part 1 Previous history of the car; how I found and bought it (1994) ..

part 2Diagnostic inventory, dismantling, survey work to be done (1995-96)

part 3  Mechanical matters (1997-98)

part 4 Body repairs (1999)

part 5 Painting (1999-2000)

part 6 Begin reassembly (2000)

part 7 Reassembly continued

     

Click on the required page

    

part 8 Problems with the top

part 9 At last the upholstery!

part 10 Getting wired for music

part 11Still more reassembly (2001))

part 12 Seats and door panels go in

part 13 First venture out of garage; lining the top

part 14After 7 years, roadworthy!

The Story without end .. (4)

Posted on January 10, 2000

The body in phase of sheet metal work. The "frame" is a wood affair with 4 small wheels..Let’s review the story so far: at my place I have a rolling chassis, with a restored engine and transmission and redone front suspension, which has travelled approximately 200 km since the summer of 1998. (In reality, the rear wheels are raised off the ground and an Imperial odometer is attached to the steering box.) The chassis actually has travelled about this same distance during various visits to body shops but always on a trailer!

The impetus for the next phase came in September 1999 when, after an astronomical estimate of more than 85,000 Francs (= $ 12 000.00), I despaired of ever finding a craftsman capable of returning the Crown to its former glory. A friend told me that an avid collector who was at the same time a professional body man had just opened a business in the vicinity, specializing in restoration of collector cars. Since he was only 10 km from my home, I lost no time in getting together with him for an estimate. It seemed to be reasonable and in no time I brought him the Crown, mounted as always on its wooden chariot. Mr. Bertrand Hughes (that’s his name) planned to complete the work by the end of 1999The body shop man fills the critical area (here the A/C pocket) with special filler. and, given that the Imperial occupied a great deal of space, in no time he was putting the grinder to the bodywork, full of holes. The task turned out to be more difficult than predicted, or at least of longer duration, because all of the lower body had to be cut out. What’s more, it turned out that damage from a earlier side collision had been hastily camouflaged with a thick layer of body filler so that the shape of the right rear fin bore only a distant resemblance to the original. Once the sills had been cut out, it was evident that they had been the subject of a restoration by a previous owner who had probably never heard of an arc welder nor a grinder. His idea of bodywork was to take a piece metal and solder it into place, with a blowtorch, of all things. Without wanting to be slanderous, I must say that this "hand-crafted masterpiece" must have taken place in the back yard of a Ghanaian shanty. Bertrand carefully saved the remains so that I could one day display them in a showcase alongside my trophies…(Oh, oh, I’m counting my chickens before they hatch, but after 5 years of waiting, what can you expect? Surely you can forgive me for going off the deep end now and then.).

The engine/transmission/frame is ready to "welcome" again his body.This all happened during the Christmas holidays (remember, I’m a teacher) and the the comings and goings between my home and the body shop increased as we fitted chrome trim to check the body shape, discovered and then filled non-original "ventilation holes", removed the "African undercoating" from the floor of the trunk, refitted the doors and the fenders, flattened and aligned the trunk floor (damaged by the sandblasting), fitting the hood from the donor car (by now a wreck) since mine was too badly damaged, and so on, and so on….

But as we were positioning the doors and hood and trunk lid, a problem arose: nothing fit! The doors wouldn’t close and the trunk lid overlapped the bodywork by a centimeter on one side. It was obviously impossible to adjust all the pieces without putting the body back onto the chassis! And, of course, once everything was adjusted properly, taking the body back off the chassis was out of the question. So:
1) paint the insides,
2) mount the body back onto the chassis,
3)adjust the fenders, doors, and so on,
4) finally sand and paint the whole thing.
Critical instant : the body is hanged to a shop crane and put over the frame.

I wasn’t too excited about this sequence (how were we going to mount all the pieces without damaging anything and how were we going to avoid painting the motor and chassis once everything was in one piece?) but it was the only alternative.

The choice of colours (white with a slight green tinge) had been made early in December and the interior of the body as well as all of the minor parts were painted just before Christmas. Because Bertrand had already spent more time than he had planned, he had to put in overtime to finish the Imperial because there were other cars on his agenda for January. So the week between the Christmas Day and New Year’s would be critical. The chassis arrived on the 27th and that day was devoted to mounting the body onto the chassis. Just as we saw in films from the fifties, the chassis was gently lowered onto the rolling chassis. Well, all right, maybe instead of 10 workers and a remote controlled hoist there were only 4 of us and a whopping great block and tackle. I was careful to put the radiator and air conditioner evaporator into place first, knowing from experience that it was almost impossible to do it later.

 

  Action ! Body is ready to be bring down the frame

Remember, December 27…! Doesn’t that remind you of something. Of course. It was the day of the storm. The late afternoon was marked by great gusts of wind but luckily only the sign was torn away. In any event, by 7 p.m. the electricity was cut off but by then the body had been solidly bolted back into place. And I returned home in the windstorm, zigzagging around the fallen tree branches on the way….

Other pics:

Hood and front fenders Inside Frame protection The engine bay

The hood comes from my 57 wrecked car. The front fenders were also not very "straight"...

The inside of the car is ready so M. B. Hughes paints it To avoid paint fog, the frame is "painted" with Slime, a special product which 'll come off later with water

Note that I installed the A/C evaporator before put the body on the frame. But I forgot to put the cover !

 

Thanks to "Tony" (Magister Max on the IML) for the translation ...

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