I started with verifying that the door was going to fit, gap-wise, based on the new lower A post, which warmed my heart. Otherwise, as with fitting the lower A post, there were more iterations of measuring and marking and remeasuring.
I ran into some technical difficulties with my Harbor Freight Metal Punch and Flange Tool where it would not fully pop a hole. This thing had some abuse before it was donated to me so it's been slowly degrading. I did get the holes in the inner sill but decided to drill holes in the strengthener plate. Also, my welding helmet auto-dim also stopped working for a mysterious reason, but it started again after I took it apart and put it back together. If you've never struck a MIG weld arc before, let me tell you, it is not pleasant looking at that thing head on. There's a reason people use MIG helmets to look at the sun during an eclipse. But, who knows, maybe the batteries just needed some attention.
I got the inner sill lined up and adjusted and clamped it in to take a look.
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| Initial fit. The crooked floor starts to become obvious as you move rearward. |
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| This lined up fine. A bit proud of the B post, but nothing a hammer won't fix. |
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| Again, a bit proud of the A post, especially at the top. This will take a bit more banging. |
I was all set to weld it in and I had a thought...what if I could move the floor in somehow. Then it occurred to me that if I used my grinding wheel to cut a slot in the floor board, I could bang it to close the slot, moving the floor board inward. It would then be a matter of running a weld bead to close up the small gap in the floor.
This would hopefully accomplish two things: (1) make the floorboard and the inner sill line up better, and (2) close the large gap at the heelboard that developed and which I somehow failed to take a picture of.
Throwing caution to the wind, that's what I did...and I was happy with the result. I wasn't very aggressive and could have taken more, but I didn't want to push my luck.
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| A poor picture showing the slot that I cut. |
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| The view from the back, showing a nearly zero gap which seam sealer will fix nicely! (sorry so blurry) |
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| The view from the outside, behind the rear wing. |
With that sorted, I tacked in the inner sill.
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| Inner sill tacked in. |
And, outside of the strengthener which I drilled and primed, that was about it. I probably lost at least an hour to the technical difficulties and with all of the fittings and markings, well, that's how long it took.
One other thing I did accomplish was a partial assessment of my boot damage. Rimmer's is having their 15% Off Fall Sale on Triumph parts so body repair pieces are even cheaper than usual. The sale ends Sunday so I need to know what I'm going to order!
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| RH inner boot floor. Bottom 1" of that outside piece with the big cutouts is gone, though not horribly. This part is still available. |
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| Same spot, but other side. This one is a little worse to go along with the worse lower outer portion of the wing in this area. |
Where the floor meets the rear outer valence is pretty bad, but it's just a straight piece so shouldn't be hard to repair. I didn't get a good enough picture of that where it's obvious, but you can look at it in the video below if you would like.
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| Shot of the LH rear lamp panel. These are not available new, but I should be able to either patch it or steal it from the black car. |
I made a quick video documenting the damage in order to ask on my favorite forum what their opinion is. I intend to get over there for just a bit tomorrow and get the old paint and seam sealer off to fully assess the extent, and then place the Rimmer's order based on that.
Here's the boot video - no work here, only visuals.
Cheers!
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