An Introduction: Chris Collins and Morris Tilly Project

[jack neville]

Both sides are now complete with inner guards manufactured and welded in place. I will get them blasted for better paint adhesion. Chris has primed all the timber which has been glued and screwed together ready for fitting. In the meantime I assembled one of the doors.

[jack neville]

Any little dents were straightened in the outer skin. It was then a simple matter of cutting the two inner sections were they overlapped and manipulating the lap joint so when welded together and ground down the welds would be flush. The edges were then hammered back over and redressed. I needed several clamps to get the corners tucked in tight to start with.

[jack neville]

Completed side panels back from sandblasting ready for paint and assembly.

[jack neville]

The sides are now painted and the timber frames nailed on and most of the hood bow fittings added. I have salvaged screws and bolts where possible as like Colin Jones has found with his counter sunk bolts, trying to get slotted screws and bolts in Australia these days is very difficult unless you have old stock. Very annoying when you only need a few of each different size. In fitting the sides I found they didn't marry up to the chassis as good as I would like them to. Some further study at the remains and scraps of wood I have been working off found that I had made the body 20mm too wide. So it all had to come apart again and the holes to the B pillar widened and the cross beams shortened and then on reassembly everything went together perfectly. I had to redo the front B pillar lower timber supports as I had made the gap between them too narrow to allow the rear seat to fit when folded down and they were also a few millimetres too low and the floor boards would have dipped at the front. That is the problem with not having an accurate body to copy from. In places it has been repaired over the years inaccurately so what I thought were accurate facsimiles looked good until it went together. There is an awful lot of trial and fit and refit with this sort of coachwork restoration but I am happy that it is now ready to lay in the floor boards. Incidentally, I had to get my timber man, Nigel Effemey at Streamline Timber in Geelong to machine up the tongue and groove floor boards as the modern boards have a 'double frog' (grooves) in the bottoms that wouldn't look right.

[jack neville]

Pictures would help

[Mike K]

Starting to look like a tilly . Have you worked out which tilly is going to which owner ? And the paint schemes , its a choice of many colours and finishes , matt satin or gloss

[Chris Collins]

I was going to pop down today and do my bit but was feeling a bit flat after the shellacking the catters got last night... . i've a few odds and sods here to work on here though.

The Vehicles show signs of being painted probably Scc15 OD, but as they never saw service here and theres a gazillion Olive drab trucks around, we've gone for something a bit more British.

The scheme is going to be SCC2 Brown with SCC 14 grey-black disruptive over the top (variants of MTP 46a schemes, one of which is the well known Mickey mouse pattern). This is a scheme that was seen from late 42 till the end of the war, even though it was officially phased out mid 44. This is why everything that has top coat is Poo brown

I'm pareticularly looking forward to put all the formation signs, gas paint splodge etc etc, make it really stand out from the crowd.

The paints are based on the blends researched by Mike Starmer, using mixs of readily available hobby paints and based on extant examples and colour chips.

We're settling on a egg shell semi gloss for finish, John has had a bad experience using flatting media, most tilly pics seem to have a slight sheen.

Ownership? well, we have a co- funder so the plan is to get one each, I think I 'll get the last one as i want to keep the energy up to keep the project going, he has magnanimously said I can to drive the first one while the second one is being worked on.