A space invader or a new project!!

[73stagman]

My mate has bought himself a "new" Stag. He wanted a bit of a project car which he could tinker with and fix whilst enjoying the UK summer!!

OK now you've all stopped laughing.. at the weather obviously no one here will laugh at a Stag. Would they?

I have posted this before as I went along and "helped" him into parting with his cash and pointing out the more and very obvious "bits" that needed "doing"

Well to cut a long story a bit shorter Brian ended up with a glossy primer RV8 powered MK1 Stag. The car came with a long list receipts for work carried out including lots of body repairs (sills and floors were very obviously done but not to a great standard) and engineers report for the RV8 installation as well as a couple of months MOT and some road tax. A bit of time to enjoy before heading into the realms of "Winter repair work"

The most obvious problems off the bat were blowing exhaust manifold, some rust around the front passenger floor area and a very wobbly rear end which was caused by very obviously badly deteriorated bushes.
However Mr Crossman (Brian ) was now the proud owner of a nice glossy white Stag which was a bit tatty round the edges but not a load of money lighter.
He has subsequently joined us on here and reads these pages daily.... he'll love this!!! And probably fill me in on all the exact details which I have wrong later!

(Unfortunately at the moment I dont have any pictures of the beautiful car as it looked when purchased)

The exhaust manifold was blowing badly so straight into it went Brian and dutifully replaced the exhaust manifold gaskets and continued to enjoy his dream car!

It didnt take long however before the gremlins attacked the "use it and fix it" plan and a few days later the car munched it points. Then its battery in pretty short fashion So the battery was charged and a new set of points was fitted along with some other obvious ignition bits and bobs. Shortly this was followed by a simple non lumenition electronic system some days later to eliminate the points reliability issue. It ate that. So was fed another.
Around now Brian thought it would be a good idea to do the rear bushes and I was quite happy to help as required. Before getting stuck in though Brian did the smart thing and got a "Pre MOT check done at our local station (two minutes walk from work which is quite convenient!) and was not really surprised that it failed.... well by most of the fail list! We knew about the deteriorated bushes and we knew abut the blowing exhaust... new gaskets at the manifold highlighted other ares of escaping exhaust gas and so we had a plan to remove and reseal the whole system. We were quite surprised though that "in the opinion of the examiner the car is dangerous to drive" due to ....... corroded front chassis leg and rear suspension mounts (we knew about one of these.. the anti vibration strap on the passenger side had been welded (??) to the rear floor repair panel and the weld had broken)

So dive underneath and hey presto the examiner is right! The bit of driving the Brian had done and the horrendous rain he had been caught in had not only shown him how water tight the Stag was but must have also washed off any covering paint over what was a horribly cracked front chassis leg. The crack started just behind the passenger side drag strut and ran along the bottom of the chassis leg towards the rear of the car as far as the first out rigger. The crack was repeated on the other side of the chassis leg and the two cracks were then joined together by another crack running right across the under side of the chassis leg under the strut arm. What was holding this together? The floor pan and bulkhead!

So now.....
My car is a rolling chassis and outside and
There is a space invader in my garage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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And that chassis rail after the first bit of surgery

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We knew the corner closest to the camera was ropey and leaking water into the car but the extent of this chassis rot came as a bit of a surprise! However things are progressing and we have put some good steel back in and have some more pictures to post later.

[73stagman]

One of the things that we have discovered and are both rather surprised by is the "four section sill" set up. We have read about "king sills" but were under the impression that these were only fitted to the first 300 or so cars. Brian's is a fairly early car (LD10640 or similar Brian can correct me if thats very wrong) but the point is that I think the shell was too late for king sills so where do these come from or is our information wrong!

If you look carefully here you can see the two inner sections amongst all the rotten bits but clearly there are four sections of sill in total. The rusty parts of the inner sections are completely confined to the very ends of the panels and the main outer sill is unaffected by any corrosion. The same cant be said about the bottom of the outer wing panel.

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[AlanD]

very intresting Neil, i'm following this with interest, and you now have a new winter project

[Ian Durrant]

One of the things that we have discovered and are both rather surprised by is the "four section sill" set up. We have read about "king sills" but were under the impression that these were only fitted to the first 300 or so cars. Brian's is a fairly early car (LD10640 or similar Brian can correct me if thats very wrong) but the point is that I think the shell was too late for king sills so where do these come from or is our information wrong!

If you look carefully here you can see the two inner sections amongst all the rotten bits but clearly there are four sections of sill in total. The rusty parts of the inner sections are completely confined to the very ends of the panels and the main outer sill is unaffected by any corrosion. The same cant be said about the bottom of the outer wing panel.

[IMG][/IMG]

That doesn't look like the "King" Sill to me. It looks more like an outer sill/bottom edge of wing, in profile. I think someone has welded a new wing on over a part of the old wing. Also the jacking point pressing appears to be missing.