In the early stages, looking at the right hand A pillar, made me suspicious that some remdial work had been done in the past as it was not particularly pretty. Once the front shroud was removed, exposing the inner scuttle, it became even more evident that extensive damgae repair had been carried out as it was down right ugly. Not to worry, this would all be tidied up along with other rusty panel repair.
Work commensed cutting out (what was left) of the sill. Most of the remaining floor fell out without much persuasion as it was mainly being held together by the manky carpet. The front outrigger had suffered badly from rust but the rear one was in surprisingly good fettle - I'd previously purchased both replacements for these but I may not need the rear one - we'll see. With the old sill out of the way and the new outrigger tacked in place I was able to offer up the new sill.
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Oh dear! Nothing appeared to line up. The attachment of the sill to the front wheel arch was much higher than where the previous sill had been welded on. Closer inspection showed that the previous had been re-welded on in a different position to the factory original. The outer footwell panel should be level with and join on to the sill - it did not, although looked like it had been bashed about to make it fit. What was left of the floor where it attaches to the sill did not line up either.
Either the new sill was in the wrong place or the chassis was twisted! Looking at the extent of the damage repair the vehicle must have suffered significent force, so the latter is a possibilty. I was able to finely tune the rotisserie so that the rear of chassis (assuming any twist would be in the front) was level and made many measurements of lengths, angles and levels. Phew! the chassis itself appeared to be true.
This must mean that the misalignment is due to the botched repairs. A trial fit of a newly purchased footwell floor panel confirmed that it aligned nicely with the new sill, and more alignment was possible as more dodgey repairs were cut out. The damage was more extensive than I'd hoped with more buckled panels (some smoothed over with bondo) so a lot more had to be cut out, repaired, fabricated or replaced. This included some sections of chassis using 2mm (14 gauge) steel.
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As the footwell and floor were no longer providing good alignment, and I had replacement panels for these, I cut out the side panel and lower floor panel. Also the pedal box with engine bearer strut was removed as these had been subject to botched repair and was causing the inner wing not to align properly with the sill.
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Initial inspection of the strut only required a few repair section but, by the time I'd finished 'just one more section', it was more like Trigger's Broom with more repair than original strut. To align this properly needed the inner wing in place which was suffering from club hammer repairs. So attenton turned to making repair panels for this - I seemed to be getting further and further away from the sill which had been my primary goal.
