Sill covers... and more importantly whats behind! - New P6 v8 owner... what should i expect?

[JC.]

Hi,
Bought a 77 3500S a couple of days ago and trailered it to a friends farm. My friend happens to have a 4 post lift I can play with.

The DPO said that he resprayed the sill covers from brown to black. He also removed the brown vynal roof and sprayed that black. He also changed the boot mounted spare for a spare that lives inside the boot... except it doesnt as he has lost the spare wheel! From what I have read in the archived on this site I assume I am now the proud owner of a butchered huntsman?

OK, well, the sill covers are made of either plastic of fiberglass and are only held on by self tapping screws.
This cant be right surely? I mean they are the correct sort of profile and match up with the ends of the wings, but surely my car didnt roll out the factory with glass fibre outer sills!

On putting the car up on the 4 post lift, I noticed that the metal on the underside of the car about an inch and a half in from the outer sills is quite soft and would hole if i put enough pressure on. I didnt remove the sill covers as I didnt have time before going home to investigate further though.

Have checked the inner rear arches from within the boot and they are all solid. There is, however, a hole in the boot floor that needs to be patched (easy)

The PO had the car for just over 10 years. For the last 5 years it has sat outside in his yard. I am familiar with the rover V8 so no problems there. I got it to fire up pretty quickly although it does need a damn good service.

The reason I bought this P6 is I am planning to convert my 1978 MGB GT to V8 power over the next summer and I want the P6 to be a daily driver whilst I do this.
I am a university student, so I dont exactly have deep pockets to throw at this car.
I estimate I have around 9 months to get this car ready for an MOT.

Any thoughts?

Unfortunately the car is 100 miles away in wrexham at the moment in a friends barn so I cant nip out and look at it. However, I am moving down to bangor next saturday so I hope to go down each weekend and any free days I have and work on this car.

Finally, has anyone got a good cheap/free drivers side fibreglass wing going spare? Its the only wing that isnt metal.
Im planning on spraying the whole thing metalic red with aerosols anyway. Theres nothing wrong with aerosols for spray jobs... I can show you a highly tuned BGT sprayed with aerosols that looks very proffesional.

Any help / advice / hints / tips apriciated.

-JC.

 

[webmaster]

The sill covers are supposed to be screwed on with self tappers !, they should screw into small folded steel clips on the top edge, and into small plastic inserts in the floor.

There's nothing wrong with fibreglass sill covers as they are non-structural, in fact the fibreglass ones I've seen are far superior to some of the repro steel items, and of course they won't rot.

You really need to take the sill covers off to get a good look at the sills and floor, sounds like you'll need to do some repairs in this area.
The best way to inspect inner arches on P6s is to remove the wings, very easy to do and will allow you to make a proper inspection.

Nothing wrong with spraying from cans, just takes a very long time and costs a fortune. I would recomend hiring a compressor and buying some proper paint. Especially with metallics as you need to get an even disribution of metal flakes.

The good thing about a p6 is you can take all the visible panels off and spray them seperately (in a garage / shed if you like) or leave them on the car and spray it as a whole.

 

[chrisyork]

If you use the forum e mail system to drop me your real e mail, I can let you have some section drawings of the sill floor area which give you a better idea of what is meant to be there. (I haven't got round to sorting out how I can make things accessible from here!) Also look at Richard's (webamster) past posts for photo's of his work on the sill area of his convertible conversion which are the best I've seen for describing what is going on!

Chris