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The bonnet was the original - although it had been stripped. It was remarkably rust free, but it had the noticeable front droop along with the derigur dents and wrinkles. Paul tackled it, panel beating and flippering it straight. The nose what smacked upwards with a large block of wood and 40lbs sledge. Then it was given a coat of rust converter and put away until it was needed.

11am onwards.

This it happened: Because we wanted to be uncompromised when getting to these rusty areas:

Because I knew what was going to have to be done with the internal roof rails, we unpicked the roof skin. We stripped the remaining filler off the skin, welded up some rust holes that appeared(!) then gave it a good flippering, fettling and farnarkling to make it as ripple free as we could. It was then given a coat of rust converter on both sides, then carefully stored away until it was required... Around this time I also had the heater core and radiator refurbished: Yuck!

I have to back track slightly here: Before the RH engine bay rail was welded into place we decided to correct the misalignment of the poorly installed RH skirt and rail. The whole front end was never aligned correctly post accident and it missed my jig mounts by a good 12mm. The required us to cut the top radiator support and pull the top of the RH strut tower OUT. Paul gave me a hand with this: The bottom of the skirt was unpicked from the footwell and then was gently persuaded to fit the jig at the bottom. This got the RH front skirt and rail back into position and allowed us to continue with the repairs to the front clip. The top of the radiator support was then repaired with new sections:

The front lower crossmember needed to be repaired, so it was measured, media blasted, cut in half, a new centre section folded up and then welded into place. The rusty ends were also replaced. We also fabricated a replacement for rear of the lower radiator crossmemeber:

hindsight is a wonderful thing gav! I think we all wish we bought Bitcoin! I’m much the same, conservative risk appetite. All this crypto business reminds me of the dot com bubble when people were pouring money into anything internet related, half the companies weren’t actually doing anything. 20 years later only a few companies still exist. chance of choosing the right company....slim... I think there’s still a place for savings accounts, in that if your goal is to save a deposit for a house, you don’t exactly want all your money at risk in the market. For example it took 20 years for the US market to recover to its old high after the Great Depression. but I agree, index funds for the win