This car is in good condition however is a bit tired.  We have been comissioned to fully strip the car down to component parts and do a concours standard restoration including a bare metal respray.

Everyone in the workshop is very taken with this car.  A lovely car in its day we're all looking forward to bringing it back to its former glory.  First job is to get the automatic gearbox taken out and reconditioned.  With that out we will then strip the rest of the car down and see what lies beneath.

A week later and the Rover looks a bit different!  Fully stripped and ready to be professionally shot blasted back to bare metal in preparation for the welding that will be needed in various places.

To get the car to this stage we stripped it down part by part.  The high build quality of these classic Rovers, and especially the P5, never fails to impress us.

The car is rusting in places.  In particular both the sills, which look ok from the outside, are rusting badly from the inside, and there are large flakes of rust inside.  The photo shows some of the rust we have pulled out from the sill.  The sills will be changed when the car returns from blast cleaning.

December:

The car has been professionally blast cleaned utilising various media.  A chemical treatment to begin with followed by plastic media & garnet media blasting on the bodyshell & various panels followed by a phosphate treatment to protect the now completely bare metal from rusting.

The advantage of completely cleaning a car back to bare metal is it removes any hidden filler etc. & you see all the repairs the car has had over its life, some repairs done well and professionally, others verging on a bodge!

A mixture of filler & glass fibre have been used to make repairs during the cars life.

We have also completely stripped the engine down to its component parts. Having done this we had the block and other parts vapour blast cleaned as seen in the picture below.  The engine block & associated parts are now being engineered etc. to restore the engine to its original state.

From its original state when just removed from the car:

to its newly cleaned state:

Various new parts and panels are now on order so we can begin repairing the various sections of the car.

Having received many of the panels ordered we are now fitting some and will return others and instead will fabricate our own as they were not to the standard required for this concours restoration project.

Richard shaping a hand-made section of panel.

The passenger side is nearly complete now with all the panels required fabricated and welded in to place.  Those joints and areas that require it have been lead loaded.  This is the proper way to fill small areas rather than loading it up with filler.

Lead loading various joints