Rovers from this era are known as 'P2' models. They were introduced in 1936 and ran until 1948 when the 'P3' was introduced, some say as a testbed for a load of innovations the company wanted to intoduce on their 'P4' model of the '50s; independent front suspension, inlet-over-exhaust engines, semi-monocoque construction etc. Some local 'P3' owners whose cars I have worked on will form a posse to come round and hang me now for thus dismissing their beloved cars as 'P2 and a halfs'. Never mind, I'll claim insanity, citing the following tale of the somewhat comprehensive restoration I recently completed for a customer from Bentham.
This was another of those 'abandoned in a field 'stories that people get all enthusiastic about. Simple at first glance, but when you realise that the chickens stopped laying eggs in it some time ago when the roof collapsed, you realise that everything in the car is ruined, worn out or missing.
As you can see by our bridal pages, we've already restored three 'P2' Rovers for ourselves, and the word has got out that we are pre-war Rover experts. So when the new owner of this erstwhile chicken shed rang me up and asked me to come and see his acquisition I foolishly agreed.
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| First sight | Second sight | Good grief! | Where's the roof? |
If it's possible, we'll do it, but this was on the cusp. The owner was keen to take on the engine and gearbox. It turned out we had a mutual friend in Malcolm from Lancaster Engines. The owner had been at school with Malcolm, who is the person I rely on for engine boring and grinding as a matter of course. So, one way or another, Malcolm was going to get this engine to work on! The owner had the car trailered up to our workshop in Ambleside, and we set to. The engine and gearbox came out as one unit for the owner and his son to collect. All removable panels were, and all furniture removed and stored. We were aiming at removing the body tub from the chassis,but it was so corroded that some of the welding had to be completed before this could be attempted. The sill panels are multi-layered sections which have a considerable longitudinal bow to them. The first two 'P2' Rovers I restored I had to make these panels myself, but fortunately Mike Evans, a luminary of the 'Rover Sports Register' club, has had a complete range of sill panels remade for 'P2's, and I am only too happy to recommend them.
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| Engine a solid piece of rust | An example of the interior trim | Body in need of strengthening | Not a lot of sill left here |
So a set of Mr Evans' sills were fitted, and the 'A,B and C' post areas were remade piecemeal. The rear inner wheel arches and boot floor were re-made at this time.
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| Sill removed | New sill panels being fitted. 'A' post n/s. | o/s rear w/arch being re-made | o/s rear w/arch completed. |
The flat area of the bootfloor is available as a pressing from the inestimable Mr Mike Cauldry of Meteor Spares, supplier of all things early-Rover. The hump forward is not available, so had to be remade, as did the lump behind the rear seat which gives clearance for the rear differential when the axle is on full travel. Then the body could finally be seperated from the chassis.
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| Original bootfloor | New bootfloor shown, old floor removed | old floor shown with new fabricated bits |
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| A severe needle-gunning awaits the chassis........ | ........ and a trip down to Lancaster to the sandblasters for the body |
Sandblasting has it's drawbacks. The grit gets EVERYWHERE so I don't do any on site. I usually use Castle Engineering on St George's Quay, Lancaster. It does have the advantage of cleaning down to the bottom of rust pits, thus effectively 'bottoming' rust problems. It must be used with extreme caution on flat areas as it can cause a lot of warping and buckling. The effect is of millions of tiny hammers hitting the panel, so if only one side of a door is sandblasted the side done tries to stretch larger than the other one, thus bulging. If both sides are accessible, then it is just posssible to get away with it if both sides are alternately attacked. The doors on this vehicle had to be extensively rebuilt anyway, so they were done with the wings, body and boot. A good sandblasting also shows if metal is surface rusted or perforated. The sliding roof support area was in this case well perforated, but this was the only major area of perforation revealed that we weren't previously aware of.
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| Body awaiting a preservative coat of etch primer Two hours after sandblasting the metal will be rusty again. Note the sand hill in the boot | Looking up at the sun-roof aperture. Perforation extensive | Looking down on the same aperture. I had to re-make the whole of this area | |
A trip down to the sandblasters has to be planned with care. It's no good going if there's the least chance of rain. I have to persuade the lads at Castle Engineering to drop everything and blast the Rover as soon as I reach them, while I go and do some shopping in Lancaster. After the four hours or so allowed to do the job, I scurry back to Ambleside with the freshly sand-blasted bits in order to get some etch primer sprayed over the bare surfaces before rust starts to form. In the meantime, the chassis has been needle-gunned as opposed to sandblasting. I find this adequate for most chassis, with the extra force exerted on the thick metal a better searching agent to show up cracks and corrosion than sandblasting. It also means that suspension and other sand-sensitive parts may be left in-situ on the chassis. A good coat of cellulose-based red oxide paint followed by a coat or two of Manor Paints' Chassis Black is adequate and cost effective for any chassis.
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| Well-painted chassis. Note the liberal brushwork has overspilled onto the metal-clad floor, not a bad thing really, it just needs the rest done now! | Body tub painted in I C I 2K and baked to 80degrees centigrade. Only with a bare tub can you dare to take the temperature so high. | The painting is carried out in the Motorbody Centres' Burntwood oven.This is literally next door to Garner Restoration,very convenient, You can see the cavity sealing dribbling out onto the floor,it's a good stage to do it after it's painted and while all is accessible. |
The body is reunited with the chassis after remaking and painting. It's amazing how much more like a car it looks when the two are assembled and it gives a boost to morale when you are this deep into a job. The next job is to rebuild the wings , literally. Large amounts of metal need to be replaced in wings of this nature and neglect if they are to be as strong as they were originally. Alignment with the apertures and the running boards means a three dimensional juggling act has to be carried out, with the wings removed and refitted many times for fit and finish corrections. Eventually they pass muster and are passed over to the bodyshop for painting. The last job before painting is to underseal the undersides with a paintable, flexible underseal. After painting they get another coating of thick, black and sticky underseal as a degradable protection against stone chipping. This should be replaced biennially.
Now we move onto the doors, which had no bottoms left internally or externally. Each type of door has an optimum sequence of rebuild. Having done this same job 16 times in the past ten years I know that the best approach is to cut out all the dead metal, inner and outer, and make the outer repair sections first. These doors are not flat, they gain their strength from being convex, so any repair sections have to go through a wheeling machine to give them that nice 'raised' look. The edges that are going to clench over the inner skin are given the standard 90degree turn, and then they are spotwelded onto the original door. A line of mig weld completes the job, but only in runs of one inch with cooling time between. Any distortion may be panel hammered into submission at this stage while the rear of the outer skin is exposed. Trial hanging is necessary before rushing on with the inner frame. I haven't found two doors that fitted the same hole on a P2, I suspect they were made to fit a particular car on the line....craftmanship! Ask a robot to do that. After a trial fit some braces are temporarily welded into place to retain the shape required, then the inner frame is made up piecemeal and the outer skin clenched over it with dolly and hammer.
Then we move on to the interior. Every piece of interior trim was remade except the dashboard top and some of the door cappings. A search through my reserve of P2 bits provided the instruments we were short of, and a steering wheel from a Series 1 Landrover was obtained. The seat backs were cast in fibreglass by Chris Trippear of Shap Wells, an elegant solution as they are some of those items that are completely covered when fitted, so nobody knows......The leather seat covers were re-made locally, and an Autosparks wiring loom was fitted. The sliding roof frame was made by 'Poly', a local joiner, and the rest of the trim was made 'in house'.
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| Dashboard before. | Dashboard after. |
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| Remains of sliding roof and sun visor area. | The same area restored, viewed from right. |
Many hundreds of hours went into this restoration and at times the overall picture looked depressing, but if each job is split down into a manageable thing that can be concentrated on, then eventually the whole picture emerges, as this lovely old Rover has done.
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| The finished article, ready to be driven and enjoyed. |