Nigel Blain Sprite Restoration diary

In January of 2008 I finally started my sprite restoration project.
I had been patiently waiting for years to get my hands on an old chassis that dad had hanging from the rafter. During this time of waiting we had restored my dad’s mk1 sprite and my brother’s mk4 it was finally my time. The garage was empted and the old shell brought to the garage.

Our first job was to get the shell onto axel stands and levelled. A bit of work with the spirit level and we were level. I also added a set of doors that I picked up at one of the shows that had been re-skinned.
Next I cut all the floor out with  mixture of drilling out spot welds, air chiselling joints, cutting out large sections  and grinding away the old metal, Followed by cleaning up the flanges that were left.

Our next job was to put a new floor in I had acquired a full single floor pan to replace the old floor so it would go in as one hole floor pan. After cleaning the nice shiny paint off the arias we needed to weld to on the new pan we raised it into place under the car with jacks ready to be welded to the tunnel cross chassis sections of the car

Following on from that I removed the front bulkhead and foot kick space and made new bulk head panels and put in new kick space panels also following that were the inner sills we did all this on the passenger side first.
Ok I missed taking photographs for the majority of this section of the work so have a picture of this bit done

Next step A-post the original ones were in particle bad shape. I was able to buy the complete inside parts for these they were very nice.  We measured them all up with the outer sills in place so we knew that everything would line up before we did any welding at this stage.

We then proceeded to do the same work for the driver’s side

Following this the A-posts were finished off with their outer skins and the outer lower sills were attached

This brings us to about June 2008 where the next major works to do is the back bulk head, this we were going to need to cut out and replace in the same weekend. But June is a busy time for us as we have to get my brothers and dads car ready for the annual pilgrimage to leman for the 24hour race.  

12-13th July 2008
After us having a gap in building for leman we had to wait for a good weekend when my farther any myself were available for a full weekend to do the work on the back bulkhead.
We started the process by securing up the car putting in more axel stands and jacks underneath the car so that when we removed the back bulkhead the car would not move. We also made sure that the doors were all in place and marked them so they would give extra strength to the car while the bulkhead was removed.

On the Saturday 12th we removed the old bulkhead. We drilled out the old visible spot welds, cut out the large centre sections then chiselled or grinded away the mettle left attached to the flanges. with a flap wheel on the grinder I cleaned off all the places that we were going to be welding.

On Sunday the 13th we finished the prepping of the flanges made sure they were ready to take the new parts.
I originally purchased the bulkhead in sections, so had an inner and outer panel and the internal blocks but found a complete unit that would make it easier to replace. I cleaned the paint off the new bulkhead where we were going to be welding to it so that it was ready for us to put in.  Getting the complete bulkhead in took quite a bit of time as it is a very very snug fit. Once we had it in place and were happy with it we started to weld it in.

19-20th July 2008
We finished off the cleaning of the welds on the back bulk head and started making panels to replace small sections on the back wheel arches were the bulkhead connects as the mettle that was there was no good. We managed to complete the work on the driver’s side for this with the passenger side still to do.