Jowett Javelin - Can you just sort this out for me

The only panel that I've found to not be effected yet is the roof skin - that said there is some realignment required on nearside roof gutter which will require paint - The fact that the car is a metallic basecoat finish and with all other panels effected it will be common sense from a colour matching prospective to repaint the complete car - doesn't mean that it has to be bare metaled - unless I find other horrors under the paint once I get to that stage - for now the concentration is on getting the outer panels fitting / opening / closing with reasonable aperture gappings - plus there is some remedial works required to correct some areas of the structural welding around the car  

So continuing on the theme 



I found this cracked chassis box section on the nearside 



Holes in the chassis at the rear along with further defective welding 



Specialist slap & run welding 



All sortable but the point is - well you already know by now 

and I didn't really mean that one - I suspect though that in your capacity as Jowett guru you know where there is a shell to be found. 

I temporally sorted the door hinge plates 



These were loose / only fitted with half the fastenings - the countersunk machine screws were loose / old / rusty - I have new ones on order but these will do for now has a starting point 



One of the backing plates was missing completely but thankfully I held one in stock 



Brass bushes which act as the the hinge bearings are fitted to the hinge plates 



Doors rehung 



Lower front edge of the front nearside door aligns pretty well with the front wing 



Bottom swage on the wing is too deep and will require reworking to match the swage profile of the door 



The window frame profile looks ok when closed against the aperture 



But is very tight against the roof gutter when the door is opened - I'll slightly reshape the roof gutter to address this - I don't want reduce the profile of the door frame has this would look odd when compared to the width of the rest of the frame 



I labelled up the areas that required remedial works to correct the door fitting / aperture gapping - has it goes this front door is actually pretty good - in its current state probably a better fit now than when it left Briggs who built the Javelin bodyshells for Jowett 



Nearside rear door then - actually removes paint from the roof gutter has its closed 



And has next to no gapping when closed against the upper D post 



The centreline swage is slightly out of alignment and the profile will require some minor works 



I cleaned up the door catches & locks but there's no end of small loose fittings & fixings missing from the parts supplied 



I had new door keeps in stock 



Further works & assessment still required - Critical factor with this type of B post & door hinge arrangement is work back from the best fitting panel - hence with the front wing ok work onto the front door - then the rear door through to the rear wing - However make any modifications to the B post & hinge plates and it effects the fitting of both doors along with the gapping & profiles against subsequent panels 

I do not envy you on this, I used to work in a bodyshop but is was 26 years ago now. I think people underestimate the hours that go into repairing vehicles and that it comes at a cost. When I worked in the trade and I used to present an estimate, the amount of people that would say thats expensive so went elsewhere to only come back cap in hand to fix it. Appreciate that you then have the other side where garages charge the earth but then send out poor work and are happy to take the money. As ive not worked in the trade for so long i personally am a little out of touch with modern techniqes so some of my work may be considered questionable but its mine and I did it. I stopped painting cars a while back and started to farm it out. The quality that comes back is no where near what I did back then so I really need to refresh my knowledge. I feel for the owner of this one but clearly its in the right hands to sort it..

Words fail me regarding the quality of the original work along with the fact, 1. That you are prepared to take the job on and 2. That I know that you can, and will fix it...probably above and beyond the original factory build. How you do it is outside my understanding, but you do, and share it with us all (even when it goes wrong) and for that, along with all the knowledge that you freely share with us to enrich our own projects, I am forever grateful

Sorted the door locking catches out for the nearside front door - cleaned them up & fitted them - I will try source new chrome dovetail locators or if not have the originals re-chromed 



So I now have both the front & rear doors closing onto their catches - these still a lot of remedial works to correct the aperture gapping's but at least the doors now fit the apertures along with opening & closing 



The centre gapping between the doors were quite wide from new - the upper frame section / B post on some models accommodated the semaphore indicator arms 



Now I can start to look at sorting the rear out - this has been previously repaired and it completely lacks the wing edge support / strengthening bracket 



I'm not expecting the best workmanship behind this Sikaflex / Tigerseal that's been bodged on 



This is the offside rear wing which still has its original edge support bracket - its very thin & weak but it gives you some indication to what should be there 



There is filler bodged into this bracket in place of weld - its the wrong bracket anyway 



The sealer bodge was well adhered and I had to use a sharp wood chisel to remove it


 
It looks like a lapped repair that they have attempted just knocked the face of the wing inwards and tacked a piece of fresh steel in over it followed by some filler to disguise it 



Repairs on the top flange edge are no better executed either 



And there's over 25mm depth of filler hiding these repairs at the rear of the wing 



For the leading edge & lack of the support bracket its going to be easier for me to cut the defective repair off and start again - thankfully I've now repaired many Javelin rear wings before - hence I keep patterns for the repair sections - the pattern is for the offside but its just a matter of reversing it 
 

What is the colour Chris , is it from something else or a custom shade?

I quite like it as a colour , just not sure it suits a Javelin.

I needed to find out what I had to work with on the rear wing - so DA out and a sand back 



The dark colour is actually bridging filler which is far from what you would expect on a good panel repair - but I suppose given the low quality of what I've found so far I couldn't really expect any better than this - Its still very disappointing none the less 



With the filler removed I could form a plan of action



None of this would have lasted very long once the car was returned to the road and I have grave concerns about the rest of panels if this theme / level of workmanship follows through on to them 



Repair panel in the making 



A piece of welding / brazing road is a good & quick way of patterning a radius profile 



Equally you can use an adjacent panel if it has a matching profile 


 
So with a eye on the profile required 



More shaping to the repair panel 



My shrinker / stretcher is invaluable for this type of work 



Getting there 



Then some hand forming work to achieve the compound curvature 



Needs some more work yet but its close 



Then cleaned up the underside of the shroud that wing fastens up to 



This was covered in thick filler along with some welded repairs that would have prevented the rear wing from mating correctly 



The brackets for retaining the wing to the D post are located incorrectly hence these will get removed 



Then I trimmed the defective repair off of the wing 



Rear wing refastened to the car and the new repair panel trial fitted 



From here I can determine the vertical aperture gapping in order to trim the repair into the rear wing  



The very lower section of the rear door is misaligned due to a defective previous repair and this will also require some remedial works 



Finally I marked the aperture holes up on the wing to check alignment with the shroud that it bolts to 



Some of the holes have been deleted by the previous idiots - By transferring the locations across to the rear shroud I can now re-drill the fixing points through the shroud