An Introduction: Chris Collins and Morris Tilly Project

[jack neville]

Underneath the passenger floor, where I wleded in the large flat patch, this piece of reinforcing needs to be relocated along with the mounting brackets for the seat base. This was removed and the excess old floor metal removed.

[jack neville]

There is still a fair bit of work to go on the body but at this stage it was ready to sandblast. I took it outside and Chris spent some time removing any remaining body deadener from the underneath so the blasting would be effective.

[jack neville]

The side panels for the rear body whilst being intact and rust free are a bit too difficult to straighten perfenctly so we opted to make new panels. The inside tool boxes were removed by separating the spot welds. The boxes can be sandblasted and reused by rewleding to new side panels.

[jack neville]

Sandblasted and ready to give a coat of primer to hold it from rusting as all the repairs and rebuilding take place.

[jack neville]

The finish on a Tilly as mentioned earlier is rougher than a car. No lead wiping is included so to convert a car body to a Tilly requires melting all the lead out of joins around the door area, and front seams. Seems strange to 'de-finish' a vehicle.

[jack neville]

Another big job was stripping all two sets of suspension dampers. About ten dampers were stripped to get enough parts to complete eight. Four front and four rear. The arms were sandblasted and the housings treated in the electrolysis bath. Pistons and valves were cleaned in thinners. Apart from a couple which had rust inside, they mostly cleaned up well. I pressed out the arms and installed new oil seals and then reassembled them. I used a small punch in the press to cut enough gaskets for the rear seal in one go.

[jack neville]

New bushes were installed in the suspension arms and links. One bush was pushed in one side and then the other side was cut down in the lathe and the two halves glued together.