Hey guys, I thought id show everyone what me and the boys have been getting up to at work...I'll use this one thread to show our various projects but first up is actually a Torana.
John, a fellow member on here came to us after the car had been sitting at another shop for over a year pushed into a corner :/ They had done some decent work and replaced most of the front panels but most of the gutters were rusted out as well as some issues with the fitment of the tail lights and rust in the beaver. But ill start off with the roof swap.
This is pretty much how it came to us:
Took a bunch of measurements first, like the width of the gap between the tops of the doors and the roof, bottom of the windscreens to the top, height of the side windows etc to ensure the new roof went back on in the same position... Then a bunch of temporary bracing was welded inside to keep everything in place once the top was removed:
Then out came the Air-Grinder, at this stage everything was just cut off near on as high as possible.
Unsurprisingly all the internal structure was abit rusty since its all bare metal inside from factory
Then I removed the layers of skins so there was only one layer left per pillar... All the cuts are staggered so once its welded back together all the welds are not in the same place to increase strength, next is a pic of the aforementioned pieces... all fairly rusty and were thrown in the blast cabinet and cleaned back to fresh steel (the piece in the top left of the bottom-right pic had already been blasted)
All the exposed sections on the body were blasted and cleaned and coated in epoxy inside n out.
After alot of measurements the new roof was carefully trimmed back, test fitted, trimmed abit more etc etc until I was happy with the fitment then the whole inner frame was sandblasted as well as the gutters, outer skin was already bare metal when delivered to us so just used some ranex to clean it up, Then the lot was also coated in epoxy
Once cured all the edged that were to be welded were cleaned up, weld through primer applied to areas I wont have access to later, roof was sat on the car and after many measurements while compared to the measurements taken at the start the roof was tacked in place:
Glass was also test fitted, the rear glass sat in nicely with even gaps all the way around:
But when I fit the front window frame seemed abit out of square even tho it measured up ok. You can see how the gap is tighter near the bottom (red circle) but opens up at the top (blue circle) and it was the opposite on the drivers side.
So decided to put some decent welds on the B and C pillars as I was happy with where they were and then use the port-a-power to adjust the front pillars slightly (talking a few mm)
Thats where I am up to at the moment, Will clean back all the welds, then adjust the front until im happy... tripple check everything measures up nicely, start welding in the outer layers then Lead wipe the factory joins.
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