the other side of the story

The Daimler has been in its current home (an old barn) for around 2 1/2 years. Prior to moving it there I had repaired the inner sill/floorpan edge/box sections on the driver's side in my previous garage. When I started that work the remit was 'patch it up quickly and cheaply and get it out on the road'. For this reason I didn't buy a new inner sill or front box section and just made repairs from sheet metal. I did buy an old stock rear box section of Ebay though as I thought it was beyond me to shape one up. After all the work I realised it would have actually been quicker to buy the panels needed as it took quite some time fabricating sections and the rear box section I bought was not the proper Jaguar part and needed alot of adapting. That is why on the passenger side I just bought the correct panels which are very reasonably priced anyway.

I haven't really looked at the driver's side of the car for a long time as I have been busy on the passenger side for the last 4 months or so and prior to that no work was really done on the car, since it was moved to the barn, as I was busy with other things.

The barn can be quite damp at times and I was shocked at the moisture dripping of the repaired sections when I went round to prepare the driver's side for its new outer sill. That side of the car was positioned near the wall to give me maximum room to work on the other side. I have now moved it well away from the damp wall and the weather is improving and now that its dried off I can see that the work done on it way back then is actually fine. I have however decided to do some more repairs. As mentioned before I only replaced the bottom part of the inner sill as the top was sound. The front and rear upper ends of the inner sill were a bit rotten though and I was frightened to dig too deep there and intended to forget I noticed. Now that I know the structure (from having replaced the full inner sill on the other side) it doesn't seem so daunting so I am doing it properly. The pictures below will show the rusty areas.

rusty top front end of driver's side inner sill

same problem at rear end. there are a lot of panels joining up here but I decided best to split them all the repair the sill properly. outer part is remains of outer sill which is easier to remove than the inner part.

another view. to think I was going to just cover this mess with a new outer sill!

this is just in front of A post where inner sill meets bulkhead area. you can see how panel was spot welded onto body. outer sill was spot welded on top of it. the outer sill spots have been cut out here and the outer sill removed revealing the next set of spots.

driver's side rear box section and floorpan edge repairs. repro repair panel was too short so nose section welded on to lengthen it. there was also no return lip for welding to the outer sill. again extra metal welded on.