As I was completing the A pillar joints I noticed the 1946 car was finished off with nicely applied lead filler around the door frame and guttering. The wartime Tilllys got no such treatment so I melted all the lead from the entire door frame with the oxy torch. I didn't like the look of the rust behind the guttering so I unpicked the spotwelds and removed the guttering. It wasn't rusted through the body anywhere but I can now clean the guttering in my electrolysis bath and sandblast the body properly before reattaching the guttering.

Another area that requires modifying on the chassis is the seat mounts and passneger floor. The car was fitted with an under floor toolbox. Strangely that appears to have been a feature of the prewar cars as well but was removed from the Tilly. The floor was patched over. As the wartime seats were different and simpler the mounting is different but can be simply swapped over from the rusty Tilly. I would have thought leaving the toolbox in situ would have made more sense for a military vehicle.

The B pillars on the wartime Tillys have six caged nuts inserted in the rear of the pillar to attach the rear body. Converting the car pillar required the same but as it is a sealed peice I had to open it up to insert the cages. I folded the cages from 2mm sheet.

Forgot the photos

The cages were welded through the holes drilled each side and the cuts rewelded.

The tops of the B pillars are modified to join the roof. Crush tubes are inserted in the pillar with small pieces of pipe and the trafficator opening was welded over and the pillar capped.

I clamped the pillars in situ and they seem to look ok. Will try the roof and hang the doors when they are both ready before welding the pillars into place permanently.

Another small area that needs converting back to Tilly spec is a section of the side footwell. The car has stamped holes in the panel whilst the Tilly is solid. Only the large holes are filled with masonite so the stamped holes would be still visible. The rusty of front end collected from Len Watkins can donate these bits, including the straight flat bar welded on to accomodate the fire extinguisher bracket

Overnight in the electrolysis bath and they are ready to fishoil and weld in when the opposite is removed.

Found a photo of when I finished resetting all the strings

Over the last few weeks I have been getting the car body ready for sandblasting. Among the required mods was removing the under floor toolbox. Simply cut it out, remove the car seat mount and weld in a patch. I used these little devices which are handy for lining up the panels flush with each other before tacking the patch in place and then completing the weld.

The pieces with the holes were removed from the footwells on bothe sides. I will weld these tilly pieces in after it is sandblasted. I will leave them out for now just so the body is opened up better for blasting.

The bottom of the windscreen A pillar is finished off. Small metal sections were required for reinforcing the pillar on the outside and inside where it bolts together.

The Tilly has a stronger handbrake than the car. It has four mounting bolts whereas the car has two. The Tilly also has a reinforcing patch of metal welded around the position of the handbrake to strengthen the floor. this was removed fro the old Tilly and excess metal removed and cleaned up ready to weld over the prop shaft tunnel. Two extra mounting nuts were welded in place.

Underneath the passenger floor, where I wleded in the large flat patch, this piece of reinforcing needs to be relocated along with the mounting brackets for the seat base. This was removed and the excess old floor metal removed.

There is still a fair bit of work to go on the body but at this stage it was ready to sandblast. I took it outside and Chris spent some time removing any remaining body deadener from the underneath so the blasting would be effective.

The side panels for the rear body whilst being intact and rust free are a bit too difficult to straighten perfenctly so we opted to make new panels. The inside tool boxes were removed by separating the spot welds. The boxes can be sandblasted and reused by rewleding to new side panels.

Sandblasted and ready to give a coat of primer to hold it from rusting as all the repairs and rebuilding take place.

The finish on a Tilly as mentioned earlier is rougher than a car. No lead wiping is included so to convert a car body to a Tilly requires melting all the lead out of joins around the door area, and front seams. Seems strange to 'de-finish' a vehicle.

Another big job was stripping all two sets of suspension dampers. About ten dampers were stripped to get enough parts to complete eight. Four front and four rear. The arms were sandblasted and the housings treated in the electrolysis bath. Pistons and valves were cleaned in thinners. Apart from a couple which had rust inside, they mostly cleaned up well. I pressed out the arms and installed new oil seals and then reassembled them. I used a small punch in the press to cut enough gaskets for the rear seal in one go.

New bushes were installed in the suspension arms and links. One bush was pushed in one side and then the other side was cut down in the lathe and the two halves glued together.

what a fantastic job Jack. You never cease to amaze me :thup2:

springs
 

Hi

How did you reset the springs ?

Mike

Hammered them cold Mike. I got shown how to do it years ago and have done quite a few different types with success. Just seperate all the leaves and take the two main leaves and draw an outline on the ground in chalk. Hammer at close intervals from one end of the leaf to the other working a tighter curve. Each lower leaf needs about a 6mm gap from the leaf above it with the ends touching the leaf above it. Then when you clamp the centre bolt it will pull them all together and the spring will have a tighter curve. There is a bit if guesswork involved and you don't need to worry too much with the shorter leaves. Helps if you know what the distance from eye to eye should be. I couldn't find that spec in the Tilly manual so I just positioned the spring shackle in what looked like the right position and took that measurement. They may settle a bit but we will have to wait and see. I did my jeep springs like this years ago and they have lasted well. If you do heavier truck springs it pays to enlist the help of a young man to do the hammering. I have a heavy steel block with a couple of pieces of steel welded on the end spaced about 50 mm apart to form a bridge to hammer on.

Ok
 

You have taken on a mammoth task with those tillies .

Yes hammering . I have heard about it . Apparently its best to warm up the cold leaves by leaving them in the sun . There is a risk of a leaf cracking if theya re cold, like in the Winter .

I think they used to use a anvil , the horn on the end for the spring hammering ?

Can you post a pic of your bit of steel you use ?

Looks like you have a Hercus 260 lathe ..very nice http://www.lathes.co.uk/hercus/index.html

Yes Mike. Just acquired the lathe recently. It is in very good condition.

The Tillies do require alot of work but Chris has been very lucky to get his hands on plenty of parts sufficient to rebuild two of them. They are however easy to work on and not big heavy components to lug around.

The steel I use for resetting springs is actually a bucket wheel pin, a relic from a floating gold dredge that used to operate on the Avoca River at Amphitheatre back in the 50's-60's I think. The dredge sank in mysterious circumstances and was broken up for scrap. An uncle of mine who was working on it around that time told me they found bungs missing from the pontoons when it was scrapped. My father who was a local plumber in Amphitheatre at the time acquried the pin and used it as an anvil. It is a little over 2' high and 5 1/2" in diameter. The smaller legs were added for stability. I welded the two pieces of flat to the top to make the bridge and hammer the spring leaves between them as I move the leaf across the top. You can see they have distorted from use. Works well.

Body primed and upside down to repair a couple of rusty sections in the right side chassis rails. You can see where I started to cut out the rust with tin snips. Also shown is the reinforcing piece for under the passenger seat and the seat bracket mounts in position of where they need to be welded in.

springs
 

OK and thanks for the pics .


There seems to be little information about on cold spring resetting.

I found this:

http://redcliffesprings.com.au/springs-suspension

The other method in use is to bend with a cheap hydraulic pipe bender . You bend each leaf individually, similar to hammering . Mark out with chalk on the floor, the camber you started with and use this as a guide .

I reset a series 1 land rover rear spring with a cheap pipe bender . On the UK LR forum a guy objected , writing that it would not be a effective fix :confused.

I'm not sure if Jacob spring works in Oakleigh, Melb. is still there

I read somewhere that spring steel has a 'memory' . The hammering process disrupts the molecules and they go back to their original position.

About 45 years ago, I bought a low light Morris Minor and re set the back springs with the back of the axe, at the chopping block, with a section of RSJ as an anvil (Dad gave instructions and left me to it) I overdid the job and ended up carrying a couple of bags of cement around in the boot, to stop the shackles turning inside out. They did settle a bit, but she was certainly nose down when I sold her a year or two later.

hammering
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS0XgPTyU3A

this guy is hammering