chassis

Here I have repaired the right C pillar base, and have replaced the rear rain gutters. The whole lot was rotten, so was cut out and replaced with new metal. I've primed, seam-sealed and painted this bit, so it can be considered finished!

This is the same part on the left hand side. I had to do exactly the same work on both sides.

This is the rear left 'elephants ear' which was completely rotten. I have replaced this and the rain gutters and boot aperture with new panels. I have also fitted new non-original boot seals, which should perform better than the Citroen originals, which were notoriously bad.

The rear right bumper mount had turned to dust on my car, so I decided to make a new one out of sheet steel. This picture shows the result, which looked very good before I covered it in seam sealer!! (But at least that should keep the moisture out of the joints this time ;-)) I also had the repair the metal behind the mounting, which you can almost make out in this picture. You can see that I have removed the elephants ear on this side; a new one will be added soon.

The passenger side footwell was quite rusty on my car - here you can see I have cut out a lot of the metal, though there is still lots to do. I plan on replacing half of the floorpan here, the inner sill, and some of the outer sill. You can see that I have cut a hole in the back panel - this was to assess the condition of the metal in the box section, which turned out to be fine, although I sprayed rust convertor and zinc coating in there just to be safe!

I've cut some more of the floorpan away here, and some of the sill. Soon it will be ready to add the new metal. You'll notice that I haven't removed all of the interior - that's because I'm going to scrap it and replace it with new red velour, so I'm not too bothered about it getting damaged.

The lower sections of the middle sills were quite rusty in places,so I had to remove them and replace the rusty bits. (That pile of rust underneath the car used to be the floopan!)

I've finished cutting the old floorpan and sill away now, it's left a mighty big hole in the car! I've made sure I've kept the passenger door shut during all of this, to give the body a little extra strength whilst the floor is gone. You can see that I have also seam-sealed the joins in the outer sill on the inside - this obviously has to be done on any welded seam to stop moisture creeping between the panels and rotting them. I'll paint this inner sill with POR 15 when the seam-sealer has gone off.

This is the new lower floorpan almost ready to be welded. I just have to clean the existing stuff up a bit and trim the edges.

This is the same shot from a different angle. Once this metal is in place I'll paint / prime it with POR 15, then try to figure out a way of replicating the original Pallas double skin! I also have to make up a new inner sill, though this is just a case of folding a sheet of steel and seaming it in place.

This is the drivers side floorpan, which has rusted along 50% of its length. The blue paint marks the metal to be replaced.

This is the drivers side 'middle' sill, which you can see is quite bad. It actually looked OK when I began, but the metal was so thin that replacing it was the only option.

Here is the same sill with a repair section let in. The holes drilled along the bottom edge are used for plug-welding the sill to the floorpan lip; you can see that I have plug welded the holes to the first foot of floor, which has also been replaced. I'm now busy replacing the rest of the floor.

Here I'm holding a piece of the floor - you can see that on the Pallas the floor is double-skinned at the front; this creates a perfect moisture trap between the panels, which of course rust. (And this is luxury?!?!)

The roof on Deese's is bolted and/or bonded onto the superstructure, as it is (usually) made of fibreglass. This leads to one of the biggest problems on the D series - rotten roof rails, as water seaps past the roof seals and sits rotting the metal underneath them. My car has not escaped this, as this picture shows. Believe me, this is NOT what you want to find on a Deese!! I knew mine was rusted along the top of the screen aperture, and this has certainly confirmed this. Hopefully I'll just be able to clean the old stuff away and weld a new strip of metal along the top of the screen, then POR15 it to make sure it won't rot again!

To repair the screen surround, I made up several short 'U' shaped channel sections, and welded them in place, one by one. The welds were then ground down, and the seams sealed.

26^th May 2002 - A major milestone was hit today - the chassis welding is finally finished! The floorpan has been repaired along both edges, the sills repaired and the holes in the inner sills welded. It's taken me the best part of two years to get this far, but I finally have a solid car!

All the welds have been seam sealed using brushable seam sealer and painted using chassis black. The next step is to fill the sills and box sections with Waxoyl and paint the floors with stone chip.

I bought a new righthand Epaulette (Elephants ear) panel from Centreville; this is the last item to be welded to the chassis before it is complete.

This is the right hand side epaulette panel, having been filly welded in place, primed, sealed and painted. The next step is to refit the fuel filler and breather equipment.

The fuel filler neck was wire brushed and then re-painted black. I also cleaned the rubber grommet which is attached to the epaulette panel and polished the aluminium filler cap. All I have to do is fit it now!