21 replies to this topic

[Rosslin Racing]

the door story will follow shortly. To make sure everything is 1st class I decided to fit the sills before the hinge panel and door, so its has side lined some what.
the inner sills have rusted becouse the water that collected in the sills could not escape just making it all rusty very very rusty. this van seems to have no jacking points.
OK a van has the jacking point set nearer to the rear wheels but did it have the inner bits?
If you look at the floorpan it looks great! Rustoleum I would say. scrap the paint off did not take long and what we have is rust!! the big question is would it still rust or was it stable?
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the front part of the inner sill needs replacing and the outer sill the box section at the rear wheel arch need work as well. photos to follow.

[Rosslin Racing]

Right instead of patching the inner sills with that oversill that some companys sell, I went the hard route.
I got the inner and outer sill with some floor pan ADA36002LQ, great part be nice if they did one for a van.
so with the hacksaw and spot weld drill I removed the offending parts, cleaned up the edges to weld and tryed to fit the new part. it is important to make sure it all fits in the right place, taking your time is worth while. I found that the sill fitted super at the front but at the back I was missing a good half inch, after trimming the strengthning plate I was able to loss this half inch gap at the back.
time to weld in the new part, I have seam welded the floor. innersills have seam welding at the front hinge panel and the door slam post, the rest will be spot welded. some of you may well be saying you have welded a saloon inner/out sill to a van?? thats true the inner sill on the later van shells are the same and it has an extension welded on. The outer sill will be removed with the spotwelder drill so that I can use it for another mini and then weld a new van outersill 14A9027 on which are the extra bit longer. I also want to see if the jacking point 14A8375 will fit the van sill.
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Edited by Rosslin Racing, 19 August 2008 - 04:41 PM.

[Rosslin Racing]

now I have sorted the sills out we can start with the hinge panels.
THIS IS HOW I DO EXTERNAL HINGE A PANELS.
I asume that you have removed the rusty items and the rest of the body around this area is OK.
I take the door which i have still to replace the outer skin, mount the hinges, the hinges should be new or rebuilt.
I only use Hertige panels for this. I take the outer and inner panels and make sure that fit together and all the holes line up hold them with small clamps.
then mount them to the hinges adjusting the panels so you have a nice even gap between A panels and door, when your happy you can tighten the nuts/screws so the A panels dont move around, remove the small clamps, you may find that the Bolt holes in the A panel need to be drill out abit this will aid the postioning of the A panel to the hinges.
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now the A panels on the door I can try and fit it to the body.
with a bit of movement you can push the whole lot in to place, you may have spots that are tight, lower part of the A panel. once its in you can clamp the inner panel (lower part) to the sill lip, it should all stay in place. step back and see what it looks like, whats the gap around the door like, you are aiming for the same gap all round. you should be in a position to move the A panel in or out up and down by doing that you will see the gap around the door changing. I put the front wing on and bonnet to see if all the gaps and panels line up this can take a few hours becouse you find the door gaps good but the wing dont fit to the A panel or the line on the door does not match the rest.

Edited by Rosslin Racing, 28 August 2008 - 03:54 PM.

[Rosslin Racing]

so once your happy with the way the door fits you can weld the panels in. I modified the outer a panel to suit the sill step I am aiming for this.
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I had to mess about abit with this, the hinge top one could do with moving more toward the front of the car, this would lift the door some what.
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you can also see the line I was on about the fold in the body line

[Rosslin Racing]

Got two pictures of outer sills. (lucky me) its intresting to see that they are diffrent.
One is gen HMP the other is a well known company , you can see that the copy is bigger this can lead to all sorts of mishaps.
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so when buying panels it not always cheaper to get copies.

[Rosslin Racing]

I fitted the front subframe as a test run to make sure it all fits the front end had to be bent around a bit to make it fit.
the rear end need abit of work so I have started on that.
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[beaubrad]

just what i needed for my a-panels