Series 1 or 2 ? 

I'm all for originality, but I can't stand the tail lights on a series 2. Its typical of what happened in the late sixties in this country (USA) when politicians and government bureaucracy started to dictate the size of indicators lamps and  bumper. As far as I'm concerned they took a thing of beauty and hack it up. So against the most sacred rights of any restoration projects, I'm changing the car. Lets face it, the rear end is just better looking on a series 1! Again all the sheet metal was readily available from SNG Barratt in Manchester NH. The lower rear quarters are the same, but the licenses plate holder is different and there's a few filler pieces that join everything together that as also needed. When I get to that part of the project I'll be sure to put up come pictures. This shot shows the back of the car after I removed the trunk bottom, lower rear quarters and the rear valance/licenses plate holder. Again my saw-all made short work of the rusty material. Other than wanting to remove the rust the reason I did this was to also increase the size of the wheel wells to accommodate larger tires. To be precise I will be using 245-40-18, compared to what was on the car 185-70-15. The overall diameter will only increase by a little over 1/2 inch, from 25.196 to 25.716. But the diameter is not the issue, its the width of the tire I need to address.  

Creating a Wide Bodied "E" 

In order to stuff 10 pounds of sh@t in a 5 pound bag, something has it give! After talking to Gary Hagopian, who indeed has wider that normal tires on his E, I started to take a closer look at how I could widen the rear end. Gary allowed me to create templates from his car and he told me the body shop that worked on his car  moved the quarters out 3/4 of an inch, and increased the wheel opening. My first attempted was to cut the inner wheel well at both front and back, and tack in a wedge filler piece. This piece was wider at the bottom (arch opening) and it literally pusher the rear quarter out. I managed to gain 5/8", but the quarter was defiantly loosing its natural curve. This next series of photos show how I managed to gain 1 1/4" of extra room for those fat tire I mentioned above. Firstly I use a flat edge to find the flattest spot on the crown of the quarter. As curvy as these car are, you will find a flat spot! I found the handle of a mechanical square to do this quite well, but any known flat surface will suffice. As I found the flattest point I dot marked the quarter with a red maker . I them connected the dots so to speak and created a smooth line from front to back on the quarter . This time I got out my jig-saw and started to cut from the back of the car forward. This worked well until I ran into the inner fender and broke the blade. One of many I might add. At this point I wedged in a piece of timber at the start of the cut so the blade would not bind up and had another go at it. You guessed it, within a matter of seconds I broke another blade. Time to brake out the big guns.........I grabbed my saw-all and installed a 4" blade. Holding the saw an angle I was able to cut through the quarter without hitting the inner fender. I continued cutting with the saw-all all the way to the door post. This shot shows the completed cut . As you can also see in this shot I started to set up the quarter to gain the space I needed, and started clamping in temporary pieces to hold everything in place.

Shaping the crown and welding 
in the filler pieces

As most of you know if you try and bend something that being in shape for thirty year, in any manner other than what it was in, you may have a little distortion on your hands. If this were a perfect work I would have created new quarters on an English Wheel and welded them in place. But I don't have a wheel handy so in order for me to get the crown of the quarter to lay flat I needed to make several small relief cuts. These cuts were 2" long and it appeared that six was enough to relieve the stress. I used my jig saw on these because the saw-all would hack up the metal too much. I then clamped the quarter down in front of each cut, and gently pushed on the back of the quarter in until the start of the cut closed up. I put a tack on the very end to hold it in place and then moved on to the next one. When all six were tacked up, I cut small pieces of sheet metal to use as blacking plates, clamped them in place, and welded the cuts up solid. I then set up the quarter in the correct position using every clamp I own, and started to tack in the filler piece starting at the door post and working back  . I used a piece of 1/4" X 2" flat close to the crown for extra strength, and then continued toward the rear of the car  . At its widest the gap I needed to fill was 2 3/8", tapering down to nothing at the doorpost and approximately 2 1/4" at the other end. The next two shots show the quarter from front and back after welding was competed and cleaned.

Finishing off the corner

Since I moved the quarter out this caused it to grow longer at the end. As you can see from this shot I have already cut the end of the quarter. I them moved the piece forward to correct the line and clamped it in place . I made the lower filler piece and then the upper piece, also clamping then in place . I checked to insure the lines look good and I then tacked everything in place . I allowed everything to fully cool and then I welding it up completely . As with welding up the quarter or any other light gauge sheet metal piece, its important to move around and distribute the heat throughout the piece. If you weld in one spot for too long there's is a strong chance that the metal will distort due to the heat build up. Trust me, I learned this from (bad) experience! This completed the passenger side of the car. Also giving that I never done this before and it turned out looking fairly good, I'm happy with my efforts. Work of this nature can be broken down like this - 80% Effort, 10% Luck and the remaining 10% is split between Hope and Chance! Now that its finished I can move onto the drivers side, with about 80% chance of getting it right on the first try.