Compound curves, and a spring hanger!

The nearside sill was, then, completed. Apart from the final seam weld I want to add underneath, for a bit more strength, but I will wait until she is back on her side before I do that.
The next nasty area staring me in the face was the scuttle, mainly the area around where it joins the dash side. The same area the front wing bolts on to, where many MGBs have rust starting to show. Sure enough, I had plenty of rust holes and thinned metal to sort out. So for my usual tactics- cut it all out, and replace it! The cardboard templates and hand nibbler were used again, and I cut back to sound metal then replaced with new panels.

Oh dear, it looks awfully complicated. Curvey in all different directions.....

Nibbler to the rescue! Cutting out a piece at a time, going back to good metal, taking out a chunk which can be replaced be a repair section fabricated from steel sheet.

Cardboard templates are perfect for working out what shape to make the repair sections. fill the gaps with cardboard, tape it together, unfold it flat, and make the same shape from steel. Easy!

The most difficult bit was going to be further back, around the bottom of the A-Pillar and screen frame, where there are beautiful compound curves with the straight lines of the car flowing into the windscreen pillar. And they had to be replaced, along with part of the screen frame.

That is a big hole to fill in. I was worried at this point I would never get it all back together, it is so daunting. Would it ever be the right shape? Note I am alse repairing a section of the windscreen frame, note also some repair pieces which have just been weld-through primed ready for use.

I was never going to be able to repair the whole area from one piece of steel, so instead I made several sections and with a fair bit of panel beating, I got them the right shape and they fitted in perfectly. It is impossible to describe the process of making a flat, oddly-shaped piece of steel into an awkward curved shape, which is smooth, and of the correct radius and shape, using only a hammer and dolley.

Wow, I think I might actually be able to manage it! It's difficult to describe how complicated this process is!

Somehow, I managed it. The pieces were put into place and seam welded together. And when ground back, there was the perfect shape of the scuttle. It just somehow worked. Well Hurrah, and Huzzah. The surface is a little rough from grinding, but I will cover it in a thin layer of lead, to protect this vulnerable area from corrosion as much as to get the correct smooth finish. I’m itching to try my hand at lead-loading, I have the lead, the flux, I’m just waiting for my blowlamp to turn up.

...And breathe!!! YAY, it worked! It's as solid as when it was built, and it looks and feels good even without any lead yet. I was told I would never manage this, and I should just use flat pieces of steel and build up the surves with filler. Screw that! It worked!

And the front wing fits perfectly, too! Oooooh yeah! Joy!

I then turned my attention to the rear spring hanger, in anticipation of the new floor pan waiting to go in place. On top of the spring hanger, there should be the heelboard extension plate, which the floor pan sits on top of. The extension plate spreads the load from the spring hanger into the floor pan, heelboard and rear chassis leg and step sill.
Valleri didn’t have them on either side. Bleeeeeegh. Previous repairmen, when replacing the spring hangers and floor pans, had omitted them, instead bodging something up out of lots of small steel plates, which was sound enough but not to my liking. So my new heelboard extension plates rapidly turned up through the medium of the courier, and I started cutting out the patches and trial fitting the new plate.

After a lot of grinding and welding, it test fitted perfectly, so I repaired a section of rusted flange which was necessary to attach the floor pan too, cleaned the steel up to shinyness, and gave the top of the spring hanger, and the underside of the heelboard extension plate a good couple of coats of weld-through primer. Ready for welding in place tomorrow, hopefully followed by the floor pan as well.

Noooo, I can't find my "before" photo at the moment! But here it is, repaired and ready for the new heelboard extension to be fitted, followed by the new floorpan!