Boot repair part 2

The boot repairs are progressing slowly, the pictures below show the new panels have been formed. There is still a long way to go to finish this repair, lots of dressing flanges and welding. The boot area will need to be stripped of all paint and grot before the new panel is welded in place for good. Then just some small repair patches to finish this bit of the boot repair.

Now the rest of the news-

I have removed most of the sound deadening pads inside the car and it seems the rust isn't actually that bad. The only bit that might need work is the drivers front floor pan. It might turn out to be better to replace with a repair section. The car is now in the garage as the spitfire is over wintering in sunny Weymouth. When the footwell finally dry out i will run a wire wheel over the floor to remove some of the crud.

I have also managed to get the engine running, not easy seeing as the car had two types of spark plugs ( two of which were faulty), HT leads that were knackered and a distributor that was incorrectly set in the engine block, The coil was also knackered the rotor arm had also been tweaked. A new set of leads, plugs, coil from the spit and cleaned point had the car running. Albeit badly, there is an air leak in the the inlet system oh and clouds of blue smoke from the exhaust ! Bugger that put the idea of getting the car back on the road next summer. Plan B i think.

The air leak i think comes from the rubber hoses to the brake servos, havn't checked this yet but might be the reason the servos don't work . The blue smoke comes from either or both the valve stem seals and work piston rings. Both of which require major work on the engine.

So the new plan is to go straight into a full on resto and engine build. The major repairs to the body will be completed first the new injection system will probably be next. This is only because i dont want to do the initial tune to the injection system with a rebuilt engine. I at the very least will need the fuel and spark maps to run the engine with no load up to 2000RPM. This is because i need this to break in the new engine after the rebuild.