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Thought about this incident the other day and occurred to me it would possibly make an interesting thread.
Many moons ago a mates brother was putting a new front end on a mk3 cortina he had thumped. literally a whole front end from the centre of the wheelarch forward. no unpicking panels here...oh no not here. he cut straight through the wing..wing rail..inner wing...chassis leg and butt welded the replacement straight on..with a stick welder!!!! i wish i had taken puctures at the time as it was the most incredible thing id seen.
what other delights have you created or encountered?
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Last Edit: Aug 2, 2019 21:02:53 GMT by strikey
'80 s1 924 turbo..hibernating '80 golf gli cabriolet...doing impression of a skip '97 pug 106 commuter...continuing cheapness making me smile!
firm believer in the k.i.s.s and f.i.s.h principles.
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Jul 28, 2019 10:30:25 GMT
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A mate, Uncle Terry *, imports, fixes and basically lives for Yankee iron, especially muscle cars. He imported a big ol Buick that had clearly lived by the seaside. The C-pillar base looked a bit lumpy, so investigation with a pointy thing soon revealed the suspected rot. Further excavation showed there to be a thick layer of filler over some dodgy repairs and still further archaeology unearthed that most of the C-pillar and rear quarter was made from seashells. In carrier bags to hold them together and then wrapped in chicken wire to give them roughly the required shape. Then skimmed over with bondo. A couple of carrier bags of finest Californian seashells At least they're relatively lightweight *Not really an uncle... it's like the Chinese honourific term denoting someone wise and old and sagacious.
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Jul 28, 2019 10:47:36 GMT
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A mate, Uncle Terry *, imports, fixes and basically lives for Yankee iron, especially muscle cars. He imported a big ol Buick that had clearly lived by the seaside. The C-pillar base looked a bit lumpy, so investigation with a pointy thing soon revealed the suspected rot. Further excavation showed there to be a thick layer of filler over some dodgy repairs and still further archaeology unearthed that most of the C-pillar and rear quarter was made from seashells. In carrier bags to hold them together and then wrapped in chicken wire to give them roughly the required shape. Then skimmed over with bondo. A couple of carrier bags of finest Californian seashells At least they're relatively lightweight *Not really an uncle... it's like the Chinese honourific term denoting someone wise and old and sagacious.I'm not sure this can be beaten! I mean, seashells?!? I have a similer story with my first mini estate. The entire step under the rear doors was a very carefully crafted lump of filler, that had been filled with fag packets to bulk it up. It had been done so well that we didnt suspect a thing, until dad stood on it and it fell off.
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Flynn
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 142
Club RR Member Number: 166
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Jul 28, 2019 12:02:26 GMT
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My terribly brown Jag was owned for a very long time by an eccentric Scottish chap who I think was really keen to get it on the road, but unfortunately he lacked the skills and/or funds to make it happen and so, over the years it was subjected to some fantastic bodgery, most of which I have now fixed but some top notch bodge work still remains. The best work on it by far was a sill repair - I didn't even notice it and happily took the car in for MOT, which of course it failed miserably. The front and back of both inner and outer sills had rotted away, the previous owner had cut some of the rot back, then pop riveted some thin sheet steel over the top to whatever metal he could find, he then filled the huge voids above the jacking points with concrete (!? - I still have no idea how he got it in there!) and then put a thick layer of filler over the whole lot, textured the filler to look like spot welds where appropriate, painted it and covered it in underseal. I'll dig some photos out... This was as I was finding out the extent of the bodge work Concrete from front section of sill This is what I had left to work with And with some new panels and many evenings of fettling, cutting and welding, I completed what I think the previous owner was trying to do There are still plenty of bodges to appreciate on the Jag, both front doors have had their lower edges 'repaired' with fibreglass and filler but it must have been done with the doors open and never offered up to the car because the door bottoms are now completely the wrong profile haha. In terms of my own bodging, I try to avoid it at all costs these days but in my early years of car ownership there must have been some terrible work on my cars, I remember fitting a big Barry boy exhaust back box to a mk3 Fiesta 1.1 which was my first car, I think it lasted 10 miles or so before it fell off on Cov ring road somewhere. Happy times.
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1971 MGB GT 1983 Daimler Sovereign 4.2 1999 Jaguar XJR
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Jul 28, 2019 13:32:56 GMT
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My son bought a series 2 swb landy, and discovered nailed on patches on the chassis, filled over. We can only assume that the rest of the chassis was soft enough to permit the nails to pass through. Still have the landy, but surprisingly enough it has a new chassis!
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Jul 28, 2019 13:53:31 GMT
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Oh and a mini van with five front floors, one on top of another, and all rotten.
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Jul 28, 2019 16:18:41 GMT
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Five floors!! that made me chuckle!
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Jul 28, 2019 16:24:36 GMT
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I saw a Carlton mk3 at the local dealers back in the day, a guy had bought the car some place else in the dark & rain with some issues and wanted the dealer to sort them, it looked like the car had been rolled and repaired very badly as you could get your fingers in between the door frames and windscreen pillars oh and wrinkles across the roof!
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Jul 28, 2019 17:03:37 GMT
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A Mate had a MK4 Cortina estate the that was as rotten as a pear, and wanted to trade it in against an ex-demo Orion. The dealer saw it and offered him £150, which left him short of what he needed by about£500. 2 days later, we'd built the bottoms of the rear wings with bike spokes, and filler spread on polythene sheets and slapped up against the sides of the car to get the profile right, sanded down and undersealed or rattle canned all over the place. Took it back and saw a different salesman, got £800! Still feel guilty about that, long before scrappage schemes
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stealthstylz
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,842
Club RR Member Number: 174
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Jul 28, 2019 18:25:57 GMT
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I wish I'd have got photos but it was before I had a camera phone - got called to say drag a dangerous car in by police, turned up and it was a 4th Gen Prelude. Looked absolutely ace (for a mid 2000s style car at the time), mild kit, absolutely on the floor on 20" wheels etc. Officer wouldn't tell me what was wrong, just said only way it could leave our yard was on a trailer. 0nce back at the yard we stuck it over the pit and had a look - it had no springs in the suspension, various snapped wheel studs with the heads glued into the wheels, the bodykit was attached with filler only, and funniest of all the rear brake lines had obviously been stretched too far so they'd just cut them and stuck a bolt in the end. Anyway next day the owner turned up with a recovery truck and took it away. 3 hours later we get a call from the police to pull a car in. I go out and it's the same car. After the police looked at CCTV it turned out they'd dumped it off the truck at the petrol station down the road and were driving round in it again.
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Midas
Part of things
Posts: 505
Club RR Member Number: 14
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Jul 28, 2019 18:38:51 GMT
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Finding the pedal box on my first kit car held in with wood screws was a special moment. I have also seen snapped head bolts and wheel studs glued into place.
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Last Edit: Jul 29, 2019 6:05:06 GMT by igor
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Not really the worst ever, but pretty ropey looking Whoever built the Fug before us used whatever came to hand
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snooks86
Part of things
Posts: 60
Club RR Member Number: 92
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This was a nice surprise when we removed the steering column from my mk2 golf pretty sure it’s meant to collapse in the event of a crash but a bit of pigeon s41t weld stops that 😲😲😲
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Last Edit: Jul 29, 2019 8:12:41 GMT by Deleted
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Is wood not standard on those old things?
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Jul 29, 2019 10:27:41 GMT
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Is wood not standard on those old things? Only thing that should be wood is the floor infill panel Box section sills when fitted correctly should look like this Its a complete misconception that people hold that just because the body superstructure is mounted upon on a well engineered & built chassis That the structure of a bodged / structurally compromised body is therefore unimportant - fact is that in event of a frontal / rear or side on impact the bodywork would just fold up / clamshell upon the occupants of the cockpit - regardless of the well built / strong chassis
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Last Edit: Jul 29, 2019 10:30:07 GMT by Deleted
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Jul 29, 2019 11:13:07 GMT
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Is wood not standard on those old things? Only thing that should be wood is the floor infill panel *posts photo of wooden steering wheel*
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Jul 29, 2019 11:23:34 GMT
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Sills compromising of rust, fibreglass & wood !!
You may not have photo's to hand but looking at how far into each car you go, I'm willing to wager a fair chunk of wedge you've seen many more 'Work of art' bodges over the years? I'll bet some were harder to achieve than a proper repair too!
Do tell - even without pictures.
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96 E320 W210 Wafter - on 18" split Mono's - Sold :-( 10 Kia Ceed Sportwagon - Our new daily 03 Import Forester STi - Sold 98 W140 CL500 AMG - Brutal weekend bruiser! Sold :-( 99 E240 S210 Barge - Now sold 02 Accord 2.0SE - wife's old daily - gone in PX 88 P100 2.9efi Custom - Sold
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Jul 31, 2019 20:09:05 GMT
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Seen more than a few myself! Like Grumpy above a long career in the motor trade with restorations as a sideline has exposed me to all manner of elegant and downright ugly bodges with all shades in between.
Early in my career the garage where I did my apprenticeship owned a truck cab SWB Landy as a recovery vehicle with a Harvey Frost on the back. It had been built from 2 ex military Landies of different vintages by someone without access to a tape measure, as it was nearly 1.5" longer on one side than the other and crabbed down the road something awful. Despite this, I and many others put thousands of miles on the old crate, sometimes lifting vehicles that were so heavy you had to brake and exploit the weight transfer in order to steer it!
Another time at the same place, I removed the head from a Morris Minor that had a compression down, to find a beautifully lathe turned oak piston complete with piston ring lands and rings. In those days a new piston was about a fiver, it must have cost more in time to make the wooden one than was saved!
A couple of years later, I bought an Austin 1300 Countryman, cheap. It was sitting a bit low and seemed a bit gutless but the price was right so I took it. But when I tried to blow up the suspension, the pressure in the system was already at exploding point. I found that both sills were poured from solid concrete, which explained everything!
I could go on for hours, maybe i'll come back with some more later!
Steve
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