner sill needs to be completely rebuilt — and solidly because of its role in supporting the front end. I’ve decided not to use fabricated sheet metal at all for this (as was the case for the original). We’ll put together something with fortified angle iron which is thicker and stiffer than the original part. (Besides, I have the material on hand!)

POR-15 applied to trunk (14 February 2003)

This trunk seems to have taken longer than I expected — at least it seems to occupy a fair number of these web pages. I’m hoping this picture will do it for a while for the trunk. I applied the silver POR-15 over the primer, and it looks really good. That POR-15 is really solid stuff, and I am impressed with it. I have to admit that I am not impressed with the recommended way of applying it, since the surface preparation never seemed to me to go just right. I would run into small sections (smaller than the width of a pencil) that would seem to resist POR-15. I decided it would be easier, and probably just as good, to prime the clean surface with Rustoleum primer and then apply the POR-15. This seems to work very nicely. The POR-15 bonds to the primer very well, and surface preparation is much more straightforward, not a chemistry experiment.

Saturday, 15 February, is supposed to be warm, though rainy. Temperatures in the “Cat Cage” were around 60 degrees most of the day, and so doing the painting was quite comfortable. POR-15 actually sets more quickly when the air is more humid, since the substance actually uses moisture as a hardener. Normally, I don’t like to paint in temperatures below, say, 65 degrees, but this worked out well.

The paint cured overnight to a hardness that feels very much like a “powder coating.” I am tempted to spray it and perhaps use something other than the “silver” brand. I’ve heard that the sprayed clear POR-15 dries very smoothly and is used as a primer coat for that reason. I am planning on coating the inner sills and stiffeners very well — probably a triple-coat of silver, just to ensure that the inner sills are well sealed from any moisture that might get into the area.

November/December 2002 – Left sill, added stiffener, trunk floor

In case you missed it, we had some good pictures of Aaron welding and grinding over the Thanksgiving Holiday. You can review it, if you want. Some of the work reported here was begun over the holiday weekend. It got quite cold on 1 December, and the heater in the Cat Cage was hard pressed to keep things warm enough for working. I quit early and retreated to the house for some warmth.

UPDATE 6 DECEMBER: Ice storm hit us and left us without power and heat for a couple of days. The crystalline trees on the DeLong hacienda were quite beautiful. But unfortunately, there was no escape from the cold. We all slept in the living room and tended the fire all night to chase away the cold. Animals made it through all right, with the exception of a few tropical fish and a beloved catfish. The goldfish in the pond of course didn’t even notice, and Aaron’s hydroponic set up had no casulties either. We lost power around 1 am on 5 December and got it back about 5 pm on 6 December. Thank goodness we had a pile of firewood all cured and ready for use. We’ll have to set the boys on the pile of unsplit wood next week or so.

Arlene’s thinking that a generator isn’t such a bad idea at all.

Left sill

The boys removed the left outer sill on 17 November with the impact hammer, but we didn’t do anything with the hole until Thanksgiving Day weekend, when we cut the hole clean and ground off the tabs left from the old rusted out outer sill. The corrosion on this sill was mainly in the front, with some rust buildup at the rear of the sill, under the rear stiffener. As with the right sill, there was corrosion nearest the floor as well (in the picture that would the the top edge of the sill, since the car is upside down). I went ahead and took off the rusted section all along the sill, so that we can repair the sill as one piece rather than in smaller sections. It seemed to me that an integrated repair would be more durable. This repair will be very similar to the right sill repair.

You can also see that the front stiffener was corroded at the bottom (the top in the picture). It will be replaced by a home fabricated piece. Although the rust isn’t very visible in the picture, the rear stiffener also was damaged on the bottom. It had weakened steel and a small corroded hole near the bottom. The weld onto the sill, however, was still very tight.

One thing that became very clear was the advantage of having the car upside down. The sill was completely accessible, and gravity worked with us as we ground the cut. Although the angle grinder isn’t really heavy, it does kick around a bit. If I ever do this again (Lord help me!), I’ll remember to flip before the sills come off.

Middle stiffener added to right sill

It is appropriate to see how the right sill looks now that it’s been finished on the inside. The left sill, in all its unrepaired glory, is a little depressing…. You might recall that I wavered a bit about installing a middle stiffener, but I eventually decided it would be a good idea. Although Jaguar’s design didn’t include a stiffener opposite the center cross beam, I thought that lateral movement might be discouraged a bit if we’d install one. Restorers who install middle stiffeners usually use a modified front stiffener. I created a smaller stiffener that is about the width of the cross beam. Aaron welded it in nearly flawlessly — our first weld that did not require so much as a particle of grinding stone. After that, we cleaned it up and primed it with rust-preventive primer. POR-15 comes later.

Repair of trunk floor finished

I don’t have any pictures of this yet. It has gotten cold in North Carolina, and my enthusiasm for taking pictures has waned as the temperature has dropped. I’ll update later. At any rate, the trunk floor is repaired. I repaired the corrosion next to the fuel filter hole, and I repaired some rust damage that happened along the underside of the trunk floor stiffeners. The middle stiffener encases two bolts that serve as the connection point for the exhaust resonators. Those bolts — and the fitting inside the stiffener — were absent when I took off the bracket that holds the resonators to the underside of the car. I fashioned a new connector using stainless steel bolts. It’s now in great shape. I do think that the next time this car undergoes a restoration, the underside of the trunk will need to be replaced entirely. That would be the cleanest fix at this point.

I’ll add pictures later, when the temps go up again.