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Removing the mud and giving the old girl a good bath made it look better, but also made it easier to see a fair few issues. I think this has been restored once before and there are a few rust bubbles starting and a fair bit of paint adhesion and filler cracking in all the 'usual' spots. I shouldn't have but i started to pick. The Premier sill garnish that had been riveted on this lowly Belmonts sills was holding a lot of mud so i drilled (some) of the rivets. Sucks teeth Ill think ill just put that back up there and pretend we didnt see that With the seal definitely broken i dug into all the suspect areas to see how many repair panels to put on the list . This deep crease explains the thick filler on the upper half of this quarter panel, the filler probably made the rust on the lower half worse. Removing the deep filler means the door shut looks 100x better than it did Good 5mm of filler of this too, and much the same on the other side, except that side has braze as well There were signs of lots of filler on this quarter too. It has also been (previously?) brazed some of the filler was 10mm thick Took most of it off with a heat gun, much less messy than with a whirlywoo. The panel looked like this underneath it, from a prang in the rear Spent a bit of time with some hammers and dollies and a bit of extra heat trying to shrink some spots and it is quite a lot better. Like the other side, removing the filler also significantly improved the fit of the doors to the body! So yeah, some bits are pretty much as i expected (doors) some are much much better than i feared (quarter panels, cowls) , but some i didnt even suspect, like the sills, are quite bad indeed. We will need every patch panel you can buy, which basically means its got bitten in all the usual places, but that is a nice change from not being able to buy any panels at all!

We decided to remove the front clip to tidy it up and make it easier to get to the suspension and enginey bits as well. Check out the custom radiator shims - the Torana must have a shorter engine bay. We got $50 of random 202 bits of FBMP and amongst a couple other handy bits that included a near new water pump, a much better thermostat housing and the extended fan thing. Nose cone off Note the blue inner on the drivers fender i think this was replaced post restoration as the paint is overall much worse than any other panel and seems to have been painted only once bolted on - the passenger side is also a replacement (originally a pale yellow/mustard) but was fairly obviously repainted with much more prep and attention while off the car. Other than the fender rust behind the front wheels where water and mud collects, the front clip panels are entirely rust free which is nice Fenders out Pulled everthing to bits, cleaned it, derusted, and painted Pretty pleased with that, pressed a couple of dents out with the press and it seems to sit nicer too Going through the front indicators to make at least 2 ok ones inner fenders tidied up rad support seperated from the nosecone and all bits including the lamps all cleaned, derusted, unbent, painted, threads tapped and reassembled. Nose cone has similar treatment but just knocking the cracked paint off on the outside and primed it. Looks worse at first glance, but its straight, rust free and ready to bolt back on, or for body work at some future point. Need to sort the rust at the base of fenders but all that stuff is ready to bolt back on. Because my big sheet of 0.8mm is for baby cars, I picked up some 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4mm panel steel offcuts today for $15 + GST ( https://rietveld.co.nz/ - what a treasure of a place - a true barry paradise!) so ill probably make a start on patching the bottom of the easier of the two fenders next to start to ease into it.

Yeah the machinist lapped the valves in the head and did leak tests on each one Thanks for checking. Crap... I think that's an action shot, but god damn it now I have to go back and check lol. Fortunately I have photographic evidence. Yep it's an action shot. Phew

Is it safe to assume you fixed this before the cams went in?

Hey I really hope I've mis read but did you lap the valves to the seats before you reassembled or did they do that at the shop and had the valves labelled to fit the head? If it came back a bare head I'd be worried about valves sealing to the seats And did you leak test the valves before you put the head on the block? If the machine shop/engine reconditioner lapped the valve seats to remove pitting then just putting the valves back into the head may not seal as well as it should Happy to he corrected and I hope that makes sense Great to see progress and I hope it all goes vaxk together well

Old guy next door who loaned me that big van, died a couple of years ago, and his daughter isn't really coping with home ownership. She's been away ~3 months looking after an ex who was having heart surgery. So I had a bit of time to think as I wombled around doing this, and concluded doing something for a neighbour was pretty appropriate for Anzac day.

Drivers A pillar is no good. Fixable though. Found a hole under the wiper panel too, will see how bad that really is when i pull the dash out. Not looking forward to it tbh.

Went out this morning to pull the front bumper off and check out how things look. Got carried away but at least i know most of the front end is in good shape now.

Today went pretty smoothly, managed to solo tow the old girl off the lawn and onto the driveway and waterblast 2 years worth of lichen off. Found lots of cancer had spread but not as bad as it could be. 15 yard test is still a pass. Also found lost of lifting bog from its life before me, will make for interesting times ahead. Had to use the quad with a bare tire on the front to push it into shed as the brakes were binding on, got wife to steer it and it went slowly rolling into the jack, axlestands and compressor. She hops out 'i tried using the brake but it didn't work, its not my fault!!' Calmed her down with 'if i told you it had no brakes would you have hopped in it?' Prolly no dinner for me tonight lol.

One of the multitude of reasons this car never gets any closer to be finished is my never ending flow of side projects and half arsed ideas filling up the carshed and not leaving enough room for the car! Rainy boring day so perfect for a shed tidying session. Got sidetracked making one of my kids a wand first up (see never ending projects comment above), but got a solid effort in this afternoon so far. Have been putting up with this behemoth being in the way everwhere for years now, never wanted the box anyway so today it got cut up for the burn pile. So much more space efficient now. Lots of things along those lines and now i can see a car sized open floored area again! Will cut open another burning drum tomorrow and get rid of all the scrap timber that has accumulated in the back shed. Then continue the relocation from hoardingsshed 1 to hoardings shed 2..... of 4. Then to tow/push/shunt the car out of its lawn divots!