And so begins the long journey in restoring this beauty to her former glory.

41,000 miles on the original 3.8 engine and mechanically okay-ish. Aesthetically we need some work.
Any suggestions regarding the body paneling and rebuilding the back end?

 

Well I think the steering wheel needs replacing, that's for sure !

 

A good wash and wax will put it right. But I thought cars did not rust in South Africa...?

 

If you are looking at rebuilding it I would look for a replacement shell from a later 240 or 340 perhaps in better condition and then change all the running gear over. You are going to need a donor anyway to replace some of the parts that are too far gone to restore and cannot be bought new anymore.
Good luck if it is not just a joke.

 

Not a joke... I have been looking around for a body and will keep you all posted.

 

At coast & especially places like Durban with salt air & high humidity they rust. In the dry hinterland & dry highveld they don't. In the case of my S Type that I restored that you can see in my signature the car had lived in Johannesburg only & was totally rust free. After media blasting not a single perforation or even surface rust causing a minor depression in the body steel anywhere. Now at coast in Cape Town & every cavity injected & plastered with Tectyl.

 

I do hope that last comment refers to the car ... 🤣🤣🤣

 

LOL ~ Indeed it does!

 

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Wow, that's a lot of work for sure. As mentioned above, a donor car for the shell would be the only sensible option. Please keep us updated though, I'd be very interested to see how you progress, good luck!

 

I kind of wondered, I thought I would let the thread grow a bit and find out.

The veneer is shot, but from what I can see, the core still looks sound and retrievable.
There may some delamination of the plywood here and there where the edges have become exposed, but that's easily fixable with some 24 hour epoxy, a syringe and clamps.

Even the upper dash's mahogany looks like it survived, but the two section it's made up of may need regluing with epoxy.

In severe cases like this a 24 epoxy works best, it's thin and runny and sucks into the pores of the wood, where water based glues only go so far.
Water based glues don't dry hard either, they move, especially inside the extreme temperatures car.

The other problem with water based glues is that they dry too fast, you have very limited working time and the fast drying glue doesn't have tome to get into the pores of the very dried out wood.
Plus they contain water, you don't want that in the wood any more.