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Here is a photo of the rear door after a couple of coats of paint. I may flatten this and apply a final top coat. This colour is a mid grey. The plan is to paint the roof a lighter shade of grey.
The tool shed has now arrived too. This will be used to store the trolley jack, and other stuff that I don’t want to keep taking back to the shed after working on the UMM.
I haven’t been able to work on the UMM for a couple of weeks, due to one thing or another. Today, though was a big step forward, as the rear door is now fitted. A little bit of adjustment is still required, but it will be fine. Now the car is almost weatherproof for the first time in years.
As can be seen, I decided to delete the rear door mounted spare wheel carrier. Having the spare wheel on the door makes the door assembly really heavy, putting strain on the hinges, and making it difficult to open and close. It also restricts rear vision. As this is a long wheelbase version, I can find another place to stow the wheel. Underneath, or inside the body.
The door colour is the final coat, and the rest of the body will be this colour eventually, with a lighter roof colour.
The other news is that I have bought a recently reconditioned cylinder head for the UMM. This was from a Peugeot 505 originally. A set of reconditioned injectors also came with it. This will come in useful too.
Next job is to finish off the alignment of the rear door and fit the door catch on the inside.
I have now fitted the rear door catch and aligned the door a bit better. The alignment is tricky, as the door is a good fit within the aperture. At one side, the glass is not in contact with the rubber seal, but this is because the fibre-glass top has been damaged in that area and will need to be repaired.
The other job this week was to remove the thermostat from the engine and test it. Then this was refitted, and the cooling system refilled with antifreeze. As the weather is starting to get colder, this was needed. The engine was run up to temperature, to check the thermostat operation, and get rid of any air in the system. All seems to be OK.
There may not be much to report as the Winter is coming, but I shall try to do as much as possible.
Geoff
After the holiday period, it’s time to update progress on my UMM restoration. Work on it has almost stopped during the Winter, but I have been starting it up every week or two. Each time I started it, I found I needed to top up the antifreeze in the radiator. After replacing a couple of hose clips, there was still some leakage, and I was beginning to suspect the head gasket.
last time, though, I notices some wetness round the back of the radiator, and traced this to a leak on the seam of the top tank. So this will need to be sent off for repair at some point. At least it is not the head gasket!
The other job was to check the steering universal joints. I noticed that the steering felt notchy when turning. I removed the steering link shaft and found that one of the lower joints had partially siezed up. I managed to free it up, but the joint was obviously damaged by rust. Another result of leaving the vehicle stationary so long. So I ordered a new UMM part from Portugal as a replacement, which arrived this morning.
I will be fitting the shaft back on the vehicle, when the weather is drier.I also got Jorge at UMMonline4x4 to send me both differential covers for the front and rear axles. These are the heavy duty ones, and so are not available as a new part. I therefore bought used covers, which will clean up nicely. The old cover on the UMM has rust holes around the sealing flange, and would not be easy to repair. This is in preparation for removing the axles for de-rusting and cleaning up, which will be done this year.
The weather is forecast to be good this week, and so it is time to get on with the body repairs. First area to be replaced is in the rear panel. This was dented and rusty, so a large section was cut out and a new one was made from 2mm steel.
Then this was welded, and then smoothed off and painted.
Behind this panel was an extension of the rear crossmember, that is used to support the bumper halves. I am not going to be using the standard bumpers, and so I cut this short, as it won’t be needed. This will make it possible to paint the rear of the repair panel.
There’s lot’s more to do, but it’s a start for 2019.
I found that making a flange on a sheet of 2mm steel was quite difficult, so I decided to make a simple bending tool to help with the many repair sections I will need.
This is a copy of some designs that I have seen for sale, but made a bit stronger. The maximum width it can bend is about 300 mm. Any more would take a lot of force to operate.
Here is a test piece I bent in 2mm sheet. This should make the repairs a bit easier.
The weather continues to be dry and warm, so more bodywork repairs this week. The driver’s side rear corner has been worked on, by chopping our rusty sections and welding in new. There is still more to do here, but it is much more solid now.
I am also trying to make some flared wheel arches. This will avoid having the plastic edges on the body. The plastic is always a trap for mud and moisture, and causes corrosion underneath. So if I replace the wheel arch with metal, I can get a good effect with no rust traps. This is what I have been making today. It is nearly finished, and so I have fitted it for a trial, to see what it will look like when finished.
So far, I like it. I’ll finish this off tomorrow, and weld it in.
I have cut out the panel to fit the new wheel arch, but before I can weld it in, there are some repairs needed to the inner panels of the body.
In order to make this easier, I decided to remove the rear axle. It will need to come out anyway for rust removal.
So here it is. It was easier than I thought it would be, as all the spring bolts, and the dampers were not seized solid.
I wire brushed it briefly, and the rust was coming off nicely, so maybe it won’t have to be shot blasted. We’ll see. As mentioned before, this is the GKN type axle.
So that was good progress today. The weather is forecast fine for tomorrow too.
Moving forward. The rear wheel arch is fitted. It still needs some tidying up, but I gave it a coat of red oxide paint to protect it. Rain is forecast for sometime tomorrow. So now we can see what it will look like eventually. The next part is to replace some rusty parts in the inner wheel arch. They will then be welded to the outer wheel arch.
The work goes on. I needed to remove the exhaust pipe, to repair some rust in the side panel. The result was a broken stud on the exhaust manifold. So that had to come off. To do this I needed to remove the engine mount. I found that had split, so a new one has been ordered.
And then the manifold has been repaired with helicoils, and replaced.
This is how it goes, sometimes.
So today, the weather was good, so I was able to replace the engine mounting, and also finish the replacement of the engine sump. I had removed this a couple of weeks ago to deal with some bad dents in it. I guess someone had run into a rock or two!
So off it came and was subjected to some tin bashing. Then a coat of red oxide followed by two coats of hammerite black. Then I ordered a new sump gasket and waited for the weather to improve.
More bodywork now underway after a brief layoff. This is the side storage compartment, and the floor was rusty. So that has now been cut out.
One new support piece is in position, and there will be three more of these. I will then put a plywood floor on to these bearers, to form the bottom of the storage bin.
Then next will be the drivers side floor.
This has also seen a repair in the past, but the overall condition is not as bad as some I’ve seen.
geoff
Back on the bodywork, after illness and weather break.
The front quarter panel is rusty along the bottom edge. It had to come out for repair.
So the rusty part was cut out after measuring, and a new repair piece was made and fitted.
Once welded, a test fitting. After a bit of filler and paint, this will be invisible. Still some more repairs to the inner part of the panel to be done, but this is the bit that shows.
This is the repaired quarter panel after a coat of red oxide paint.
Then more cutting and welding today.
25mm square tube has been welded along the lower body edge. This will support the storage compartment floor, and also is where the hinge will be mounted for the compartment door.
It’s just a case of working along the car, putting more panels in as I go. Fortunately, the other side of the vehicle is not too bad, compared to this.
I decided to extend the steel tubing forward and take it right to the door “A” pillar. This will provide more strength to the door opening and give a firm edge to weld the floor to. Fritz gave me the idea to do this on his LWB rebuild.
It then became clear that it would be a good idea to get the front wheel arch in place next. Then there will be a firm edge to weld the floor and inner wing repair parts to.
So I made some repair sections with the new profile, similar to the rear wheel arch. These will make up the desired shape of the wheel arch.
And so the wheel arch sections are welded together. This is the complete arch, and the flange are will be trimmed to suit the existing bodywork. Then I will cut round it and let it into the body, and then weld it in.
This is just held on by a clamp at the moment. I am going to use this as a template to cut the sections for the other side. That will save some time, as getting the angles right was a pain.
I think it is going to look great when it’s all done.
Today was the day for fitting the wheelarch. I cut the panel underneath to suit, and tack welded all along the join. There is still some trimming to do on the lower edges, but that’s going to be easy. The other side is also made and waiting to be fitted.
The inner wing area under the bonnet was in need of repair. This is the left hand side, but the driver’s side was the same. Part of the panel had been cut away and a piece of wood was used to fill the gap.
So the top edge and front had to be re-made and fitted.
And then after more welding and grinding. A coat of red oxide paint was added for protection.
And so this is what it looks like with the plastic panel fitted, and the bonnet closed. Now on to the rear of the wing and then the other side.
Not much progress over the last 2 weeks. The weather has been rainy every day. I did manage to do some work in the shed on the brake master cylinder and the servo.
I dismantled the master cylinder and gave it a good clean and inspection. The seals look OK, and there is no corrosion inside, so that is good. I just wire brushed the servo, and then gave both items a coat of paint.
Today, I was able to carry on with the driver’s floor area, where a lot of corrosion was found. This has been cut out and now I am in the process of rebuilding the structure around the floor. Here is the bottom of the door frame.
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