Countach bare metal respray

Al has been busy over the last couple of weeks, a new RH wing top and LH light pod have been fabricated. The RH front wing is now repaired, and on Monday the LH front wing gets welded back together. Al's local AC shop have managed to repair and make as good as new the AC rad for the sum of 35GBP! (an absolute bargain).
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Al has been working hard now on re-assembly ready for priming (still a long way to go however). Progress in the last week has now focused on the front end, RH front wing now recovered, the RH door is stripped (another truck load of filler) and the LH front wing tacked so it can be repaired off the car. The tacks being done once the front end was all aligned with bonnet, lamp pods, doors.

The RH front wing has been etch primed on the underside and given a coat of satin black for added protection once on the car.

The AC rad is ready for re-assembly to the fan cowl which we have powder coated in black. Al is busy today stripped the LH door - hopefully less filler on this! It has to be said Al has worked wonders to recover the LH wing, sort out the lamp and bonnet alignment, with the minimum amount of new metal.

The bucket is the stuff removed from the door alone!
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Al has been on fire this week, so we now have a repaired LH front wing, (have to say amazing job to recover the mess that was the 2 halves). The air con rad is back, as you can see a fair transformation. The front end rebuild now underway with the RH front wing rivetted back on with the correct copper rivets.

The LH door is now stripped and again a gair bit of filler has been used round the NACA duct. I have sent Al some pictures from the Jean Marc Borel book of how it should look.

We took the precaution of letting in a drain hole in the upper hinge bracket area so water can escape rather than being trapped. The other wing should be on next week, then the reapir to the LH rear wing can begin.
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Ha ha yes in the uk a fender is also called a wing, not really sure why but in the uk we rarely refer to them as fenders.

Its great to see some real progress now going the other way i.e. towards a car being back together. The issues were far worse than expected, but with Al's skills he has made it look easy. You can see that he deals with a lot of different cars, the Indy he has just finished has a great met red colour and at the same time he has a white mini van almost complete.

 

Some more progress, both front wings are now mounted, although Al is still 'fettling' the lamp pod gaps. The RH drain gutter has had 2 areas of corrosion cut out and new metal let in. The roof ariel hole is also now history. There is a bit of work to do on the roof to take out all the imperfections, but nothing that Al cannot fix.
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Thanks Joe, the corner has been turned, there is the rear wing to repair, straighten the roof out and then a bit of work on the doors. The main issue with the doors is that the corners of the NACA ducts have been filled, the filler is out but it will require a bit of panel work to get nice crisp edges again.

In the meantime just collecting up parts to get the suspension and brakes rebuilt.

 

Al has now removed the rear wing and is prepping the panels for welding back together. No real issues found and the tube work underneath is good. Al will paint the frame before the wedling takes place. In addition about a 1/3rd of the roof has now been shrunk back into shape.

Once the wing is back on there is a whole car which once the roof is complete will be ready for final prep ahead of some profiling filler and primer. (i.e. the same process as the factory, as per Jean Marc Borel's account in the Countach book).

Al generally paints the main shell then the closures/add on parts.
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The car has had 2 small knocks in traffic, one in London, the other I did not get the details. The other damage is a mystery but looks like vandalism. The odd thing is correct oem 1/4 panels were bought for the front and rear then a non skilled shop fitted them and re-painted the whole car.

Once back in the UK will track doen the history by trying to locate the former owners.

 

All of the engine bay has been masked prior to the wing coming off, Al will re-mask once the welding is complete. I will ask him to tape up though to avoid any possible drama later.

 

The quarter will be welded back to the front section, and the points where it joins the frame is with copper rivets as per original. We intend to also weld in some L shaped pieces on both sides to stiffen the section around the airboxes.

Getting excited now as we are about 2 weeks away from primer being laid down.

 

Will dig out the receipt for the rivets, we have a few left over! As min order quantity was 500

 

They were about 35gbp for 500, see link below

http://www.shop4fasteners.co.uk/

Simon