Some photos before and after pulling.
Front strut top mounts before and after:
Engine mounts before and after:
Front screen jig before and after:
With the car held down to the jig by means of the various brackets that now fit, plus a pair of sill clamps, the front towers could be pulled.
The Porta Power is lifting the offside tower a bit, whilst helping it in and rearwards a little.
At the front, the current front pan doesn't fit the jig brackets, but I was able to lock them in one hole down (these have an upper and lower position), and then use long bolts / screws to hold the front of the car where I wanted it. Later on I'll weld some temporary straps between front of inner wings and the jig-bed whilst the front pan comes out. There is still some spring in the area, but as more and more work is carried out, I'll work this spring out before any new metal goes in. In the meantime, those ugly long bolts are holding everything just-so.
Whilst on same subject, all that pulling around has got the nearside torque tube end into the correct position. The four bolt 'receivers' though are a different matter ...
Barry says:
The whole of the nearside of the car needed to go forwards a fraction, so I did this with the Porta-Power. This corrected several problems all at once.
The next issue was that the rear was slightly bent over to the nearside. This was corrected by means of drilling, bending and welding on a 3mm steel strap for the dozer to grab. This worked well, and if the need arose, the plate could be cut off, the welds linished and the rear slam panel none the worse for wear.
It was then time for some more work on the back end, this time in a vertical direction. I'm omitting a bit of detail here - Barry is extraordinarily (in my view) open about his methods, but this bit has a couple of trade secrets.
Anyway the news was good:
As hoped, the nearside was lower than the offside, which explains why the front screen jig fitted as it did, pre-pulling.
The rear nearside being lower than the offside pulled the roof back, pulling the A-pillar back away from the jig.
As shown in the previous photos, the shell is somewhat bent. So the first work package is pulling - applying fairly large forces to the car to try to pull it back into shape. We have the Celette jig to tell us how it's going, and also some other tools (like the screen jigs).
One of the indications of the front end twist was the front suspension mounts. They had been hacked about pretty badly, presumably to get the front suspension to fit despite the mounting points being misaligned. So on the jig they went.
To quote Barry, findings were:
Both of the Macpherson strut top mountings are pretty battered, and the offside one has been ground down, plus one of its clamp plates cut down.
Now actually, I don't think the inner wing itself was out so far as to justify this wanton bodgerism, so I wonder if the upright itself was bent, and to a degree, this is what is trying to be corrected here?
... seems like a plausible theory.
Since I'm not using the uprights (struts) that came with the car, I don't much care whether they are bent. In fact, better if that's the problem not shell twist.
This is what I mean by hacked about:
... and this is how the mounting points looked on the Celette.
Not great, but not as disastrous as I had feared:
Moving to the back end, here are the "before" pictures of the engine mount points, relative to their correct positions on the Celette:
I think this can be summed up as "not great". That jig should fit waaay better than this.
I knew that the front pan etc had been repaired, and had planned with Barry that these repairs would be coming out (see panel list - already bought all of those bits).
As shown here, the previous repairs were somewhat agricultural:
The main problem up at this end is that, either as a result of poor front end restoration, or more likely as a result of trauma, the front end is twisted.
One side is about 10mm higher than the other:
There are also various areas of corrosion / damage repair to the front inner wings.
We had hoped to save the inner wings, but it now seems likely that new front inners and a-posts are the most sensible option.
Panel cost of that is quite high, and of course it takes more time.
More investigation required before that decision can be made.
I knew the previous torque tube end repairs were poor, and would be re-done.
Torque tube itself is OK. More pitted at ends than expected. End repairs will sort this out.
Fit to the jig is not too awful:
The bad news back here is old buckling and ugly repairs to the inner wings. All of that needs unpicking and properly fixing. So there's more work than expected to the rear inner wings / "chassis rails":
Really not bad.
Rear screen jig fits quite well:
Rear of shell is a little low, implying that any previous work was not jig based:
Slightly more corrosion than I thought, but not much.
Parcel shelf and inner sills less good than they looked. Still a very good shell in this regard.
