After the recent radiator work (Part 85), I asked Troy Nace to help me get Beck's body panels aligned. I had already figured out that it was going to be a fussy and time-consuming task! But we had to take a little side trip, due to the way some British cars were still made in 1952. The bodywork has a substantial wooden frame, and wood has a nasty habit of rotting...
We were removing a long rubber rub strip at the front of the body, just to see if we could trim it successfully. I was on the passenger side, and all was fine, but Troy removed the strip on the driver's side, and said, "UH OH!" I came around to find this significant rot on one of the wooden members between the body and the front cowl. We decided to fix it right away, because we needed solid wood there to reinstall the rub strip.
The cowl is held in place by a large number of big bolts, with nuts on the inside of the car. Troy held the nuts on the inside while I loosened them from the outside.
Once that was done, I used a rotary cut-out tool to make a square shoulder in the solid wood below the rot. That tool is mostly used for drywall, cutting out holes for lights and such, but it has the power to melt through those thick timbers also.
Soon, we had a clean hole, ready for a patch. I used some cardboard to trace the shape and the locations of the bolt holes.
The patch was made from hard oak. We were lucky to find a piece of the correct thickness in the shop.
And here it is bolted in place. The rubber strip is already nailed to it now.
That was definitely an unexpected side trip on the afternoon. It took about an hour and a half to accomplish that patch. I had previously installed the rub strip in 2017, so the wood had rotted since then. In fact, it was probably already rotting from the inside out, and it made its way to the outside. Whatever, I'm glad it's done. Stupid Wooden British Cars!
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